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Teachers, students can be poor match

By Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published February 25, 2008 at 12:30 a.m.

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Parlez-vous math?

Some kids do poorly in math because their teachers are speaking a foreign language of math concepts.

Chris Umbriaco, 16, a junior at Jefferson County's Bear Creek High School, said his problem with math is "all the big words."

"Like 'integers.' If you don't know what they are, it's confusing," Umbriaco said.

Umbriaco is in a special class where he gets help with math basics along with Algebra II, the standard 11th-grade course.

Heaven Perez, 14, a Bear Creek freshman, attributes her math woes to a lack of communication with math teachers.

"It's weird, because they think I'm getting it, and I'm not," said Perez, who is also receiving extra help alongside the standard ninth-grade math course.

Some experts say the students have a point about a lack of communication with math teachers. Math whizzes - a group that includes most of the people who become math teachers - often need help communicating with students who are unlike themselves.

"Things that come easy for some of us, we take them for granted, and you've never sat and thought why it's easy for you until you're trying to explain it to someone who doesn't get it," said Jenni Harding-DeKam, a professor at the University of Northern Colorado who trains math teachers.

Sometimes, teachers who weren't especially good at math in school make better teachers, Harding-DeKam said.

"For them, a lot of them who struggled in math, they're really able to help a child who's struggling with something because they've been there and they can relate," she said.

Arlene Mitchell, a past president of the Colorado Council of Teachers of Mathematics, said communication with kids who aren't learning is the most important part of the teacher's job.

It's not enough to reach the eager students who sit in the front of the room, said Mitchell, a longtime Greeley West High School math teacher who is now a consultant to school districts and the Colorado Department of Education.

"It's the 85 percent of the kids who are in the back of the room that just don't get it, period," Mitchell said. "How do you get it across to them? And that becomes the art of teaching."

Harding-DeKam said she tries to give her best math students a dose of the frustration other people feel about numbers. She uses a problem about volume that has a counterintuitive answer few people get on the first try.

"So then we can talk about children who are frustrated," she said.

morsonb@RockyMountainNews.com or 303 954-5209

Comments

  • February 25, 2008

    12:13 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    STOPUSAGiveaway writes:

    So you don't think it could be that we have ONE permitted students to enter college without any requirements--so what could they begin to teach?
    Then you wouldn't think it just may be that the person doesn't even know ENGLISH on a scale of l-5!
    Could it be that there are those whom have seen the people around them be given something for nothing.
    How then could it be prior to the mid sixties: there was not a drop out problem and now we have an over 70 per cent teen pregnancy which is rewarded and it isn't just TEENS its ILLEGALS running across the USA border to drop their sperm donor exponentials just in time for auto-elfare citizenship from womb to tomb on the backs of the diminishing worker-taxpayer who must pay for what they use or loose their homes etc.
    Could it be that TENURE is non competitive?
    And could it be that the BOARDS are rubber stamps?
    Could it be that superinendents have a 5 year contract and know if they are F I R E D it must be bought out?
    Could it be the Natiional Educators Unions lobby for themselves?
    Could it be selfish T E A C H E R S whom S T R I K E
    right in the middle of the school year
    AFTER they have had ALL SUMMER OFF
    while other parents are 8-5 or go hungry?
    Could it be E N T IT L E M E N T s?
    Could it just be that we have a liberal society that thinks they don't have to do anything but complain...
    Years ago had you dared ask: "what is going to be on the test" you would have been flunked! Now an outline is provided college students.
    We don't complete we are just disposing of ourselves like the boiling frog syndrome as is our disposable dependable society on a COMMUNIST nation the Chinese and the world--even for our food.
    We didn't start out that way either.
    But we have a grand guarantee that we will and are ending that way due to the world invading and we sit and say "those poor this and ..
    Could it be AFFIRMATIVE ACTION: when these kids didn't even live or get to live their life are B L A M E D for something that happened during Jesus time?
    Could it just be extremist extremism or just plain those who want to terminate the USA?
    Send our youth to die on foreign soil while the foreigners have rights on our own soil...
    Double standards---
    Do Unto Others...
    One Nation Under GOD

  • February 25, 2008

    5:32 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    Scott writes:

    Let's see, what might be wrong here:

    Issue 1: Chris Umbriaco a high school junior complaining that words like "integer" are "big" and "confusing."

    Comment 1: Obviously this kid has never heard of a dictionary. Sounds like a failure on the part of the English teachers.

    Issue 2: "Math whizzes - a group that includes most of the people who become math teachers - often need help communicating with students who are unlike themselves."

    Comment 2: HOLD IT! I thought that all of those 24 semester credits of "Why Johnny Is A Loser" courses that are REQUIRED for a teaching license was suppose to take care of this. Guess not. These courses must be more of the geriatric hippie (professor) job security act.

    Issue 3: "Sometimes, teachers who weren't especially good at math in school make better teachers," Harding-DeKam said.

    Comment 3: I think I have just figured out why our kids are so dumb. With geniuses like DeKam making statements like this is it any wonder that the K-12 teachers are so pathetic? Could DeKam be one of those geriatric hippies?

    Scott

  • February 26, 2008

    7:07 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    vudumom writes:

    integers- A number in a set ( -4, -3,-2, -1, 0, 1, 2 3 4 ) ;
    a whole number or the opposite of a whole number.

    This is in my 5th graders math materials sent home for parents to help their students understand meanings and math words.
    At the beginning of the year their elementary school holds a math night.They invite all students at all grade levels to come in and hear a presentation from their teachers on what kind of math they will be teaching and updating parents on the different ways they are teaching math.They provide a big packet of models,terms,games etc...to the parents.My 5th grader was the only one that showed up in her class.My 2nd grader was the only one who showed up from her class.

    Parents wonder why their kids are failing? Don't get me started!

  • February 27, 2008

    8:51 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    psu96 writes:

    vudumom,
    I knew I would find a response from you blabing about how smart and committed your kids are. Feeling insecure? We get it, your involved and your kids are smart,