#math teachers

Results of a math test teacher candidates in Ontario must pass in order to be certified show striking disparities across language, age and racial groups, the province's teachers' federation says. The Ontario Teachers' Federation, which advocates for more than 160,000 teachers in the province, requested roughly a year's worth of success rates for the test with demographic information included. It shows that overall, about 68 per cent of teacher candidates passed the test on their first try, with that number jumping to 82 per cent once people who failed the first time took the test again.

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my math teacher hissed at us today

This is a blog about innumeracy.

Innumeracy is like illiteracy, but for numbers. I have dyscalculia - or "math dyslexia," if you prefer something easier to say that more people also understand.

Like most people with dyscalculia, I've had it my whole life. I've also been functionally innumerate my whole life. I can count (usually); I can do basic addition and multiplication (kind of), subtraction (sometimes) and division (ehhh....). I hate games that involve counting money or keeping score. I can read an analog clock if you make me. I mix up my right and left more than random chance allows. I get lost a lot.

My math skills top out at "calculate a 20% tip on this bill" or "count change." I can't even reliably use a calculator for a lot of things, because calculators need the user to know what they're trying to get the calculator to calculate, and I can't always tell the thing the steps in the right order.

I'm 42, and for 42 years, I've hated, avoided, and feared basic math. I have three college degrees - not one requiring a single math course. I'm fascinated by several topics involving math, but I can't do them. The numbers knock me out of contention every time.

So why - now, when I have my own house, a stable job that requires only the occasional calculator arithmetic, a reliable car, and something resembling a savings account - do I care to change that?

Honestly...I don't know. There are certainly a few factors in play, including:

Most of my friends are math nerds, science nerds, and/or spatial-reasoning-artist nerds, and I want to appreciate their nerdery appropriately;

My students are aware that I'm a giant nerd who is interested in everything and thus love to ask me questions, and it hurts to admit to 15 year olds that I'm better at ancient Greek than at basic algebra;

I read Ben Orlin's Math With Bad Drawings and I want to be able to do the math, dang it. (I can already do bad drawings.)

But the biggest one is this:

Having learned what it is like to spend 40 years of one's life hating and fearing math, I don't want to spend another 40 years of my life hating and fearing math.

Here it is:

How good is this book? Well, check this out:

(idk if the image is blurry though... but you get the point.)