Learning Strategies

As usual, I picked up Barbara after work, and we asked each other, “How was your day?” I relayed three brief anecdotes to her:

• Just before one of my classes was about to start, I overheard one student say to another, “I just discovered that my social security number is prime!”
  


• It was the end of another class. Students were packing up and leaving. One said to another with great enthusiasm, “Now we have Latin! And next year we get to take AP Latin, which they’ve never offered before!” I don’t whether Weston has really never done so — it seems likely that it must have offered AP Latin back in the ‘60s at least — but as someone who studied Latin for seven years I certainly have to applaud both the decision and the enthusiasm.
  


• “Given four points, each of which is on the side of a square, how do you construct the square?” Our department head gave this problem to all of us. None of the math teachers managed to solve this completely, but one of our students did.

“What nerdy students you have!” was Barbara’s observation. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that...”

I assured her that these were not exactly typical Weston students, but it certainly brightens one’s day.

Labels: math, teaching and learning, Weston