Archive for November 2013

On making big decisions.

Having graduated from college, I like to consider myself a "real adult." But, being a real adult means you have to make big decisions, and since I've had experience with that recently, I've been thinking about the process.

A common phrase for making decisions is "pull the trigger."  I think this is an appropriate metaphor, but not how most people think of it. (To be clear, most people seem to see this as making an impulsive decision like suddenly jerking back on a trigger.)

Let's talk about shooting.

The very first step to firing a gun should be preparation. Before even being on a shooting range, you should have knowledge about guns. You should know where your safety is, how to load it, how to aim, etc. And you should have to tools to be on a range: the gun, the ammunition, safety glasses, hearing protection, etc.

After you're prepared to be on the range, to actually start target practice, you have to aim. Most of the time, aiming isn't just pointing the gun sorta near the target. You have to slow down your breathing or hold in a breath, steady your arms, and focus carefully down the sights. You have to know where the target is, and align your sights on it.

Then, once you get to this point, you can pull the trigger, but you do so slowly. You don't jerk back, or you'll throw your aim off. You apply steady pressure while keeping your sights on target. You don't actually know the exact moment the gun will fire, so you just keep your aim until the bullet fires.

So, in that sense, making big decisions is like pulling a trigger.

"I couldn't do that. I'm bad at math."

I was reading another blog post today (The Myth of ‘I’m Bad at Math’) and had a line stick out to me describing what it takes to succeed in a math class: “For high-school math, inborn talent is much less important than hard work, preparation, and self-confidence.”

I’d like to expand on that.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard some variation of “Wow – I couldn’t do that.” From telling people I was a Math major to telling people I now teach Math and Physics, it’s almost always the same.

“Whew – I wasn’t good at math.”
“You must be crazy.”
“Good for you.”
“I’ve never been able to do well at math.”
“You must be really smart.”

While I pridefully relish the idea that I’m inherently intelligent, that’s just not true. I’m not particularly smarter than most. I just worked at it.

The heart of the matter is that math is hard until you practice it. To get good at identifying the domain and range of a function, you have to have some experience doing it. But almost everything is that way. I can’t pick up a golf club and instantly get a hole-in-one. I likely couldn’t even be anywhere near on par. But if I took 15 minutes a day to practice, eventually I could. Why should we expect any less from math?

But that only covers part of the story – the hard work and preparation. Let’s talk about self-confidence.

For my classroom, I’d like to think I can push students to work hard and hold them to standards of preparedness, but I have much less influence on their self-confidence. I do my best to praise accomplishments and minimize the focus on error. I structure material so they can make lots of small victories until they’re ready to tackle big victories. Yet, one negative influence can undo the work of many positive influences.

I believe having an adult say “I was terrible at math” is one of the most disheartening things a student struggling in math can hear. In this one little sentence, there’s two messages to a struggling student: 1) someone they see as smart struggled in math and 2) they don’t even use math anymore. I’m not sure you could kill self-confidence quicker.

(Now, I do realize that for a student doing well in math, hearing someone say “I was terrible at math” can give them a boost of encouragement, but for this post we’re less concerned with those students – they’re already doing well.)


So, if you’re talking to a student about math, I’d love it if you’d focus on the “work hard and be confident” bit.

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