kellyclowers:

aokayinspace:

gotsnolegs:

adhdteacherthings:

peanutworm:

You, an intellectual: 9+7=16

Me, with ADHD: if you take 1 from 9 and give it to 7 thats 8+8 and 8×2 is 16

Someone, usually a Teacher: NOT LIKE THAT YOU HEATHEN

I teach common core and I literally encourage kids to explain their answers in this way. And it’s so validating as a teacher with ADHD because that’s how my brain works anyway and I know it’s how a lot of kids’ brains work too. And honestly, if you’re getting the right answer, who cares how you get it?

This is decomposition of numbers and I actively teach this.

This is why I hated when you had to show your work, because when it came to math in school my brain worked differently than you are typically taught. It also didn’t help that I was on the mathelete team and we were literally taught shortcuts like this that were helpful competitively but meant when it came to “show your work” quizzes I’d lose points because my brain would go from A to C and skip step B but still get the answer. I was the kid good at math who couldn’t help friends struggling because what made sense in my head didn’t make sense out of it.

I mean, I was taught basic math in the 80s in rural Montana. And no one ever had any issue with things like that. The idea that anyone would is baffling to me. I mean maybe in the 1800 or something I don’t know…

Glad your experience was a bit better, from the sound of things.

My experience at the elementary school level in rural Virginia in the ‘80s was that usually if you didn’t show work in the exact same steps as the example problems in the textbook, it was wrong. Sometimes the correct answer would get partial credit; sometimes not even that, depending on the teacher.

I am also one of the people with the combo of (then-unrecognized) dyscalculia, and a fairly easy grasp on concepts. Which meant that I have often needed to figure out my own shortcuts and workarounds to actually get things done in a way that made sense. That…did not go over too well when we were supposed to be learning the basics.

Some of the alternate approaches that I figured out may well have had problems, and not been more generally applicable. Some explanation of why this might be a sensible or not-so-great different approach to the problem would have been handy at times. (And I did start getting more feedback like that later in school.)

The kicker, though? I have to suspect that many/most of the elementary school generalist teachers couldn’t have offered that type of more involved explanations if they had wanted to. A lot of the time, “but, that’s not how it’s done in the book!” may well have been the main way to judge correctness they had available. Largely thanks to their own math education, without as much focus on how and why the numbers are doing what they are.

(Which isn’t really down to time/place, BTW, other than some bigger longterm problems with math education in the US. Seems like an unfortunately common thing.)