Like I said before, I always try to
demonstrate to students on the board how to do the mathematical steps, but when
the steps are changed—and no one tells me—then I’m the one who needs the help. I don’t know.
I could do long division in the old days, but now? With the “Everyday Math” methods, I need
someone to demonstrate to ME how to divide like a fourth grader.
I wrote on the board 879 divided by
37 in the standard division bar method and proceeded to explain to the class
how 37 can’t go into 8, but it can go into 87.
“Now,” I said, “how many times can…”
A young lady started waving both
hands in the air. I thought she had a
medical emergency. It ended up that I
was the emergency.
“That’s not how Mrs. Jones does it.” She told me.
“Okay,” I told Miss Smarty Pants,
offering her the black marker [no chalkboards anymore, remember?]. “Then show me how Mrs. Jones does long
division.”
My eyes started to dry out as I tried
to decipher the drawings on the board. Hieroglyphics
were easier to understand.
“What’s this right hand line down
the side of the division problem?” I asked
Miss Pants.
“That’s so you can divide into the whole number,” she told me.
“But I thought that’s what we were doing with the standard, curved division
symbol.”
She just rolled her eyes and began
writing round numbers down the outside of the right hand line.
“Um,” I tried to regain the upper
hand in the class as snickers rang out when the students watched my
brow become one big furrow.
“Why are you estimating?” I asked.
“Don’t we want the correct answer?”
“Estimating’s easier,” Miss Pants
assured me as she rewrote the problem as 40 into 800 and then estimated the
answer as 20.
“Easier for whom?” I desperately needed a few Tylenol. I watched as she next took 40 into 80 and then
added up figures outside another vertical line.
The board was covered in mathematical computation.
I am a firm believer that the more steps there are in a problem, the more chance for error. But I certainly couldn't tell Miss Pants that. The substitute teacher had now become the student.