Math is what I'm most worried about. I cannot do math. I think there are books written about people like myself - a true math phobic.
When I was in high school I had a kind Geometry teacher who tried, to no avail, to convince me that Math would be important in my life. He said, "Here's a real-life example. What if you wanted to re-roof your house-you would need to know Geometry to do that."
I said, "No, I would need to know how to use the yellow pages. I'm not getting on a roof."
My friend Sam, a fellow-English teacher, spent some of our time as teachers, trying to convince the left-brain Math teachers that you could live a successful life without knowing Math. Occasionally one of us would open up the door to our next-door teacher's room and interrupt his class with comments such as, "It's too bad you have to waste your time in this class...you'll never use it." One time she even ordered the video (before DVDs) "Donald Duck and Math." He was a good sport and showed it. But I think I'm going to need to do a search on this video - I do believe my level is about the Donald Duck one.
But you know, we have lived successful lives without Math. Sam is a school superintendant and I'm a college teacher.
However, that doesn't help me when I open Ian's Math book and read the first paragraph that says " Expressions, equations, and inequalities express relationships between different entities."
What does this mean? How am I going to explain it to Ian?
I was the kind of Math student (and I use the term "math student" loosely) that when given a word problem such as "If Sally had 7 balls and gave three to Tom and one to Issac, how many were left?" I would wonder why doesn't Sally play with the girls? Why does she need all those balls at once? Who is Tom? Who is Issac? Are they nice? I bet Sally doesn't play with the girls because they don't like her. Why don't they like her? Doesn't she have nice clothes? Why do Tom and Issac play with Sally and not the boys?
So I'm worried about Math and I think I'll hire a tutor-for Ian, not me, after all, I've been pretty successful without Math.
Maybe it would help to think about the relationships (so evident with Sally and her throng of boys with balls) when you are deciphering the idea of equalities and inequalities. Sally is unequal to Melissa, (who has nice clothes, lots of girls as friends, and whom the boys stare at but don't talk to). Melissa is equal to Polly, who goes shopping with her, lives across the street and whose mother is best friends with Sally's mom. The expression on Sally's face is priceless. The expressions on Melissa and Polly's faces are very different from Sally's and all three girls expressions are sweeter and warmer than the boys with the balls. Equations are sentences with = signs. The previous sentence, therefore is an equation. Does this help?
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