For the Americans in my group: the title is French, and
translates to Victory over Maths. In
this article, the author reflects on a book written by Lusiane Weyl-Kailey, who
is a therapist (and ex-math teacher) charged with teaching Math in a clinic to
students with special learning difficulties as well as psychological problems. Through
a few case studies, the point is made that students’ abilities to understand
Mathematical relationships are directly related to the comfort and safety they
feel in their human relationships. Weyl-Kailey seems to have found success
using this approach in both directions: helping students feel more confident in
Math by first helping to heal their emotional struggles; and helping students
feel more emotionally stable by improving their mathematical ability.
I think a lot of pressure is put on students to be good at
Math in school. A common conception is that those who are good at Math are smart
and will be successful in life (and the opposite). I can imagine that this can
be emotionally damaging to students who don’t ‘get it.’ Certainly, I have found
the most success while teaching in Special Needs programs by removing the
pressures – allowing the students to work at their own level and pace without
tests until they are ready. I have definitely observed that these emotionally
fragile students perform better in Math class when they are feeling stable in
their lives outside of the classroom. I have been lucky for the past two years
to have the freedom to do this in my classrooms as I work with small groups and
am not tied by the bounds of curriculum. However, it’s much more difficult to
apply to mainstream classrooms where a certain pace must be maintained, and
those that can’t keep up fall further and further behind. This reminds me of
some advice a colleague gave me in my first year of teaching – she suggested I
not feel bad about students who were not succeeding, but that students had a
time they were ready to learn and receive knowledge (somewhat similar to Piaget’s
stages), and that it could not necessarily be rushed. I think that emotional
instability can cause interruptions and delays in these stages, which is
sometimes most obvious to the Math teacher as it may be harder to face
mathematical understanding than it is in other courses.
I fully agree with you about students being rushed and therefore they do not learn the "required" math. This made me think of a couple of students I work with now. One of them is a 13 year old male with autism. I was told that he was at a grade 3 level in math, so I first started working with him on multiplication. It was so frustrating for both of us because we were not seeing any progress. Eventually it dawned on me that maybe he doesn't know how to multiply yet. We then started working with kindergarten standards, and I have seen much more effort and growth on his part. We are slowly moving through the standards, but it's only because I made him feel comfortable and didn't rush him through his learning process. I think this is a perfect example of what this article is describing.
ReplyDeleteYour personal experience in the classroom matches up so well with this article! Something that comes to mind for me is the fact that many people think of mathematics as a "value-free" discipline. Somehow, human values and emotions are disjoint from mathematics. I've always found that I produce the best mathematics when I am genuinely excited about the problem. I want to work on it, I explore it, and I'm eager to continue. If students feel separated from the mathematics, what motivation do they have to continue to do it? Even worse, if they feel totally separated from it, the experience of doing it can be extremely unpleasant. It's a vicious cycle...
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