What's Bugging You About Math?

By Pandora A. Walker

The information contained in this book is an accumulation of my experience, research, and book reads throughout my career that has elevated me from average educator to better than average. Over the past 30 years of teaching, tutoring, and consulting with students, parents, teachers, and schools; I have narrowed down five topics that bug most people about math; the teacher, the test, the variable x, math fear, and relevance

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Jul 27, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483445199

Book preview

What’s Bugging You About Math?

It May Be a Simple Misunderstanding

Pandora A. Walker

Copyright © 2016 Pandora Alexander Walker.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4518-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4519-9 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 7/19/2016

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Preface

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Teacher

Chapter 2 The Test

Chapter 3 The Variable X

Chapter 4 Math Fear

Chapter 5 The Survey

Chapter 6 Relevance

Chapter 7 Summary

References

Websites

Glossary

About The Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank my husband, editor, children, and family. Without your help this book would never have been completed. Thank you for your patience and time.

DEDICATION

I dedicate this book first to my mother and father, Betty Jean and Lloyd Alexander II Senior first and foremost. My parents placed a high emphasis on education even though their early lives did not provide the opportunity for them to obtain a formal education. In addition, I would like to dedicate this book to the students I taught between the years of 1985 - 2016 and everyone who encouraged me along the way.

Thank you. I would have never achieved my dream without a push from all of you.

PREFACE

Learn what counts. Math counts, reading counts, and writing counts too. You will not be successful in math until you learn to read and write. As children, we love to sing numbers songs, count them out aloud, and put them into nursery rhymes. But to assess whether you know and understand one number from another number you must be able to recognize it (reading), compose it (writing), then operate with numbers (arithmetic). As an adult, I still enjoy songs like; 1-2 buckle my shoe, 3-4 close the door, 5-6 pickup sticks, 7-8 close the gate, 9-10 you are a big fat hen let’s do it again! Or one little, two little, three little Indian boys, 4 little––

So, did you notice the word assess above, it means to test the knowledge by comparing and contrasting things which are similar or different. Assess also means to use, operate with or apply in real world situations. From birth until we die, we are tested or assessed. We have our vision tested, our IQ tested, and our hearing tested. We are measured and compared to others all throughout life for many different reasons. Therefore, it stands to reason why we are testing our accumulated knowledge in education.

Chapter one will explain how the teacher might be the barrier from keeping students from learning math. The other chapters are the observations I made over the years from teaching and tutoring mathematics. I hope after reading this book you will no longer be bothered by mathematics as something to avoid as an unpleasant experience. I hope you realize with help, practice, and a renewed mindset mathematics is a vital part of life just like reading and writing.

Math avoidance is at the center of why students and parents accuse the teacher, test, math fear, variables, and relevance as the things bugging them. Imaginary fear of mathematics can be overcome by acknowledging it, willingness to do something about it and get the right help and support. Since we know the age old issue of what’s bugging students about math, I have decided to write about how you can begin to address the issue as a teacher, parent, student, or school.

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INTRODUCTION

Since testing has occurred, SAT scores and the quality of education have improved, and the quantity of students moving on to post-secondary education has increased. In addition, there is a