And so it begins. The students are flustered. The emails are coming at night. The faces stare at me, scared to death. Although I repeat numerous times, “You do not have to come to class with each problem done and correct” students are totally freaking out about the fact that they can’t “do their homework” or they can’t “get” a certain problem on the homework. No matter how many times I attempt to send the message the first few weeks about how unnecessary it is to come to class with a problem complete or an answer to show, students feel the need.
Tomorrow I am writing on my large post-it notes in HUGE capital letters, “Get comfortable with uncertainty because it’s not going anywhere.” Every year about this time, I give the speech about how my homework is extremely different from any homework they have probably encountered in math class. These are not problems that you are supposed to read, recognize and repeat. They are there to motivate your thinking, stimulate your brain and trigger prior knowledge. In other words, you need to be patient with yourself and truly create mathematics.
Today I met with a young woman who I thought was about to cry. She came and said, “I can’t do this problem that was assigned for tomorrow.” Here’s how the conversation went:
Me: Why don’t you read the problem for me?
Girl: Find points on the line y=2 that are 13 units from the point (2,14)
Me: Ok, so show me what you did. (she takes out her graph paper notebook and shows that she graphed the line y=2, plotted the point (2,14)). Great, that’s a great diagram.
Girl: But it didn’t make sense because in order for it to be 13 units away, it had to be like, diagonal.
Me: Huh, what would that look like?
Girl: (drawing on her diagram) There’d be like two of them here and here.
Me; yeah?
Girl: But it can’t be like that….
Me: yeah? Why not?
Girl: Um…cause it wouldn’t be a straight distance. I think..
Me: Is it 13 units away from (2,14)?
Girl: yeah, I think so…
Me: Hmmm….how far is (2,14) from the line y=2?
Girl: Oh that’s easier – it’s like 12. ..Oh My gosh..it’s like a hypotenuse….and the other side that I don’t know is like the a and the 12 is like the b. I can just find it. Oh my gosh that’s so easy. And the other one is on the other side. Why didn’t I see that?
Me: Well, you did…actually….
Girl: well, after you asked me that question…
Me: yeah, but eventually you’ll learn how to ask yourself those questions.
And they do….it’s just the beginning of the year. We have to give them time – time to look into their prior knowledge as a habit, time to surprise themselves, time to have those moments, time to enjoy the moment and revel in the joy and courage and disappointment. It’s all a part of the breakthrough that is needed to realize that they are creative and mathematics needs them to be. It’s amazing and it’s worth it.