The Power of "I Think I Can"

I have several students who struggle with math. That’s okay. Perfectly normal. My job is to work with them and help them improve anyway.

By the time they get to me, these struggling students have often come to the conclusion that they can’t do math, period. So a big part of my job is to undo that damage.

Not. Easy.

I’m not a magician, so it doesn’t always work. But if I can find one thing they’re successful with, reinforce it, and find another … sometimes that sets off a chain reaction. They think maybe they can do a few things in math. They’re a little more willing to try, a little more patient with their own mistakes.

They stop saying, “I can’t.” Instead, they ask questions.

And that can build momentum that’ll take them far, long after they leave my class.

Other times, the barrier remains. They’ve given up. They refuse to believe. (So I try a little harder, try other ways. Jury’s out on whether it works in a lot of cases.)

How often in our own lives do we let “I can’t” become self-fulfilling? Not that saying, “I can,” instantly makes all possible … but it certainly doesn’t hurt as a first step.

What helps you get past that, to begin to believe it might be possible?

And when the larger obstacles come, what helps you keep going?

Doting on the Doodlers

A while back, I posted a piece of “fan-art” that was included as part of a beta-reader’s feedback. More recently, I touted the awesomeness of my former student Lynn, who draws awesome things like Mindy McGinnis’s Hatchet Cat.

Today, the two are combined. Lynn read the manuscript for Stitching Snow several months ago and offered this marvelous depiction of the main character, Essie.

That’s my girl.

And I continue to be in awe of people who can draw.

What Do You Call Your Writerly Acquaintances?

We writers are connected in many ways. Some have pretty straightforward labels.

The Writer-Friend. Not that they need to be set aside from friends in general, but they meet extra qualifications. They know the lingo like “querying” and “form rejection” and the accompanying angst.

The CP (Critique Partner). Like the Writer-Friend squared, they don’t just wish us well in the trenches—they help us get the right gear, find the best paths.

The Author-with-a-Capital-A. The rock stars of the writing world. The multi-published, best-selling authors. Those people the rest of us can’t quite bring ourselves to equate as being in the same profession we’re trying to weasel our way into.

Then there are other connections, a little more nuanced, and that’s where the labels get a little head-scratching for me. Most specifically, writers with an agent or publishing imprint in common. I often see such writers referred to as agency-sisters, for instance.

But what about the guys? My agent represents several male writers (and illustrators!), but I’ve never seen anyone say anything like, “Yeah, Jimmy’s my agency-brother.”

Is it because as females, we’re more likely to establish and define relationships in this way? For guys, are we just all writers and that’s enough?

Does it matter? Probably not. But this is the way my brain works.

I guess I’ll just stick with the labels for myself … a happy AQCer and member of the Literaticult.

What Your Math Teacher Probably Didn’t Tell You

First off, this isn’t about the ubiquitous question every math teacher faces: “When are we ever gonna use this?” (The answer: You may not use an individual skill from class. Then again, you might. Few of us end up doing exactly what we thought we would as kids. More importantly, while learning the skills, you’re developing the problem-solving, critical-thinking part of your brain, and THAT you will always need.)

With that out of the way, here’s what it is about. Sometimes math teachers or textbooks make us do things in an overly demanding way, or using arbitrary rules. It’s not always the times students think. There are good reasons for doing things the long way before learning shortcuts.

Here’s one example where I think we get away from the spirit of mathematics. “Put your answer in the form of a fraction unless there are decimals in the original problem.” Um, okay. Why?

What if I have a problem involving money, using only whole numbers initially, but the answer isn’t a whole number? It only makes sense to give that answer in a decimal. That’s an obvious case, but what about regular bare-numbers equations? What’s so wrong with saying 0.5 instead of 1/2? They’re equivalent.

So I’ve gone for a rule that’s a little tougher. It means I have to watch for multiple correct answers when I grade work, and it means students actually have to think a little extra. I want the exact answer, not approximations, except when (a) the instructions say to round to a specific place value or (b) the context dictates an approximation is the only way it makes sense.

The reason? That’s how answers get used in the real world. You use the form of the number that makes the most sense for the situation.

Kids need to know how to think, how to reason, how to work something out. When they get used to memorizing arbitrary rules (“Do it this way because that’s how the teacher said to do it”), they don’t delve in for deeper understanding.

That’s what I think, anyway. Are there other rules your math teachers made you follow that didn’t seem necessary to you?

Cool vs. Not-Cool—More Relativity

We already know this: What is “cool” varies from person to person. We knew it in school. Some kids thought drugs and partying were cool; some disagreed vehemently. That’s more extreme, but there are grayer shades.

Which kids in your class did you think were cool? I’m not talking jocks and cheerleaders vs. geeks and nerds. More like which cheerleader—the queen-bee who seems to have it all under control, the sweet one who seems happy all the time, the hard-working one who’s all about perfecting her handsprings? (Were they all the same person in your case?)

Who we individually think is cool is entirely subjective. Collectively, though, there’s generally a majority agreeing on one person/thing or another being cool.

When I’m teaching, most of my time is naturally devoted to the whole “teaching” part. Still, there are a few minutes in every class near the end where I fall into people-watching. Some students are obviously the “cool” kids (and there’s usually more than one distinct set of them). Some are obviously on the outskirts of Popularity-ville. Many are somewhere in-between.

I should know better, but it still surprises me sometimes to see who some kids are (or aren’t) friends with.

The whole thing is such a game. Even as adults, we don’t escape it. And yet, as an adult, it twists a little.

Not all my students think I’m cool. Some don’t even like me a little bit. But I can guarantee I’m “cooler” and more popular as a teacher than I ever was as a student.

The students who do think I’m cool often strike me as those who wouldn’t have noticed me when I was in school.

On the flip-side … I see those “popular” kids in a way I never could back in those days.

Perspective. Relativity.

We’re a bunch of complicated creatures, aren’t we?

The Secret Society of Writers—We’re EVERYWHERE!

My new/old classroom has a couple of bulletin boards—a long one along the side of the room and a square one next to the whiteboard at the front. It’s been a while since I’ve had that kind of wall space, and I’ve never really been skilled at fantastic bulletin board design, so I was kind of at a loss.

I ended up putting some math stuff on the long one and decided to make some color print-outs of book cover images for the smaller one. It makes the kids ask questions—”Uh, Miss Lewis, why do you have a bunch of book covers up in math class?”—and gives a good excuse to talk to them about not pigeonholing themselves or others.

I’ll probably change it later, but for now, it works.

The other day, our librarian/media center coordinator/general queen of awesome stopped by to see when I wanted to come in with my classes to get our new textbooks. She caught sight of the book covers and said, “Oh! I want to read that steampunk but haven’t gotten to it yet!” (Incidentally, The Unnaturalists by agent-mate Tiffany Trent!)

She already knew about my publishing deal from one of the other math teachers. One thing leads to another and … she says the magic words:

“Then there’s me, still at the querying stage.”

She knows what ‘querying’ means.

We speak the same language.

She is one of us!

We launch into talk of how she writes contemporary YA and has her ms out to an agent. How she uses QueryTracker and how I think she really ought to stop by AgentQuery Connect and check it out (because really, every writer should). How we’re both on Twitter and she thinks my agent is awesome and hilarious (because @literaticat is awesome and hilarious).

Meanwhile, the other math teacher I’d been planning with thinks we’re both a little crazy.

Well, let’s face it. We are a little crazy.

We’re writers.

And we find each other at the least-expected moments sometimes.