Elijah Wood on Yo Gabba Gabba

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Okay, I find this disturbing for reasons that just utterly defy me. I mean, I don't know what bothers me worse... the characters and their syrupy fakey way of talking? Or the fact that Elijah seems somewhat dance challenged?? Or his facial hair?

Keepin' it surreal, y'all!

Feelin' chuffed!

Oh, yes, I am feeling so proud of myself, even if I am sniffly and fevery!  I helped the Impertinent One with her math homework, and this is a major accomplishment because math was not my strong suit in school.  I'm quite good at it, actually, but it took me a loooong time to get past a lot of issues that I have with math.  It wasn't because I didn't have the ability, and it wasn't because I had lousy teachers (though in some cases, I had some pretty clueless ones).  I had a whole LOT of factors workin' against me.

Okay, ever read articles in a newspaper or a magazine about the state of education in our country today, and then seen the line, "In studies done on school children during the seventies, it was shown that...?"

Yeah, well, I was one of those unfortunate lab rats.  I went to a low income, inner city elementary school in Houston, and I guess they decided that was the perfect place to run six years of studies on students of various grades.  We never knew from year to year what was going to happen in a class.  I could read before I entered kindergarten, and it turned out to be a good thing when I started first grade, because... they didn't teach us how to read in first grade.  No, the teacher was supposed to show us by example so we could catch on to it intuitively.  Want to know why your kids are not being taught to read intuitively?  Because that particular experiment was a failure.  Oh, did I mention, the teacher didn't talk to us much, except to give us instructions, such as "Take out your books and turn to page 35.  Take out your pencils and write the letter g five times.  The letter g sounds like GUH!  Say GUH!!" and so on.

In third grade, our text books didn't have instructions in them.  They had pictures and drawings to tell us what to do.  This was the year we were supposed to memorize our multiplication tables.  You could say my mom did a lot of home-schooling between first and fifth grade for me.  Not only were we dealing with this crap, but... we were also trying to learn something called "New Math."

Now, I have to tell you, I have never, ever understood what New Math was.  And most of my teachers didn't either.  Sometimes, all I basically had to do was wave my pencil over a piece of paper, make a few random scribbles, write two numbers, and I got an "A" and I had no idea why!  Others, I found myself trying to do an incredibly complex ...well... equation... to do something rather simple.  It was mindboggling, and confusing, and we all spent our time dreading math class.  My parents were ready to tear their hair out, because they had learned it all the old-fashioned way, and knew the basic algorithms, tried to teach them to me, and I would sob in confusion, because it was completely different from what the teachers were telling me.  I pretty much started hating math.  So, we're learning "New Math," AND being experimented on.  Not a good combination. 

Thank all the Powers That Be that the experimenting stopped by sixth grade!  But the damage was done, and I had this major math phobia, and it was just unbelievably hard for me to do (though for some reason, trig was a breeze for me.  It just made sense!! Don't ask me why!).  

Didn't make a breakthrough until I was in college, and was attending a junior college for a semester, taking an algebra course, and met this teacher who loved the challenge of teaching "mathematical idiots" and proving to them that they weren't.  She was the first person to discover that I see numbers in circles.  

Yes.  You read that right.  Most people see numbers in straight lines, like this... 1...2...3...4... and so on.  Not me.  I see numbers like this...


                                                                                 1

                                                10                                         2
                                                                                                
                                          9                                                      3

                                                8                                           4
 
                                                          7                            5 

                                                                          6



Well... you get the picture.  Almost like a clock, isn't it?  I didn't realize that for a long time, either.  But when you get to twelve, 13 starts another loop of another circle and so on.  I remember this teacher staring at my circles in astonishment, and then getting this gleam in her eye.  "Right," she said, grinning.  "Let's get to work."  

We made a lot of progress after that.  I understood things much better, and she said later, that I actually helped her understand how to help some of her other students that were having problems better, because, as she said, "I really have to know how they're seeing the numbers before I can help them!"  We had only discovered my problem as a segue in a discussion in trying to figure out why I wasn't getting some of explanations in our classroom discussions.  

When I realized that math is a language, things got even better.

Now, I'm not saying I'm great, or that I'm a genius at it now.  I still flounder, but... at least I know why I'm floundering.  And because of this, I can help my daughter when she flounders.  Now, the Husbandly One is great with some types of math that I'm not, and I'm good with Algebra, etc, so between us, we make a fairly decent math teacher.  But sometimes, when the Husbandly One and the Impertinent Daughter get to thinking too hard, and I step in and look at what they're doing and... well... you see, I'm real sneaky, but y'all knew that!

Like, tonight.  The Husbandly One had retreated to the computer to see if he could find something to help them out.  She was supposed to find a chain of factors or some such for  the number  "1, 350."  I looked at all the squiggling they were doing and well... they were thinking WAY too damn hard.  Not that I had the answer myself!  So, I pulled my favorite trick out of the book.  I sat down with Miss Priss and said, "YOU teach me how to do this.  Talk me through it like I've never done this before!"  Which basically... I haven't.

So, she did, and you know what?  She figured it out herself.  All I had to do was wait for her to say, "We thought about trying 5 as a factor, but..."

I said, "Why can't you use 5?  Is that like... an official rule?  You can use any number but 5?  It IS a factor of 1, 350, right?"

She basically did it all herself after that.  It was GREAT!!

Yes, I am SNEAKY!!  I help my kids by making them figure it out THEMSELVES, because really, they already know this, they just panicked and forgot that they already know it!

*does a little victory dance*