Right and wrong answers on math

Re: Ontario teachers will have to score at least 70 per cent on math tests, Aug. 27, and Proposed math testing for all new teachers doesn’t add up, Aug. 30. Mathematics was one of my weaknesses, yet I was able to effectively teach math to students within a broad spectrum of learning abilities, slow learners and gifted alike. Why?

Due to my self-recognized weakness, I voluntarily took in-service courses when new teaching approaches arose.

Because mathematics was a challenge for me, I often understood the specific thinking involved in a student’s errors, thinking that was below the radar for a person for whom most mathematical thinking was speedy, natural and automatic.

On the classroom walls were colourful interactive displays to help instil mathematical concepts.

Daily games with such things as multiplication tables and other math facts become part of the students’ arsenal. For example, each student had a box of multipliers domino cards, ready for play at the beginning of class. That game idea came from a seasoned oneroom country-school teacher.

The point is that what is required is not a mathematics whiz to teach mathematics in the classroom. What is required is an aware, creative, determined person who has already earned her/his teaching degree and has insight into the ways in which students of various skills and personality types learn — and what motivates them.

Overemphasis on specific preparation for standardized tests has already meant the loss of valuable learning time for countless Ontario elementary students.

Please don’t compound the error with the teachers. Give them the class sizes, the teacher’s aides, the resources they need and let them do the job for which they have been educated. Let the teachers and parents and, oh yes, the students, work as a team of people who care. Patricia Anne Elford, B.A., MDiv., Petawawa