Question #2

Matt--it's interesting that you had a student tell you that a teacher calls him stupid, because just 10 minutes ago I had one of my students come in to my room, asking me if it was right that a teacher called a student stupid (apparently she called him stupid for not bringing a pen to class). So unfortunately I guess it's systemic.

One of my favorite small victories involved two students who I've had since the beginning of the year. Both of these boys started off the year highly self-proclaimed math-averse. They were in my room after school last week and somehow they got on the subject of buying cars, and how much a car would be worth years after you bought it. Not only did they remember the concept of depreciation (which we did back in September) but started figuring out the explicit formula for the geometric sequence to actually compute it. They grabbed some chalk and a calculator and worked it out on the board while I just sat at my desk, pretending to be grading but really trying not to smile too big as I watched them.

Yesterday, I had a group of students in my room to work on homework during my planning period because their fourth period teacher was absent. One girl, who was super-quiet and strugged a bit last semester, has been killing everything we've done since January. She grabbed some chalk and started making up, and solving, her own very complicated Law of Cosines problems on the board. When another student, who was my top student in Algebra II last semester and is now in Precalculus, asked what she was doing, she taught him clearly and knowledgeably. A third student (actually, one of the boys from story #1) thought she had made a mistake and told her so, and she eloquently showed him that she was, in fact, correct. Her confidence has grown exponentially to the point where she is not only learning but teaching as well.