Common Core: Math need not divide us

From the moment a toddler holds up two chubby fingers to ask for two cookies until he tears out his last gray hair doing taxes, we count. We compare. We organize with numbers.

Math classes by tradition were silent time spent solving grids of stacked problems. Page after page. Bringing home great grades did not take grappling with why the formulas worked. It took remembering it long enough to finish the class – the next one would teach something else.

Dividing fractions – is that the one where you criss-cross the tops and bottoms or go straight across to get the answer? Is the percentage something went up or down where you subtract the answer from 1 – or do you subtract the two numbers before dividing?

Generations memorized the formulas and then forgot them like last week’s spelling words. Years later, dividing a recipe or figuring how much taxes went up could pose a daunting task.

“I struggled in math,” admitted fourth-grade teacher Annie Thompson to colleagues taking a Math Walk at Las Palmas Elementary in Patterson. “I was always waiting for someone to tell me why.”

What did “why” matter? Most of us grew up thinking the math whiz kids were the fastest multipliers. But today, anyone with a phone has a faster calculator at their fingertips.

“I tell my students, ‘In the real world who do you think does all the computations? Machines,’ ” said Christina Rubalcava, a math teacher at Enochs High in Modesto.

Three years ago Rubalcava replaced algebra I with a pilot integrated math class to help struggling students who had already failed to pass algebra once. They thrived on the more practical and social approach. Real-world problems solved in a group worked far better for them.

“It was a lot less intimidating. It’s more about developing strategies, so if you don’t know how to solve a problem, if you have some tools in your bag you can figure it out,” Rubalcava said.

“The old way was a process of memorization. There are a small number of people that memorize really well, but a vast number of students who are the people you see rolling their eyes,” she said.

Those who memorized well have the hardest time with the hit and miss messiness of talk-it-out, figure-it-out Common Core math.

“It looks so different and its not the math we're used to,” she said.

“Right now we're still at that transitional phase (in high school). They’re still caught in the middle,” said Rubalcava, but she sees hope rolling up the pipeline.

“I think we're finding at the lower grades the kids are much more open. They haven’t spent years doing computational math,” she said.

Computational math is what educators call the “sit and get” method. Teachers lecture. Students absorb. Aside from some experimental schools in the 1970s, that has been the educational model since assembly lines provided the engine for the Industrial Age.

But technology has upended industry and commerce, and schools once again are being called on to prepare students to enter a world in transition.

This story was originally published March 17, 2016 at 9:55 PM with the headline "Common Core: Math need not divide us."