I Teach Math And Get Taught A Lesson

Yesterday was the first day of math tutoring. I have the same co-tutor as last term, and most of the kids are the ones we had for English in the fall. Among the bunch is my favorite, K. Teaching math is a lot harder for me than teaching English. We’re supposed to be teaching “numeracy”. Like probably most of you, I learned by rote, and remembering why stuff like long division works, and explaining it to a 4^th grader, isn’t something that I've had to do regularly. It's fun to have to think about this stuff.

During a short break, I asked K. how her Christmas vacation was. We talked, sitting on the tiny 1^st-grader chairs in the classroom we were in, and as we did, I noticed she was holding a roll of quarters.

“What’s up with the quarters?” I asked.

“X. gave them to me."

"She gave you a roll of quarters?" I asked.

“Yes. She stole them.”

“Wait… X. stole them?”

I said, “I don’t understand. If she stole them, why do you have them?”

“She gave them to me. She stole them from her dad. She gave all of of us quarters”.

X. is a girl who last term liked to give out candy to lots of kids in class. Now this.

“Ay,” I said, putting my hand to my head.

“Ay”, K. said back.

“Look, I think you should give it back to X.”, I said.

“I didn’t know it was stolen when she gave it to me.”

“OK, but now you do, and to keep something you know is stolen..well, you should give it back.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, K. got up and walked over to X. who was playing with the other girls during the break. She came back.

“She doesn’t want it,” K. said.

“I understand, but it doesn’t matter – you should still give it back.”

Again, she got right up and walked back to X. She came back without the roll of quarters.

“Good job. Thank you.” I said, smiling at her and patting her on the shoulder.

The kid is a better person than I ever was at 10, and for a good few years after that, too.

Later, when we were doing some division-with-remainder problems, something K. had found difficult, she said, “You give me such confidence.”

You can’t make this stuff up.