Math

Oct. 14th, 2009 02:55 pm
sev: (Default)
[personal profile] sev
I'm once again very grateful that I had only women teaching me math from fifth grade all the way through the end of high school.

Before all that, there was the male fourth grade teacher who did nothing when I was failing to learn long division. And after all that, there was the male calculus teacher my first year of college, who thoroughly killed my interest in taking any more math classes, despite a lingering interest in math. I got enough math under my belt for my science degree, though. And for that I can thank my teachers Ms. Jaramillo, Ms. Delman, Ms. Williams, Ms. Tom, Ms. Tello, and Ms. Benton.

Thank you for never, ever making me question whether or not I could.

(This post happened because I was reading a comments-thread over at Shapely Prose, on a post that happens to be about math, science, and/or statistics (depending on which way you cut it). And, as is so often the case, what ensued was a whole bunch of women posting their stories about the awful ways they were denied an education in math because of a teacher's assumption that "girls can't do math.")

on 2009-10-15 08:31 pm (UTC)
Posted by [identity profile] slfisher.livejournal.com
You know, it never occurred to me that a male math teacher could be the factor. But in 7th grade I was bored silly with yet another year of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, fractions, and decimals, and I made some dumb mistakes as a consequence, and so it was decided I wasn't smart enough to take algebra in eighth grade like the other smart kids.

Fortunately, my mom pitched a fit and I ended up being able to take it self-paced, but I still had to take two years of math in one year in order to take calculus my senior year. And yes, it's the first time I had a male math teacher.

Profile

sev: (Default)
sev

March 2019

S M T W T F S
     12
3456789
1011 1213141516
17181920212223
24252627282930
31      

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jan. 24th, 2026 09:39 pm
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios