If you’ve read Part 5 of this series, you learned about Mrs. Daly, the tutor who tried to ensure I’d get through fourth-grade math when we moved to a new school district. I had no great love for math but was doing okay. Still the new district thought the tutor was a good idea. Mrs. Daly did actually get me excited about math, briefly, when she taught me a cool addition trick which I explain in that story.
But when I was done with the lessons I fell back into just getting through rather than enjoying most of the math classes that followed. Once I got to seventh grade I began to get flustered and confused. Others were getting easily things I couldn’t wrap my head around. I loved music, English class, and parts of American history. But math didn’t seem logical to me the way they did. I couldn’t seem to learn to do most things without an understanding of their basic parts, and couldn’t get anyone to explain those parts in the math classes I was now forced to take such as geometry and algebra. Or if they showed me a solution, they did it quickly, never seeming to think any further explanation was necessary, such as where it came from or why.
I tried to memorize and then use some of what teachers would write on the blackboard. But since it made no sense to me, this didn’t get me very far toward understanding the problems.
For geometry our teacher was a basketball coach. Perfectly nice guy, but when I got up the nerve to ask him after class why and when I was supposed to do a certain thing in a problem (I was usually the only one who asked), while he did try to answer me, the answer was quick, and I felt sure he expected me to get it. But I usually didn’t get it, which was not only frustrating but also embarrassing. I thought he needed to rush to another class because he never stayed long in that room after our class. So I thanked him, knowing I had no idea what he’d meant.
For Algebra 1 and then 2, my teacher seemed to me like a stern, businesslike grandmother, emphasis on stern. My assigned seat was at the back of the room and even with glasses it was hard to see all the stuff she wrote quickly on our green blackboards. I copied down all I could but when I got to the homework assignment it might as well have been Greek, or maybe Martian, and I wouldn’t have dreamed of asking her a question after class.
I squeezed through geometry and algebra with mostly C’s, and by senior year still had only minimal notions about what was required to move from one place to another in any math problem, or why that move was required. I think I only passed because I managed by luck to make some reasonable guesses for at least part of a problem, but I couldn’t have said why I made that guess.
I seemed to need things to work the way English or music did, flowing in rational ways from one statement to the next. I did well in those classes because they made sense to me.
Somehow, though it took forever, my senior year had begun. Trigonometry was required, and I could hardly stand to think about it, knowing what a disaster it was going to be. My assigned seat was on the front row, so I could at least see what was on the board, but it made no difference. After the first day I knew I was lost. Oh well, I was going to major in music anyway, I told myself. But I had to pass this class to get a diploma.
Our teacher, Mrs. Bramwell, was very young, and I think we might have been her first class after she’d graduated from college. She was smart, sweet, soft-spoken, and completely unintimidating. So I was able to feel okay about asking her a question after class. The first time I asked one, and she told me what step I needed to take in order to begin solving that equation, I didn’t understand why it was that step that was needed. She was so calming that I felt I could ask another question. Without hesitation, quietly, and kindly, she explained. But I didn’t understand what the reason was for that particular explanation. I still couldn’t see the connections. She explained further, never showing any impatience.
It turned out that I was so far behind that I could not get through one homework problem without asking her about how to do it the next day. It was very slow going, but after some time I got better at taking the first step in a problem, and a while after that, the second step. In every case I needed to understand why, because I couldn’t do a similar problem without knowing. One morning Mrs. Bramwell said to me, “I’m here early every morning. Anytime you need to ask me a question, just come here and we’ll go over it.” I was there almost every day. It was as if I’d never been taught anything in math that stuck, beyond elementary arithmetic. It was as if I’d just begun. There was just so much I didn’t understand.
Eventually I could manage some problems on my own, but I always asked for help when I could not. Near the end of the term, with graduation finally in sight, I was of course relieved to be done with math (I hoped). I’d chosen a college and been accepted.
One day my parents, who were aware of my issues with math, got a short, handwritten letter in the mail. It was from Mrs. Bramwell. She wrote:
“Your daughter was in my trigonometry class this semester. I urge you to push your daughter hard to major in mathematics in college.”
My mother told me she almost fainted. My dad was surprised too, but both were pleased.
I did not major in math, but knowing that Mrs. Bramwell even thought this was a good idea was an enduring gift. She’d helped me to believe in myself, and to trust that if I needed help again for anything, I could find it.
And I got an A in Trig.