Wednesday 11 January 2012

As you will recall...

"As you will recall..."  This phrase strikes fear into me far greater than, "pop quiz."  Because at least with a pop quiz, I'm probably prepared since I probably did the reading or screening etc being that I am such a keener.  But when my Math 11 textbook says, "as you will recall" it's pretty much guaranteed that I won't.  For instance this week's first "as you will recall" was about a math term with which I was not familiar. A quick search of the index revealed to me the reason – it was explained in a chapter that I didn't have to do (and therefore didn't.)  Frankly, I found that to be a bit unfair.  But even better is the next "as you will recall." For this one required that the student recall a concept from Math 10 but in order for me to do that, I have to go back 25 years. Twenty five years ago my classmates of today weren't even the pregnancy scares of their parents.  Twenty five years ago I was already regretting my acid-wash purchase, the change for which would have included a neat new coin, the "loonie."
We're told that we use math all the time.  And I won't argue, but he truth is if this skill from Math 10 was truly that fundamental, wouldn't I have used, and therefore remembered it more easily?
It's NOT that I am resistant to learning new concepts (albeit painfully slowly it sometimes seems) it's just that when these new concepts are expected to be old concepts, I do get a bit frustrated. Fortunately, I have a wonderfully patient teacher who has this knack for answering questions in a way that makes you not feel dumb - now that's a skill worth having.

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