High school Geometry. Easy, don’t you think? I was a whiz at Geometry. Granted, it was a few decades ago. Anyway, the 9th graders come in. I give them my opening greeting, (I was in a public high school just like yours, ended up going to Harvard, blah, blah, blah, aren’t I so interesting blah, blah, blah). And then they start working on their online lesson. Not a peep in the room. Everyone working hard, writing down tons of notes – equations, graphs. And total silence. This is unusual. And then a hand went up, and a very studious young adult asked me “are these lines the same length?”
I looked at the problem he was working on, and realized I did not have a clue. Obviously, you have to calculate the length of each line, both of which are inside a triangle resting on a graph. It is something you cannot even Google. You need to know the naming conventions, terminology, and processes of Geometry to answer. I had forgotten it all.
Surprising myself, I knew exactly what to do. I found a young woman who had already finished the exercise. I asked her quietly “was this easy for you”?. Yes. “Are you comfortable with your knowledge of this material”? Yes. “Would you mind helping me help others in this class who might be stuck” Um….helping?…. Um yes, ok.
And so it went. I walked her over to the young gentleman, she helped him with the answer, and the world kept turning. I did this all day, in each Geometry class. I had the sense that they were not used to this – helping each other. Or maybe just a bit shy. But they did what I asked and they helped a classmate figure out an answer. I told them that when they get a job, it will happen all the time. Colleagues help colleagues.. Every day.
Students don’t expect substitute teachers to be subject matter experts. Staff and Admin certainly don’t expect it. It’s not a big deal. In grade school and even high school.
Was it worth it for me to learn Geometry if I was simply going to forget almost all of it? The answer is yes. Totally. School teaches us how to think. Geometry teaches us to demand proof, or assurance. It teaches us to see a question, ponder it, calculate the various answers, and then work towards the most accurate answer. It teaches us to discard a “belief” if the evidence is not there, or the calculations point in a different direction. Not to mention learning about spatial relationships, graphs, and the like. I also believe that Geometry, and math in general, is something that is so different and esoteric that young people, as they start to master it, can begin to feel “OMG, I might actually be smart”. I believe this because it happened to me.