I don't understand why this simple 2nd grade math is featured on hacker news. I guess the next topic will be a long discussion what would be 1/2 divided by 2/3.
One of the things I've realized in life is the best teachers are people who were not very good at something and then became very good at it through sheer practice and grit.
People who are naturally gifted at something because they can't understand the reason for someone else's failure can't teach well.
I worked for a year of work study as a math tutor at a community college. "How to do integration by parts[1]?" one student asked? That's easy to explain. My hardest day was when I was trying to help this one woman understand that when you multiply two negative numbers you get a positive numbers. "Wouldn't that make it more negative?" she asked.
I decided I would have been a terrible math teacher even though I was very good at math. And reading this article was interesting to me because it explained to me why I would be a terrible math teacher.
Bingo. To me, this is the key point of the article:
> It’s hard to think and teach at the same time!
This teacher seems pretty bright. I'm sure if she had a few quiet minutes to think and regroup, she could come up with a stellar explanation. But instead, she has to proceed with the lesson, manage the classroom, and tackle an interesting puzzle at the same time.
At home, merely trying to manage my work and two kids with their remote learning often puts me in the same spot. I will often do some tutoring with them during a work break. But my brain power is already silently depleted, so if any kind of obstacle or creative question arises, I struggle to even begin thinking of an approach to it.
After I read the article, I thought the article had less to do with the math involved than the way kids see things compared to adults. So I thought it was pretty interesting.
