A little more background, this time from the Calgary Herald rather than my second-hand knowledge from email listservs:

University-bound arts or humanities students who once struggled to complete high-school math requirements may find help when a new math curriculum begins for Grade 10 students next year.

…

Mathematics 20-1, 30-1 and 31 is meant for students who wish to pursue math-intensive subjects while Mathematics 20-2 and 30-2 has been created to prepare students for post secondary studies which would not require higher-level math training.

Arts students, for instance, could learn to interpret statistics and to complete math research projects, assignments which aren’t included in the more science-focused math class where the emphasis would be on calculus.

“It’s not easier math, it’s different content you are studying,” said Henzel.

That last line is the kicker.  This isn’t just a watered-down version of calculus prep, this is a completely different teaching target.

The article ends with a mention that the U of Alberta and U of Calgary will be “aligning” with this curriculum in a few years.  The devil is in the details, though, and they aren’t giving any details yet.  Hopefully they take a more reasonable approach than UBC.

My first job interview for a Teacher-On-Call position happened last week, and it went pretty well.  There was only one question that caught me off-guard.

I’ve been looking over your resume and your background.  So why the switch from computer programming to teaching?

In retrospect I don’t know why I didn’t anticipate that one, since I’ve had dozens of people ask me over the last year or two.  It’s not really that surprising a question, but I have a long and messy history with it.

I had one interview for a tutoring position a year and a half ago with a private tutoring service where the woman interviewing me asked me exactly that – except with more confusion and shock.  I gave my answer and she followed up with, “But, you do engineering – engineers make more money than teachers. Why would you be a teacher?”  Which I had just answered, but since my answer didn’t have dollar signs on it she apparently couldn’t understand. I am not even making this stuff up.  I teach math – I’m pretty sure I can add up that this isn’t a quick route to getting rich.

The interviewer I spoke with last week was far more reasonable, but the question is loaded with so much personal stuff that it still made me laugh a bit.  Switching from software engineering to teaching hasn’t been easy.  It took me a while to shed the layers of cultural, peer, and personal expectations around “being an engineer”, even without looking at the dollar signs.  It took even longer to let go of the layers of baggage around being (having been) a video game developer.  If that’s hard to imagine, here’s a quick cross-section: childhood dream job / engineering pride / coder pride / need for vindication after layoff / dream to succeed as an indie dev / need to have creativity recognized / being “the man” and bringing home the big(ger) paycheck.

But when it comes to the original question, my answer can’t be that different than any other sane teacher out there.  I do it because I love learning.  I love watching people get something they didn’t get before.  I like being helpful (although not too helpful).  And working with kids is fun – they have less stuff in the way of getting to know who they are than grown-ups do.  (Yes, even teenagers.)

This is how I like to sum it up:

“Teaching might be nuts, but it certainly isn’t boring.”

Alt: “Making video games for a living was too boring, so I went into teaching instead.”

From Dan Meyer‘s report on the “Thoughts On Rationalizing Algebra In Ways That Serve Kids, Not Universities” session from a recent math conference:

The day before CMC-North I was trading notes with our lead counselor, just swapping stories about kids, when she mentioned a student who was at the end of her turn at the local community college. She’d be transferring to a state college to complete a liberal arts degree if it weren’t for a failing grade in Algebra II. Because she can’t yet perform long division on polynomials, she’ll have to postpone her degree in (just guessing here) linguistics a full year.

Stories like this drive me crazy.  Mathematics has been positioned as the primary gatekeeper for post-secondary education.  What’s worse, thanks to early streaming of math education (in the name of helping students achieve success!) that gate is often locked for students the moment they step through the doors of high school.

Now, my problem in writing this is that I so desperately want to hammer out a harsh rant and lay out exactly what’s being done wrong and how to fix it; except that I just finished my practicum with a cross-section of Grade 9’s in both a “Math 9” and “Essentials of Math 9” block.  I know there is no easy solution because I’ve seen at least half a dozen of any category of student you want to think of: underachievers, overachievers, those crippled by poor self-efficacy, students with learning disabilities or global delays, students not actually flagged as LD or delayed but quietly falling behind those who are… the list goes on.  I don’t have a single solution that wouldn’t leave at least half a dozen of those students worse off than they deserve.

But what’s truly frightening is the thought that no amount of educational reform at the secondary level is going to remove that gatekeeper effect.

Western Canada’s provinces and territories are currently adopting a new secondary math curriculum from grades 10 – 12.  This new curriculum has been designed to provide two possible streams leading to post-secondary education.

• Pre-Calculus prepares students for STEM programs.
• Foundations is designed to prepare students for liberal arts programs.
• Applications and Workplace is the “easy” stream, but is notably more challenging than the previous “Essentials” stream. It covers the basic Trig and Geometry knowledge needed for trades work, as well as general life skills math (personal accounting, taxes, etc).

The programs were designed in consultation with post-secondary institutions in Western Canada, and all sounded great.  Then UBC released their basic entrance requirements for students coming to them through this new curriculum:

Either

• Foundations 11 and 12, or
• Pre-Calc 11

The effect being, for students who aren’t going into STEM fields and simply want to do enough math to get to their goal, the Foundations stream will mean taking an extra course.  Naturally, many math teachers see that as a death knell for the Foundations stream as it was designed.  (How many English-majors-to-be want to sign up for two math classes when they can get the pain over with more quickly?)

All of this just highlights the real problem: universities and colleges want a gatekeeper.  They want that extra way to filter admissions, because they have to do it somehow.  Worse, they don’t want to be seen as the “easy” school to get into, because this lowers their respectability.  (This also drives me crazy.)  So they demand gatekeepers, whether or not those gateways are actually a more useful math education for their students.