All Stars
When I took calculus in high school, my teacher was a master at creating alternate realities. Through the sheer force of his personality (and probably 20 years of practice) he drew in the class and we came out the other end knowing not only his procedures and policies but also a fictional personal mythology of math that included Charlton Heston, The Math Gods, aliens, Mickey Mouse, and a whole cast of other characters, inside jokes, and special terminology. We felt like we were part of a secret club. And, in a sense, we were — the mathematical elite of that high school.
So, I aspire. I’ve given quirky problems and projects about my spring break road trip in college, where to sit in the movie theater with your girlfriend (which some of the girls from the class verified with my girlfriend at the time in the ladies’ room during last year’s prom — and of course, she knew the answer), and some terrible puns lifted directly from my own high school experience (unLIMITed enjoyment, etc). This year, I gave my calculus students these little buttons that said “Calculus All-Stars” with a derivative on them after we finished that unit test. It quickly became the class identity. I didn’t set out to do that, but it’s almost as if every class wants to create an identity to set themselves apart and have a way to honor each other for their dedication and hard work. Anyway, this is just an observation that this effect can be used to great advantage and that masters of the game probably know this on several levels.
Being able to give students a sense of belonging is enormously important in educating them, far moreso than most of us educators realize. Students in high school and college are trying to find a framework for who they are and who they will be later in life. And the scary thing is that they will find that framework in one place or another — in their studies or families or churches on the one hand, or in gangs or worse on the other. There is really an important battle to be joined here by educators and having little buttons like you made up can go a surprisingly long way.
Comment by Robert — June 6, 2007 @ 3:49 am
The one and only programming course I took in college involved a fictional world like this, and it did add immensely to the interest of the course. Exam problems would consist of writing a program that would solve some practical problem in the imaginary country of Ruritania, where the Olympics include racing with milk pails and where there is only one Theater. One exam problem involved writing a program for the national election. It certainly would be fun to develop such a self-contained universe for high school math too. That would be a summer project… not something there’s much time for during the school year.
Comment by H. — June 10, 2007 @ 1:33 pm