How Hip-Hop is Breaking Down the Walls of Education
a.k.a. How a Language Arts Person Like Myself Came to Coauthor a Math Book
by California teacher of the Year Award Winner
Alan Sitomer
What happens when a literacy specialist who has fashioned a career from elevating the academic performance of capable but disengaged students sits down with a like-minded, awesomely talented math teacher and has a cup of coffee?
As an “English” guy, I have long stared in amazement at the math assessments taking place across the country. “These are reading comprehension problems before they are evaluations of mathematical abilities,” I’d declare to anyone who’d listen.
Many nodded, yet, after more than a decade of head tilts, few things changed.
To a person in the world of E.L.A., the obvious amount of pure literacy skills necessary to tackle word problems in math class seemed self-evident. But on most campuses, as we all know, literacy exists in one silo of school and math exists in another … and rarely do the two ever break bread.
Alex knew, and I knew, that if we were ever going to improve our kids’ competency and performance when it came to word problems, a math teacher and an ELA teacher were going to need to sit down and tear down the artificial walls that separated our two disciplines.
We have now done that, but let me tell you, writing this book was hard. Much harder than I imagined, in fact. Not because the math proved beyond my abilities; I’m no Pythagoras, but I can pull off a little bit of trig. No, this book required a Herculean amount of effort from my side of the fence because writing a cogent, crisp, well-executed mathematical word problem requires an incredible amount of precision.
In fact, one thing became apparent very early on in the drafting of this text: many kids are underperforming in math because so, so many of the word problems they are being asked to answer are just horribly written. Questions are sloppy, ambiguous, imprecise, and lazy. Researching this text proved absolutely maddening for me. I was, and still am, appalled at the work of other publishers.
“No wonder so many kids are faring so poorly! Look at how convoluted this question is,” I’d yell. “These problems STINK!”
Alex, after reducing my coffee intake and walking me back off the ledge, would remind me that this was why we were taking such great pains to write a great text. Excellence would be our answer.
I am supremely proud of this book. And I deeply believe that it might prove to be a key that unlocks both comprehension as well as enjoyment of math for many, many of your students.
Godspeed and good luck to you. Many of us are rooting for your success.
