“Anyway, her “sisters” were forever interrupting us so we could help them solve math problems they were encountering not in a math class but a class to teach them how to teach math.”
had the same problem with my college roommate.
She had an assignment one day - all she had to do was convert fractions into decimals.
She was already frustrated and near tears before she asked me for help.
I thought it should be no problem - just explain the top number is divisible by the bottom number - right?
She had a mental block - or worse - who knows.
She never did understand it.
She became a teacher.
She became a teacher.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
And,,,I am certain that her personal math phobia bleeds over into her professional teaching in class. Poor kids!
That’s funny because the most annoying evening I recall was all these gals asking questions about how to handle fractions. My father told me one of the more frightening aspects of college was encountering the education majors.
My other favorite memory was sitting in an all night library studying but also listening to some kids discuss the final touches on their project for the kiddies the next day (I guess it was Ed practical exercise).
They were going to introduce the kids to the topic of density. They were going to drop an object in oil and then in water and show that since the oil was more dense the object would fall slower than it would in water. They were then going to take the oil and pour it into the water and show that because it was more dense the oil itself would sink in the water.
I let them go on till about 2am and then broke the news to them they were confused as to the fluid properties they were demonstrating and that the kids had inevitably seen coverage of the Valdez disaster (prominent in the news then) and they would probably question why they were discussing oil sinking when clearly it wasn’t on TV.