Avoiding the Trap of Algorithms

Transcript

Welcome fellow Recovering Traditionalists to Episode 176: Avoiding the Trap of Algorithms

Recently I was asked if I’d like a preview copy of a new book coming out in 2025 in order to give a blurb of support that could potentially be included in promotions for the book. 

Before I talk about the book I’m actually going to go off topic, kind of, because the past few days in my home life the topic of mean girls and women not supporting women has come up multiple times.  Then as I started writing out this podcast I realized that this episode is a wonderful example of women supporting women.  Too often women work to tear each other down and unfortunately it starts very early and is heavily seen in high school.  When one female is excelling or seen as “better” in some way, other females see it as a threat and work to tear that female down instead of working to get themselves up.

It is unfortunate and it’s crazy to see that this behavior continues into adulthood.  In fact I bet you’ve even seen this in your school.  If one teacher is excelling, i.e. their students are excelling, then instead of working to find ways to excel their students, often other teachers just bad mouth that teacher and find ways to bring her down.

Instead we should be supporting that teacher and saying, “You are doing awesome! What are you doing? What’s working for your students? What can I learn from you?”

The reason I bring this whole idea up is because the author of the book I was asked if I’d like a copy of could be seen as a competitor of mine.  She provides resources for teachers around math, just like me.  She has a podcast, just like me. She has online courses for teachers, just like me.  She has an online PD site for teachers, just like me.  I could have declined the offer to review the book because I could view her as a competitor in “business” but instead I see her doing the same work as me and want to lift her up.  We are doing a “business” that helps us pay bills but we are both working towards the same goal of helping teachers understand how kids develop their math understanding.  

I could choose to believe that if teachers are learning from her then they aren’t learning from me and therefore NOT want to promote her stuff.  Instead I choose to believe that a) teachers can learn from both of us, it’s not an either/or situation, b) if they don’t want to learn from me for whatever reason maybe they will learn from her, and c) who cares who teachers are learning from as long as they are learning and growing in their understanding of how children build their math minds.  My end goal is that children have a different experience around math than I did.  That mathematics actually makes sense and they enjoy it.  So I don’t care if you learn that from me or someone else and if someone else has a way that resonates better with you then I’m all for it.  In fact, on the show notes for this episode over at buildmathminds.com/176 I’m going to provide links to all of her stuff and NONE of mine.

And so in the spirit of women supporting women, I’m so pleased to introduce to you Pam Harris’ new book Developing Mathematical Reasoning: Avoiding the Trap of Algorithms.  I can’t give too much away from this book because it actually isn’t published yet and the copy I have might change a bit, however it is open for pre-orders so I wanted to give you a little preview…and Pam said I could.  

I’ll do more with her new book when it comes out in February but if you are like me and grew up inside the trap of traditional algorithms you need to pre-order this book.

I made it through school with good math grades because I was a good rule follower and math was taught as a set of rules & procedures to follow.  It wasn’t until I was getting my master’s degree that I learned I didn’t know mathematics, I was just good at arithmetic and I was a good mimicker.

“I wish I would have been taught that way!” was something I said sooo many times and I’ve heard many teachers say it. Once we see a different way to think about mathematics it opens our world to a whole new way of thinking.  We made it through school parroting back rules & procedures in math but being able to do the algorithms only made it look like we knew math.  However, doing and understanding what we are doing are two very different things.  This book will build your own understanding of mathematics so you can help your students avoid the trap of the algorithm and ensure that your students won’t one day be saying “I wish I would have been taught that way.”

There was a spot in Pam’s book that I think gives us a sense of why we end up saying “I wish I would have been taught this way.”  I can’t tell you what page this is on because I just have a digital preview copy but it is in Chapter 3: The Trap of Addition and Subtraction Algorithms and I’m only grabbing a small part of what Pam writes about three traps:

Many of the traditional algorithms share these three general traps:

• The less sophisticated reasoning trap – the trap of being able to use reasoning in a prior level and get correct answers, therefore never learning the reasoning that kind of problem could build and needs to build in order to then build on it…
  

• The digit trap – the trap of treating numbers like lists of digits and therefore not grappling with the place values/magnitudes involved… 

• The false definition of math trap – the trap of believing the myth that math-ing means mimicking…

As a learner and then a traditional teacher, I was caught in these traps and it wasn’t until my eyes were opened to a new way to view mathematics and the learning of mathematics that I was released from the trap.  As I was being released I saw myself gain more sophisticated reasoning (and then striving for that with my students). I began to see the value of numbers and not just see them as symbols to manipulative.  I began to see math as more than just following the steps and that’s when I began to say “I wish I would have been taught this way.”

If you want help along your journey of getting out of those three traps and ensuring your students don’t fall into those traps, go pre-order Pam’s new book and check out all her resources. Pam is amazing to learn from and has so much passion it’s contagious.  And let’s remember to build each other up.  

When you see another female who is looking good, doing something good, or just being an awesome person…tell them.  We all get a lot of people saying bad things about us all the time, so be a person who says the good things and lifts others up.  

See you next week, my fellow Recovering Traditionalists.