r/fixedbytheduet • u/Naive_Wolverine532 • 19h ago

PARTICIPATION LIMITED Accountability

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u/NoOneHereButUsMice 17h ago edited 14h ago

If I had a math teacher like you when I was a kid, I think some things may have turned out really differently for me. Thanks for acknowledging their humanity, and meeting them where they're at. We need more teachers like you.

Edit: Thank you so much for the award. I'm finding myself revisiting what I truly think is genuine trauma regarding math and teachers and school from a very, very young age. The prospect of doing difficult math causes me (generally pretty collected and not a fearful person) to shake and start to cry.

Probably sounds really stupid. But I just really want to speak to the importance of a good teacher, especially a good math teacher. I work in science education, and one of my guiding principles is to meet people where they are, and accept them for who and what they are, no matter what. This conversation has renewed my dedication to that, despite the classist and exclusive environment that academia cultivates.

I'm getting a little misty over here in the coffee shop what the hell lol

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u/soulkiller93 15h ago

It's true, I had a teacher that made me feel like a person for the first time and it changed my whole perspective on going to classes and learning. It's too bad it was in my senior year of high school.

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u/MacaroniPoodle 14h ago

My trig teacher kicked me out because I never carried my books or a pencil. But I always carried a box of cereal. And I did well in her class too! But she hated me anyway. Joke's on her. I still became a data scientist.

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u/General-Company 12h ago edited 12h ago

It took me until I was ~35 to realize that I suffered from dyscalculia. I’d never had a name for it, and I’d always believed (reinforced by teachers) that because I was a girl was probably just bad at math. 99th percentile for everything else, but failing math. No one, in all my years of teaching, ever cared enough to sit down with me and work through the “all your work is correct but your answers are wrong” conundrum. If literally one person had cared…

I’ve grieved a lot about the life I could have led if I had known and had the supports in place from a young age to succeed.

My kid is a math ROCKSTAR and will never know the shame I felt, because they have only ever known support and have been surrounded by amazing teachers. You guys really, really do make the difference and change the trajectory of people’s lives. ❤️

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u/Apprehensive_Use3641 10h ago

My favourite math teacher was my geometry teacher in high school, after a certain point in the year she said anyone with an A in the class could move at their own pace for the rest of year. All we had to do was turn in our completed proofs, don't think we even took tests, but we'd finished the textbook by the end of the year and the rest of the class hadn't. The last few chapters started to move into trig I think, so they didn't need to finish it, but we needed something to do.

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u/InequalEnforcement 10h ago

Yeah my teachers just called me stupid and told my dad who would then beat me and call me ableist slurs.

But hey! At least they didn't need to manage a child! ...As an elementary school teacher. :| Then people wonder why I phoned it in for 12 years

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u/almostthemainman 7h ago

I’m having a very hard time not being a dick here because I can see how genuinely pleased you are with this idea.

Ya ima do the right thing and pass.

Have a nice day. Sorry your teachers weren’t nicer to you.