Heads or Tales

Middle School Math Recommendation

I remember as a kid struggling with math. For some reason, I began improve when I studied to take the GRE. I actually enjoyed putting all those facts back in my head.

Recently, I ordered Mathematwist Number Tales From Around The World by T. V. Padma, and today, I spent the afternoon reading and working thorough the stories and the theories behind them. Each of the fourteen stories is a folktale from such places as Vietnam, India and Armenia. Some of the stories I was familiar with, but, even being familiar with the story, the author’s treatment and explanations afterwards were a pleasure. For example, after the story “Dividing A Goose”, a Jewish tale in which a peasant outwits a rich man and is able to give his own family a good dinner, Ms Padma talks a little about the ancient symbols for addition and subtraction. Did you know that Egyptian hieroglyphics show subtraction by depicting a man walking away? She also talks about the oldest Indian mathematical text. It was found in a field written on treebark.

Mathmatwist would be a great asset for a middle school math class (6th and 7th grades). The stories are engaging and the explanations are clear and never stuffy. There’s even a play to read out loud.

The book is only $8.50 and, even though it was published in India,can be easily ordered from her website www.cliofindia.com/padma/children.htm. The mailing address is in the U. S.

Telling Stories in the Virgin Islands

For the last two weeks, Nelson and I have been visiting a friend on Virgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. We have known Martha Holder from the time we lived in Denver, where she and Gene, her husband, ran a school. They decided to sell the school and everything else they owned to make their move to the Caribbean. Gene died last year, but Martha has made her home there for thirty years.

Going anywhere on that small island with Martha is like going to a home coming because she knows everyone. After they arrived in 1978, they started a school there as well. The Rockefeller resort, Little Dix, had a small empty building on their property and let Gene and Martha fill it with kids. The kids who came were often learning disabled children who were floundering in the traditional British school on the island. The Holders ran a regular school for about 18 full time kids during the day, and they ran a tutoring program for the kids from the British school, who were asking for help.

Martha has since retired, but the Valley Day School, even though it’s in a different building, is thriving. Take a look at the picture of the kids hanging over the railing. That’s the Valley Day group. The boy on the far right is so smart, but he can’t read at all. His teacher, the lady on the left, has him tell the compositions she assigns. She asks him to write the first paragraph, which he does with help from home. She asks him to read it when they present their stories, which he does with a lot of help. She then frees him to tell the rest of the story, and he is good. The day I visited they were writing stories about leprechauns. It was so much fun to hear how one of the wee folk would do on Virgin Gorda. That boy did such a grand job. In return, I told them, not a leprechaun story, but a tall tale about Shorty and the little man who took up residence in the dumpster in the alley behind our house. I felt so happy to be visiting those children and their teacher.

I was lucky enough also to tell stories during our visit at Robinson O’Neal Elementary School. The road to that school involved driving over Virgin Gorda mountain, which means you go straight up for awhile and then straight down. The view was gorgeous, of deep blue water and faraway islands, but I closed my eyes through some of it. Take a look at the picture. That’s the lower grades. We crammed two classes into one room and right next door a big machine was busy digging. The teachers found a quieter room for the older kids, and it was much easier to listen