As a math major, it was hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that my kid was innumerate, and apparently hard wired that way. But when I spoke to his (3rd?) grade teacher about multiplication and found that he was being required to write out the problem as boxes and then count the boxes. OK, that works, Then he told me that 2X3 was written out as a rectangle two wide and three deep. And 3X2 was ONLY to be written out as a rectangle three wide and two deep. No freaking WONDER my kid was having trouble with such concepts, since the teacher was incompetent. I pointed out that they were the same rectangle, but he didn’t get it even when I grabbed the paper and rotated it 90º. Mind you, my kid really is unable to grasp numeric things, so even an excellent teacher wouldn’t have helped… but it would have made ME feel better.
As a math major, it was hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that my kid was innumerate, and apparently hard wired that way. But when I spoke to his (3rd?) grade teacher about multiplication and found that he was being required to write out the problem as boxes and then count the boxes. OK, that works, Then he told me that 2X3 was written out as a rectangle two wide and three deep. And 3X2 was ONLY to be written out as a rectangle three wide and two deep. No freaking WONDER my kid was having trouble with such concepts, since the teacher was incompetent. I pointed out that they were the same rectangle, but he didn’t get it even when I grabbed the paper and rotated it 90º. Mind you, my kid really is unable to grasp numeric things, so even an excellent teacher wouldn’t have helped… but it would have made ME feel better.