I'm proud of my students. I'm proud of what we do in Room 15 — my classroom, my home away from home for the past 11 years. These bopping teenagers: sullen one minute, bubbly the next, hormonal but somehow invincible. They don’t all love math like I do. (Not everyone loves college football either, but we get along.)
What’s happening in Room 15 is a loud and proud math culture that we’ve built together from day one. And we keep building it — in what we do, what we say, and what we write — because our behaviors are the best evidence that this culture exists.
Here’s one piece of that evidence:
Her frustration led to loving the problem. That last sentence of hers? It’s a giant celebration of how much we value the process of problem solving. Her classmates had their own reflections — short snippets describing how the problem worked on them as much as they worked on it.
They pushed hard because the problem was driving them nuts. It’s not unusual to hear kids blurt out, “This problem is making me crazy!” or, “I won’t be able to think about anything else until I get this!” Now they own that struggle. This isn’t about grades anymore. And it sure as hell isn’t about me.
Here’s the problem they were working on:
The Missing Area
A 10 by 16 rectangle is attached to a triangle as shown below. If the purple section is 24 square units, what is the area of the yellow section of the rectangle?
John Golden, GeoGebra extraordinaire, even created an animated gif of this problem.
Mike Lawler solved it using similar triangles.