A Lesson from Middle School

I don’t remember what we were learning but I remember my peer Ryan asking a question in our middle school math class that would only become more pervasive the deeper into the education system I got. 

The question? 

“How are we going to use this in the real world?”

This question is still something that surfaces as we are 10 years out of high school and people reflect on all of the “wasted” time spent in the traditional education system. 

I didn’t realize it in the moment, but Ryan’s question to Mr. Brady would help me shift the way I viewed the lessons from my time in the American school system to take seemingly insignificant moments and shift them into larger ideas that would serve to benefit me later in life. 

I will never forget my 7th grade math teacher Mr. Brady. 

As I sat at my desk, facing the front of the room where he kindly was making the worst noise known to man - chalk on a chalkboard - in an effort to teach us a new math skill, I couldn’t help but feel confused by how he was teaching us. 

I followed the essence of what he was trying to teach but the steps that he was teaching just didn’t make sense to me. I looked around the class and most of the students seemed to be understanding but I just wasn’t getting it. 

When he assigned us some problems to solve using this new method, I derailed in a way that made sense to my brain. 

Mr. Brady had been walking the rows of desks seeing if we needed help and checking our work along the way. When he checked my work, he seemed a bit perplexed. 

What he was looking at was not the method that he had shown us, but it worked. I was getting the correct answer on every question. Instead of scolding me for not following his teachings - Mr. Brady gave me extra homework. 

He assigned me an extra set of problems to solve and asked me if I could show them to him at the start of our next class. If my method continued to prove reliable, he wanted me to teach my peers that method in the following class to see if it registered better with the way they thought. 

Sure enough - I nailed all of the problems and got to making the gross song of education followed by a quick dusting of my hand. 

While I could see on Mr. Brady’s face that he still wasn’t following how I was solving the problem, I can still remember the faces of a couple of my peers that this immediately clicked for. In enabling me to utilize a different solution - Mr. Brady had helped broaden his audience’s understanding of the concept. 

This is a stark contrast to my stats teacher my senior year of highschool. For Mrs. Cranor, it was her way or the highway. If you strayed from her methods even slightly, you’d get docked points off of her tests or her assignments. 

In doing this, she truly believed that she was benefiting her students as her way helped ensure that her students understood the fundamental concepts of her class. 

This stats class not only required understanding the math but what went into it. Imagine taking math tests with verbal questions that were to be answered without solving problems but with a fundamental understanding of the concepts taught in whatever college level stats book we were using. 

A common complaint in her classes (this was the second time that I had her) was that she was too rigid with her teaching style and that people would get correct solutions but still get docked points on their exams, ultimately resulting in lower grades. 

I got my first ever C in this math class. Ironically, not because of the equations - I always aced that portion of the test because stats was intuitive to me. But my acing the math would be offset by my failure to read the textbook and know the textbook answers to the questions. 

I went on to take two stats classes in college that my professors allowed us the freedom to solve all of our problems in whatever way worked for us - my confidence in these classes was so high that I would use the same bic pen on every test. I felt dangerous. Nobody dared take a math test in pen. 

The contrast between my experience with Mr. Brady and my college courses versus my experience with Mrs. Cranor taught me an incredibly valuable life lesson that I hadn’t realized until today. 

Not everybody thinks the same way. Embrace this and understand that people are going to solve problems differently than you. If you try to shove everybody into the same box with which you reside, you may be minimizing their potential, regardless of intent. 

Moreover, you could be minimizing yourself by holding yourself to the same standards that Mrs. Cranor held us to in her math classes. 

Meaning, you are trying to learn from people who don't think and learn similarly to you. Learning from people that think differently than you isn’t inherently flawed. It is actually invaluable to be able to learn from people with different perspectives than you. 

It does, however, become a problem when you aren’t fully understanding topics that they discuss and casting judgement on yourself based on what you are and aren’t able to understand. 

If you are a person that derives a sense of self-worth from your ability to understand complex topics and you can’t understand what somebody is teaching, it can lead you to value yourself less. 

I could go on a whole different tangent on where you should derive your sense of self-worth from but I will save that for another post. 

Instead of judging yourself for the inability to fully understand the concepts that an individual is discussing, it is worthwhile to look for content surrounding the underlying ideas that you do understand with this. Consume this content with the intention of understanding but let your mind look for what it currently views as important. 

This is an exercise in allowing your brain to explore topics and ideas, subconsciously connecting the topics that you have previously learned to the topics that you are currently learning. 

Along this journey, you may find someone that communicates in a way that you resonate with more or simply, they break down concepts in a way that you can better understand. Through this, you are better able to understand topics that you have previously been exposed to and getting exposure to new ideas. 

If you think about the learning journey as a brick or cobblestone road, the gaps in your knowledge could be viewed as potholes where bricks or stones are missing. You aren’t able to understand the full message due to getting stuck in that pothole. 

The exploration of the concept through different lenses helps fill in each pothole that was initially on the road. After significant exploration and implementation of your learnings, you can circle back to the initial piece and you will find that you pull different ideas from the same message. 

This is due to your more dynamic understanding of the concept as a whole. You have a better conceptual understanding of the topic and - if you were iterating on what you were learning - you have a more functional understanding of how to apply the concepts as well. 

If you still don’t fully understand the message - it’s time to either learn more and iterate more on the learnings or determine that you don’t think the same way as the individual communicating the message. 

Before giving up on that person, I recommend periodically returning to their ideas even if there are years between your visits. Understanding is not something that is built in hours. Our perspective is shaped by our experiences and is ever-evolving. 

What is a topic that you have been learning lately? Where have you been getting hung up? What have you done to try to bridge the gap? How are you reacting when you don’t understand a concept or idea? What thoughts go through your head at that moment?