January 2025
Frances Anderson (University of Nebraska-Omaha)
Those were the best days of my life: the glory years, I call them. How do you ever say goodbye to the “job” that gave you meaning, each day? The job that reminded you that you were valuable, you meant something, and that you could change someone else’s life?
I remember when I started my program to become a teacher. I looked at teaching as “subpar,” as a job that had little-to-no value, as a job that would be boring, routine, repetitive and mundane. I looked at it as though it was a job for people with little intelligence and anyone with an ounce of intelligence would be in search of some other career. So then, how did I become a math teacher?
Frankly, I fell into it. I graduated with my undergraduate degree in Sociology, with an honors thesis devoted to researching juvenile gangs in rural Nebraska. With a large data set of 25,000 students, I got hooked on research and quantitative analyses. I remember the day that I went in for my last advising appointment in April of my graduating year. My advisor told me to “stop working now” because the work needed for my undergraduate degree was easily “on par with a master’s thesis”. It was this work that fueled me to want to do more research and, simultaneously, altered my perception of certain careers. I began to view employment options as better or worse dependent on their perceived intellectual demand.
Upon graduation, life took me in a different direction than the master’s degree I was planning on pursuing. Instead, I became a businesswoman at the age of 22. You would think owning and operating four coffee shops would be enough to keep my mind preoccupied. And yet, after the initial opening phases and routine setting in, boredom settled within me. What more was there to explore? How many more invoices could I input to the same system in the same way and for how many years? My mind cried out for learning. Then, I remembered how my brain felt when I studied mathematics.
Math was always a subject area that spoke to me. It was never easy; in fact, I worked for many hours and sat with many high school teachers and professors to master content. My first true hurdle came while studying Calculus II and I remember failing the sequences and series assessment. To this day, Calculus II remains my one B I have earned in mathematics. As I reflected on my experiences as an undergraduate in mathematics, it seemed, at that time, the only reasonable path to become “unbored” was to take a math class. So, I did. I enrolled at the university as a “non-degree seeking post graduate student.” I learned that there were many limitations to this status and began to consider what options I had to continue learning through a master’s degree.
Program after program called for full-time student status, which I could not commit to. Running four coffee shops, married and pregnant with my first child, academics had to take a backseat to the rest of the responsibilities in my life. So, I continued to take math classes here and there until I finally I found a program that allowed me to take graduate courses part-time.
“Teaching”, the advisor had said. And I began to laugh. “I’ll never be a teacher. Not in the U.S. They don’t get paid enough; they don’t get respected. And, it sounds boring. Talking at kids, teaching the same lesson over and over. Nope. Not for me.” Yet, after reanalyzing all the other program options, I returned to teaching because, from what I can remember, it was the only master’s program that I could do part-time. For this reason, the desire to learn alone, I chose secondary mathematics education as my master’s degree program without the intention to teach in the U.S. at all.
With this decision came the requirement to take secondary mathematics methods and as I walked into my math methods course, my disposition towards mathematics learning changed completely. I was introduced to a way of teaching that I had never experienced. This idea of “tasked based learning,” having students talk to each other, having students discover the content and having curricula that offered choice and expansive thought. This spoke to my soul in the same way that I had experienced math individually. When I worked through a math problem, the beauty was in how I could make connections, discover relationships, and piece ideas together both creatively and through logical reasoning which is why I had continued to persevere in so many mathematics classes when math did not seem to come quickly to me. The fact that I was being taught ways to teach students these “secondary” (or so I believed at the time) skills, in class, made me want to be a math teacher. How cool was it to share the experimental and creative nature of mathematics with others?
And it was. For seven years I taught mathematics without a single day of boredom and without the desire to find anything new. Every day was a new day. Every class was a new class, every period was a new period. There was LIFE happening, all the time and in each moment. In the halls, it was student after student saying, “Hey Miss.” or “K dot!” with a high five. These were the fun moments, the silly ones, that hyped you up as a mathematics teacher. But these were not the most fruitful. There were also the moments in class, the confidence building moments where students eagerly waited for a gold star, regular stars, or even just a star drawn on their desk. There were times where I would look at students and tell them how proud I was of their effort, accomplishment or just for showing up to class that day. Seeing the returned smile from their faces will be forever imprinted in my memory. The simplicity of a, “Thank you for being here” and seeing what it meant to someone else, is a feeling that I will never let go of.
But more than that, the aha moments, when something, mathematically speaking, began, for the first time to make sense conceptually to a student, “Ahhhhhhhhh. I NEVER knew that Miss. I actually “get it” for once.” Then these students slowly having math become their favorite subject. There were also students who were “too cool for school.” These students, at first, really wanted nothing to do with learning math (or at least that is what they would share) and I would respect them for it. We would “make a deal.” “I’ll leave you alone and respect your desires, if you can respect my classroom.” For respect, I would simply ask for them to “act like they were doing math” even if that meant they were working on their song lyrics or other personal project. I remember a student that transferred into my section after getting kicked out of his math class. He was failing and claimed no interest in learning mathematics. Thus, he spent about four weeks in my class acting like he was doing math, as we had agreed. Then, one day, looked up from acting and called me over. I submitted to his request and asked how I could help him. He asked me, “Is this all we are doing? I think I get it.” I looked at him and said, “Yes. This is what we are doing and yes, you do get it. Would you like to try the work today.” “Yeah. Get me a paper.” I got him the paper and he never went back to working on his personal projects in my class. Instead, he spent the rest of the semester shouting out answers and working very actively with his team.
Still, this was not what touched my heart, not what changed me, not what fueled me, not the reason teaching math was my “glory years.” Rather, it was because of the relationships that I built with the students. Almost every day I spent at Central, a student would share details of their life that they felt like they could not share with anyone else. This might have been the fact that they were currently homeless, that they were sending money back to their parents in Mexico, that they had just broken up with their boyfriend, how they didn’t feel heard in their many relationships with friends/family, and more than anything that they needed someone to talk to. Every day, at least one student would talk with me not because it was fun to chat with me but because the chat was vital for them to operate throughout the day. Simply put, they NEEDED to talk. I learned that I was there to listen to these students and that this role was critical in their lives. Teenagers are experiencing a developmental period that is unlike any other point in a human’s life. Unpacking their cognitive load, which for many was an overload, is critical. When I listened, they talked. When they talked, they could, thereafter, learn mathematics. If I listened to them and found their lives valuable, it seemed reasonable to them to listen to me when I taught math, and they found mathematics content valuable.
My co-teacher used to tell me to “take them to the hall and go work your “Fran magic” on them.” A couple of years into working with her she finally looked at me and said, “What on earth do you do out there to get them to focus during class when they return?” The answer was always simple, “I listen.” Listening meant, at times, being called names (not the good ones), being someone who did not take things personally, and it also meant being someone who would act if action were needed. What I learned was that the “Fran magic” was just the act of allowing students to unleash what was so held on to so tightly in their minds, hearts, and souls, which took care of a basic need. Tending to this basic need allowed them to shut off the fight or flight response and turn on the desire to learn.
As a high school math teacher, through experience, I learned that every student has the inherent desire to learn. Seeing the desire to learn in everyone around me, I miss tremendously. Walk into a prekindergarten classroom. All the students are singing, laughing, jumping, and playing. Walk into a high school classroom. Most classrooms have many students completely disengaged. So, what happens between prekindergarten and 9th grade? To me, I noticed that independent students’ curiosity is replaced by the requirement to regurgitate content, especially in mathematics classrooms. So much so that students lose interest in learning because they are no longer asked to learn. They are asked to mimic specific behaviors that bodies have determined to be valuable. For these reasons, math is boring and, “sucks.” So, what happened in my classroom and why did students start showing up differently? I allowed myself, and my students, to sing, laugh, jump, and play. We would go outside for the algebra walk or for any defendable reason. I would randomly break into song. I would get down on the floor for push up competitions and the students would jump right in alongside me. It was the most vibrant exchange of living that I have ever had, and it makes my chest hurt when I think about this. Why on earth did I ever leave teaching mathematics? What am I doing? Do I have it all wrong now? My heart aches. Why am I so far away from what I love so much?
And then I remember: I became a math teacher because someone taught me how vibrant, creative, and full of life a math class could be if I made certain choices. I went, and I made these choices. I was mindful about the curricula I used, I was mindful about the environment, student engagement, interactions, relationships and so much more. Then, I had someone ask me, “What would it take to have you at the university?”
When I was asked this question, I thought back to my life before teaching when I had so many preconceived ideas about teaching based on my experiences in math classrooms. My experience teaching mathematics looked nothing like the math classrooms I frequented as a student. Thus, all my ideas about teaching were not correct and instead could not have been more incorrect. Teaching was the opposite of what I thought it would be. Now, I have learned that the career that begged for the most intellectual stamina is teaching mathematics. Teaching coupled with the complex nature of mathematics is a dynamic duo that made me realize how little knowledge I had, and that knowledge is expansive as we age.
So, how was I to answer the call to academia when I was faced with it? It was not answered lightly, and it was not without contemplation and doubt because I had to say goodbye to what I loved so much. Still, I took the leap into academia for one reason: the tension that I experienced between my mathematics education and the one that I provided to students. I believed (because I’d experienced it) that with certain specific content taught in secondary mathematics methods, teaching math can be done in a way? that highlights the beauty of mathematics in the same way that mathematicians see math instead of teaching math through a style of mimicking. As a mathematics educator, I can say that I do not have the same number of consecutive days where I feel the impact that I have on student lives as I did as a high school math teacher, but there are still days where I get to feel like I am making an impact in the lives of my undergraduate students. Students share with me the impact I have had on them and this is meaningful.
The things that I value the most as a math educator are twofold. First, watching my students create the very environment that I created, and second, participating in the joy of knowing that the number of mathematics classrooms that are designed for true learning and experiencing the beauty of mathematics is growing exponentially. Through this process of observing my students cocreate content with their students, I also see something else so vital happening: the relationships that they are building with their students. Then I am reminded that they have learned to build relationships that foster true sharing because my students have learned to listen to their students.
So, what about my glory years? What are my years now? My life has changed so much with over a decade in education and through transitioning roles from math teacher to math educator. I may not be in my glory years but these years, impacting undergraduate students are notable all the same. I call them the “exponential, transitive years” where I get to watch them, in their glory years, pass down the tradition of math as a beautiful subject, vibrant and full of life. My heart is vibrant and full of my memories of teaching mathematics and in anticipation of passing this gift on to others as a math educator. Fun fact: math facts were never taught in my classroom. Instead, life facts and lessons learned, were taught every day. Through these, lives continue to change.