Teaching from the Heart

by Yela Martinez

I was in High School in the mid-nineties, I was an average student, nothing to highlight, some difficult family situations may have made that so. what really stands out was my little love for math, either because I did not understand it or because the teachers’ didactics were not the best, a school of 40 students per classroom of several courses in each grade, very difficult to focus on teaching from love and all this is added to the time, strategies and innovative methodologies definitely did not go hand in hand with the pile of notebooks that should be reviewed and reports to deliver etc, and the question of… After all, what is the use of math? When will I use everything that I left written in several notebooks? a lot of practical exercises that I only copied from those who had become my friends just to approve the topic.

Almost 20 years later, I had become a preschool teacher, and there I was again faced with math, things of fate led me to teach this area in the grades of primary school, not by choice but by assignment, very little motivated by the idea, but, unlike 15 years ago, now with the firm certainty that math is an essential part of our life, from making simple conversions, time, temperature, measurements, to the interest I pay for using my cards, measuring, algorithms, are not just concepts. They are a pillar of our life, everything is based on it, and in our adult life the knowledge of them will allow us to make good calculations and be intelligent when doing business etc.

What was I going to do? the usual? teach to add, subtract, memorize the multiplication tables? I knew that my apathy was partly due to lack of understanding, for what? why? how? where? answers that the topic answers by itself, but will they enjoy finding those answers?

how I was going to bring my students closer to those books? the books were not the names of my students of course, in fact there was vocabulary that was not even familiar to them, what was my goal? filling notebooks with algebraic operations, problem analysis, putting them at the front of the class to repeat the multiplication tables over and over again? No, we didn’t need notebooks, I wanted to hear them create their own analysis, see them find the answer among their friends, in their daily lives, everything we needed was in our environment.

We counted the steps from the classroom to the park and converted them to another unit of measurement, we split the fruit from our snacks and talked about fractions, we looked for the pencil colors that our partner had lost and understood the subtraction, counted the food trays, we added up numbers several times, multiplied, built figures, with their sides, angles, etc. we were only building knowledge by ourselves, from the fun. It became the hour of play, a game of thinking. Was it innovative? Perhaps, the best strategy? Suddenly, I don’t know what the great math proffesors would think, but what I do know is that my students will never forget these classes. Has it served their adult life? I’m sure it did. and with all certainty I say, they loved math, they loved that class.

All this story is intended to share from my own experince, a reflection that could be applicable in any area of learning, now my students are over 20 years old, I proudly say that when I saw them at school in their classes or on the street they always came to me remembering some anecdote of the class, what better gift and than satisfaction.

Teaching must be from the heart and for the heart, in these times when technology has made us teachers and parents aside to fill our children with little relevant information, where they do not learn to think, it is when we should come to them with questions , from their surroundings, from their tastes, a great task for parents and a giant challenge for teachers in all areas, however it is by own knowledge that the diversion and learning is not only for them, if as teachers we remove the whole wall of notebooks, planning, books, standards, etc and see the child who wants to play and who wants to learn, we will be full of ideas to bring it to knowledge and just like them we will have a lot of fun in this beautiful task. It may be out of our comfort zone but it will always be worth it.