I was talking to my youngest son over the winter break about the college courses he had signed up for this next quarter.  What he answered surprised me.

“I signed up for US Constitutional Issues.  I’m SO excited to take this class.  The professor is amazing!  I took his American History Pre-1865 class last quarter and loved it.  He’s so passionate about the material and makes it exciting because he tells it as a story. Plus, he relates it to what’s going on today.  I don’t even mind getting up at 6 for the 7 o’clock class.”  (That’s 7 o’clock AM!)

By the time he was done describing the class I felt gypped by all the history classes I’d ever taken.

But here’s the thing.  My son is a Business Major.  And he still plans on graduating with a degree in business.  And yet, the class he is most enthusiastic about has nothing to do with his major.  Not that he doesn’t enjoy his other classes.  But this one stands out in a big way.  So what is it about this particular class that gets him so excited to get up at 6 in the morning?  Two things.

The first is the professor.  His passion about history oozes out of every pore.  It draws the students in.

The second is his teaching style.  He doesn’t simply follow page-by-page the scope and sequence of the textbook.  To be sure, he’s clear about what he needs to teach but then he draws on ideas and examples that aren’t found in the textbook.  And by doing so, he makes it more interesting and relevant to the students’ lives.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could teach mathematics this way?

We can.

It starts with passion.  Although it would be great for every teacher to ooze the Pythagorean theorem out of every pore, the key is to simply be passionate aboutteaching.  The math part will follow.  Especially if you….

…periodically put down the textbook.  Replace it with hands-on projects that are tied to concepts students are learning.  The more open-ended, the better, as this allows for more outside-the-box thinking.  An example that I’ve done for many years during my volume unit is to have students re-design the soda can.

Including these types of hands-on projects in your curriculum takes time.  Years, in fact.  But what you’ll begin to notice is how excited and engaged the students become. And when that happens, discipline issues drop, student learning increases and a passion for math begins to blossom.