Stay In Your Lane [A Math Teacher's Lament] | The Jose Vilson

Stay In Your Lane [A Math Teacher's Lament] | The Jose Vilson:

Stay In Your Lane [A Math Teacher's Lament]

by Jose

Why do people stigmatize math teachers?
It’s bad enough we teach people that they’re either math people or they’re not (patent lie, I promise you). Now, we’re even limiting math teachers to the fields in which they can excel. They stereotype (!) math teachers as having hobbies like playing piano (fractions!) and read xkcd (might be true), but God forbid they actually know how to do things like write (without patterns involved) or read books (not by Einstein, Hawking, or any other mad genius).
I’m not sure where the stigma comes from, but the way we want students to see common threads in our topics is akin to what I’d love our teachers to see about each other. Not in the bullshit Kumbaya, top-down-education-management sort of way that cites some research I never even heard of and tries to force-feed collaboration down our throats. More in the, it’s-OK-to-actually-have-an-affinity-for-seemingly-unrelated-topics-and-we-won’t-slap-you-on-the-wrist-for-it sort of way.
Can a student hate science but love math? Yes. Can a student hate English but love social studies. Absolutely. Can we be OK with that? Yes.
Also, can people stop pelting the math coach (me) with