Higher Level Math

     A story in the unexpected gifts department. One year when Sarah was in middle school – her math class was pre-algebra. One afternoon, the teacher gave them a challenge problem – totally optional – and the students could use any resource at their disposal to figure it out.

     Sarah promptly handed the challenge problem to me when she got home – she said I was an allowable resource! So I sat down with the problem and recognized it as algebra – which I had always liked in school. I quickly realized that the problem was a quadratic equation, and then I just as quickly realized that I could not remember how to solve a quadratic equation!

     I started the challenge over and over again – always getting to the same spot and then stuck. I told Sarah I was going to figure it out. I was. And I started it all over again. While I wrote down steps that I knew were going to get me to the same stuck place, I tried to think of resources at my disposal that would help me solve the problem.

     And finally I remembered that there is an algebra textbook on my bookshelf – it was published in 1891! But quadratic equations are older than that - so the solution should be somewhere in those pages! Right?

1891 Algebra Textbook

     With much hope, I found the book – and soon I had solved the problem for Sarah.

     She said, “redo all the steps Mom, and explain each one to me so I can write them on the board for everyone in class tomorrow!” Sarah was very excited.

the secret to quadratics

     When we were done going over all the steps, I looked around and saw that evening had come! It was dark outside, and it was dark inside the house everywhere except where at some point I must have turned on a lamp at the table where I was working. Hours had gone by! Neither of the girls had had any dinner! What kind of example was I being to my children to put everything else aside to bullheadedly, stubbornly pursue something like that - to give them the impression that something else was more important than taking care of my children and for goodness sakes, more important than feeding them?

     Months went by. The same math teacher gave Sarah's class an assignment to make an ABC book with math terms. Sarah did her book and handed it in.

     At the end of the school year, when kids had to clean out their lockers, Sarah brought home a whole pile of papers, and I took a glance through them. One of the things in the stack was the ABC book of math terms which had been returned and then stashed in the locker. I turned to the first page and saw that it was a Dedication Page. I thought that surely the teacher did not require such a page – Sarah must have done that independently. My curiosity piqued – did she dedicate the book to her sister? One of the cats? A friend?

     The Dedication Page said that the book was dedicated to my Mom who taught me higher level math.

     “Sarah Beth!” I exclaimed, “When did I teach you higher level math?”

     “Remember that night, Mom, you helped me with the algebra problem?”

     “You mean the night I stubbornly sat at the table for hours and did not feed you until I had figured out the quadratic equation?”

     “Yes, Mom, you taught me higher level math.”

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