There in not just one right answer!

It was fascinating to see how many different ways we all looked at the same problem. It was almost as if we were doing the same jigsaw puzzle but some of us started with the edges, while others started in the middle, and still others started sorting by color. We all got there in the end, but we all went about it in very different ways that made sense to us personally.

I found myself wondering why I instinctively headed toward one method over another, while the person next to me always seemed to choose a clearly different route. I was very fortunate to sit next to someone who thought about those math problems in a different way than I did. It made me realize that I have been too dependent on the “only one right answer” way of learning math. Everyone should do it the same way I do, right? Now I see that is not only incorrect, but a very limiting and boring way of going about learning. I really enjoyed seeing what other people did! And every time a new way was introduced, I found myself saying “wow, that’s cool, and it DOES make sense to me. I didn’t think about it like that.”

After discussing the first problem, I solved the second one by going with my first instinct. But this time after I finished, I caught myself looking over my neighbor’s shoulder to see what she was doing. Not to cheat or in search of some validation of my answer, but out of a wonderful sense of curiosity.

If we were able to get our students to foster this sense of curiosity, what a great learning environment we could create! Not to mention how much it would help those students who just don’t solve things in the same way as the teacher, but can maybe glean some understanding when another student explains it to them in a different way! And once a student can understand a concept in one way, they are much more likely to be able to proceed onto understanding it from different angles, increasing their overall understanding and knowledge base for future learning.

Some people just NEED to sort out the colors first, while I always need to separate out the edges. There is no one “correct” way of getting the puzzle done. And it’s very important to always keep that in mind!