Classroom Difficulties with Mathematics

     Something to think about . . . do some of us still cling? . . . obediently and thoughtlessly . . . to beliefs such as

                I can't / poets can't     understand mathematics
                                or
                I can't / math people can't     understand poetry 

Current interactive teaching/learning processes are helping to revise those negative attitudes -- and my thoughts on the subject were brought to mind by a poem that showed up recently in my email.  It is Poem 15 in the Poetry 180 project, an activity initiated in 2002 by Poet Laureate Billy Collins in 2002 -- a project that provides a poem for students for each day of the traditional school year.  (Each Sunday subscribers get an email that provides a link to a poem for each day of the coming week.)

Keeping Track of Chairs

 The first steps in mathematics . . . COUNTING!

      I grew up on a farm and keeping track by counting happened often -- counting chickens, counting sheep, counting the number of weeks until the early transparent apples will be ripe . . . and when I read Tom Wayman's poem in Poet Lore I found a similar habit of relentless counting.    I have not been able to obtain more than short-term permission for posting -- and so I offer here just a sample and, beneath, a a link to the full poem.

from Fifty Years of Stacking Chairs     by Tom Wayman

     Two of these chairs at a time
     are easily manageable, so back at the empty rows
     I fold three and haul them with both hands
     across the space. Next trip I try
     four: fingers on each hand curved
     under the metal backrests of
     two chairs. Fifty years