I have never been one of those teachers who hates maths and any mention of it. My relationship with maths as a GCSE student was mixed. I was interested in things like chaos theory and fractals, clearly name-dropped by teachers clearly as bored as we were. I persuaded my teacher to let me take the intermediate paper so I could get a B and be on my way.
I made the mistake of doing the BKSB maths skills test in September. My maths level came out as entry 3, then I tried again really hard and got level 1. I was worried a klaxon would go off and I’d be carted away for intensive fence-building-related re-education.
Some of my students have sat their GCSE maths four times by the age of 18. They got a grade 3 in school, a grade 3 doing the resit, a grade 3 in the November resit of the resit. And then they had to resit.
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In the summer, I was invigilating the resits for my centre; the hall was full of musicians, artists, fashion designers and actors. At the end, I collected dozens of sad little pieces of artwork done in pencil on tracing paper which they had not needed for the exam. There were shapes and swirls, portraits, typography, and one particularly interesting diptych entitled Alien Beach. They looked like little cries for help, each perfect stroke of graphite saying “This is what I do - this is the thing I’m good at”. I collected them and made a display in my classroom.
‘Why do letters have to get involved?!’
After racking my brains for what I could do to help my resitting students, I realised there were two options.
1. I could become as good at maths as the maths teachers in about a week (which would involve some sort of magic spell or amulet).
Or 2. I could struggle valiantly alongside them for no real good reason other than making myself look ridiculous so they felt better. I chose the latter; I’m still waiting to hear back from my contact in the Dark Realms.
My colleagues have watched me slowly unravelling for an hour a week on the online revision tool Mathswatch. They’ve endured my head slamming on to the desk, frustrated confusion clouding my face as I grapple with plotting a midpoint on a graph or expanding and simplifying. I occasionally blurt out things like “Why is this suddenly not working?!” and “Why do letters have to get involved?!”
To make myself feel better, I sat in on a class doing something I thought I was good at - averages - only to find myself being schooled in inverse operations by a 16-year-old when I had a tantrum over a question about how many marbles someone had, my own rapidly spilling from my brain and bouncing down the maths corridor.
At the end of the lesson she had got almost perfect marks on the past paper. She reassured me that I had done “pretty good” and then said, “You know, there are other things you’re probably good at”.
I will keep persevering with maths. After all, I might need to build a fence one day.
Kirsty Walker teaches at a college in the North West of England
