Kathryn sat in my classroom day after day looking more like a zombie than like a junior in a college preparatory high school. I’d been told that I shouldn’t take it personally, that she displayed the same apathetic demeanor in all her classes. She wasn’t a problem at all. She was never rude or disrespectful, just totally unmotivated academically. When I would specifically call on her, she did her best to respond politely, but her effort was minimal, at best. Then one day, I experienced an “A-ha! moment.”
Some time around the Spring of 1998, I accepted an invitation from my sister Cathy to attend a math workshop at Aragon High School in San Mateo. Cathy had suggested that I might find the presentation enlightening, specifically in terms of my responsibility of parenting three young boys and my ability to help them with their math homework. The speaker challenged the audience with a math problem based on a personal experience:
She was on a strict diet, but she was pressed for time between meetings, so she stopped at a local deli and ordered one-third of a pound of sliced turkey breast. Despite her impacted schedule, she was determined to stick to her diet. The man behind the counter gave her the turkey in three equal slices. When she got to her car, she ripped open the package to devour her meal, but quickly remembered that her diet only allowed her to eat one-fourth of a pound of turkey breast, rather than the one-third she had purchased. She quickly needed to calculate how much of the contents of her package she could eat without exceeding the limits of her diet.
The next day at school, I presented the same math problem to my students, asking them to indicate with a hand gesture when they were finished their calculations and had an answer. In my class were several students who were members of the National Honor Society and/or the California Scholarship Federation -- students who were taking advanced levels of math. Much to my surprise, Kathryn was the first student to indicate that she had an answer -- a good two to three minutes before any other student in the class.
Once a handful of students had indicated that they had calculated the answer, I began calling on them one-by-one, beginning with the more academically-gifted students. Most of them had the correct answer, and, when asked, explained the circuitous methods by which they had arrived at their responses. Then I turned to Kathryn and acknowledged that she was the first student to indicate her readiness to respond to the question. I asked her if, indeed, she had arrived at the correct response. She had -- and she had done so without using pencil or paper. I asked her to explain how she got the correct answer without written calculation. She responded, “Can I show you on the board?”
Kathryn drew three circles on the board and said, “You said that she got one-third of a pound of meat in three equal slices.” She then drew two more rows of three circles below the first row. “If three slices is one-third of a pound, then nine slices is one pound.” Then, after drawing a large “plus” sign through the nine circles dividing them into four equal quadrants, she counted the segments in just one quadrant. “So one-quarter pound would be two and one-quarter slices of turkey breast.”
I was stunned. This young lady, who exuded academic apathy day after day, was bright. She had visualized the correct response! There was something deep down inside her that had not been tapped by the educational environment in which she found herself. Fortunately, that soon changed. She enrolled in a special program through the Central County Occupational Center in San José and was trained to network computers, something she enjoyed immensely. She graduated from the CCOC program with honors and has enjoyed a lucrative career in the IT Departments of two local universities -- Stanford and Santa Clara.
Kathryn was definitely like a fish who was being forced to climb a tree -- trying desperately just to survive. Only when she had the opportunity to dive into the waters of her passion did she realize her giftedness and begin to thrive.
