An English teacher co-teaching trigonometry asked students to explain an equation to a child and to transform discrete problems into a story.

I had always hated math. Now I suddenly find myself teaching trigonometry. I was an English teacher in Chicago Public Schools with certification in special education. When my school experienced a shortage of certified special education teachers, I was pulled in mid-year to co-teach a junior-level trigonometry class with the math teacher.

My students struggled with the calculations, thinking they just weren’t good at math. Like me, they hated it. What was the point of working and reworking these calculations? What were we trying to figure out anyway? And I originally agreed with them.

Yet, trigonometry slowly became my favorite class of the day. After spending years teaching English and reading, I was challenged to move beyond my usual routine. When you’re new to something, you have a fresh perspective. You’re willing to take risks. You’re willing to try anything because you don’t know how something should be done.

I worked with my co-teacher to create a series of supplementary lessons from a different perspective, aiming to help students find personal meaning and unleash their creativity in math.

EXPLAINING IT TO A BABY

I found that many students feel frustrated with math because they are required to arrive at one single correct answer. This was particularly challenging with my diverse learners, who had difficulty with multistep equations. Instead of focusing solely on arriving at the correct answer, my students and I emphasized the importance of the process involved in reaching it.

I brought in some books from Chris Ferrie’s Baby University series, such as “General Relativity for Babies” and “Optical Physics for Babies.” The concept is that you truly understand something only when you can simplify it to the point where you can explain it to a young child.

That’s the task I gave my students. We started by reading Ferrie’s board books to see how simple language and illustrations could be used to explain complex subjects. Next, students chose a multistep equation they had initially struggled with. Working in pairs or small groups, they discussed their thought process and the necessary steps to solve the equation. Their partners were encouraged to ask questions and seek clarification so that the ideas could be explained at the simplest level.

Using the books as models, students revised and wrote down their explanations to simplify them enough to be understood by a young child. After they wrote out their explanations, my co-teacher and I challenged them to create short books using cardstock and colored pencils. Students worked with their small groups to discuss ideas and create illustrations for their books. If they struggled, they could pair up with another student to create a book together.

Collaborating with other students enabled them to articulate ideas in novel ways, leading to a more profound comprehension. Students were encouraged to think metacognitively to articulate their thought processes and methods to others. The entire class benefited from exposure to diverse perspectives in mathematics through listening to their classmates’ reasoning. And they were all excited to see how they could use writing and art skills in an authentic way in math class.

PUTTING THE ‘STORY’ IN ‘STORY PROBLEM’

The interesting thing often overlooked in math class is that it already includes stories and real-life connections in the form of word problems. But the story problems are generally discrete—each one is an individual unit, and they do not contribute to a larger narrative.

Another issue is that the real-life elements often do not relate to the actual challenges students face in their lives. They might include calculating the area so that someone can buy new carpet for their home. Or a story problem might involve landscapers planting a new tree and needing to calculate the length of wire required to support the tree. These might be things that students will do later as adults, but they are not current issues in the teens’ experience.

I used story problems as an opportunity to connect math to students’ lives by creating fictional math-based stories. First, students will work in small groups to go through the chapter in their math textbook and gather the story problems, writing them on index cards. Next, students would lay out the cards to see the questions as a whole: Out of 10 or more story problems in the chapter, were there five similar ones they could group together? What problem-solving skills were required to address these issues?

Looking at these five unrelated stories, students pondered why they needed to solve them and used their rationale to generate interconnected concepts. They created backstories for the names in the problems, thereby transforming them into more developed characters. They identified challenges or reasons why the characters needed to solve the problem.

Finally, they combined the story problems they had created and developed a longer narrative to connect these scenarios, creating an overarching story rooted in authentic math story problems. Survival was a common theme. One group wrote about a zombie apocalypse, while another imagined an alien invasion. In these scenarios, characters had to solve problems and utilize skills to ensure their survival. It’s true that these stories were not based on students’ actual lives, but they were more engaging than discussions about rug purchases or landscaping.

When students utilized their creative writing skills to craft math story problems based on their interests, they became more engaged. They wanted to read the other groups’ stories and work on the math within them because they had a genuine interest in the results. The stories helped students find motivation because they provided an answer to the question, “Why do we need to learn this?”