Why I am Teaching Myself Math

**If you make a purchase through the following affiliate links, I may receive a commission and you will be helping me support my children's insatiable love of learning through materials and opportunities. I only link to products I truly believe in. Thank You.**

Well, kind of.

I am using the Khan Academy to learn math. You see, I am reading The One World Schoolhouse by Sal Khan, founder of the Khan Academy and it is INSPIRING!

Amusingly enough, his vision for revamping public education is very similar to a drawing I posted on Instagram of a dream I have for a "Free Range Learning Resource Center" for all ages. Just check this out:

"At a given moment, perhaps one-fifth of the students would be doing computer-based lessons and exercises aimed at a deep and durable grasp of core concepts...Twenty kids out of a hundred are working at computers, with one of our team teachers circulating among them, answering questions, troubleshooting difficulties as they occur...What of the other eighty students? I can see (and hear!) a boisterous subgroup learning economics and trying out market simulations by way of board games such as those we've used with good effect at our summer camps. I would have another group, divided into teams, building robots or designing mobile apps or testing out novel ways for structures to capture sunlight. A quiet corner or room could be devoted to students working on art or creative writing projects. A less quiet corner would be reserved for those working on original music. Clearly, it would be an advantage to have a team teacher with particular affinities for those fields."

-Salman Kahn, The One World Schoolhouse, pp. 203-205

The problems Sal describes in the earlier chapters of his book with the current method of teaching resonated with me so much! I have suspected for awhile that my troubles with math were not with the high-fallutin' concepts but rather a gap in my understanding of how math fundamentally worked that I just didn't get in grade school. I knew division was really tricky for me so I signed my kids and I up for the Khan Academy.

I have been starting at arithmetic and sure enough I have already found gaps in my knowledge. Whether those were there from when I was learning math the first time or have simply disintegrated over time...I don't know. Either way, I am modeling to my kids that learning is important and fun and lifelong. My goal is to complete all the math lessons on Khan Academy up to Calculus and finally shed my "I'm not good at math" identity forever.

When my kids woke up this morning they found me tackling multi-digit multiplication problems. After watching me awhile they both asked to work on quizzes of their own. Later, we watched a Life Noggin video about education around the world and at the end Blocko asked the question, "What's your favorite subject?" My oldest shouted, "Math!"

That shout is why I'm teaching myself math.