How long will it take for two cars traveling at 75-80mph
from Utah to arrive in Minneapolis, Minnesota a distance of about 1300 miles? If our cars leave on Friday morning and
travel two days, and my husband flies by plane on Saturday (due to being unable
to travel by car as he just had back surgery) at what time will we both arrive
into Minneapolis? These are simple distance,
rate, time questions which we just experienced as we moved our family (with the
help of my dad as a 2nd driver) to our new destination.
As a former aide who
has worked with many Algebra students, I have repeatedly listened to students
question, “Why do we have to learn Algebra?
We are never going to use this.”
A few times in response I delve into my life analogy comparing Algebra
to the real world. Algebra is all about
learning the steps to solve the problems.
The more students learn the steps the better they can apply these
teachings to more difficult problems. Algebra is constantly building upon
itself. The basic understanding of the
foundation of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, fractions,
and decimals increases the likelihood that it will be easier to understand the
steps.
As I would try to explain how Algebra is like life because
in life there will be numerous problems to solve and there is no easy way to
get from the beginning of a problem to the solution without understanding the
steps and then working through the steps until the problem is resolved and a
solution is found. I don’t know that any
of the students who I shared this philosophy with appreciated my comments. They didn’t like Algebra, sometimes a strong
foundation of basic math principles was lacking, and they didn’t want to work
through the steps to get the correct answer.
They hoped for an easy way to get to the answer and they didn’t always
care whether they got to the correct answer.
Sometimes, I wish my life had the simple Algebra word
problems of time, distance, and rate, but my life feels more like the Calculus
and Linear Algebra problems I did in college.
Occasionally, those problems would require an entire page to work
through the problems and even then I would end up with the incorrect
answer. That meant I would be tossing
that paper and starting the problem over from the beginning!
For the problem listed above about the time required to
travel from Utah to Minnesota, Point A actually begin in California, Point B
was supposed to be New Jersey, but when the New Jersey job turned to a grinding
halt, I crumbled up the sheet and my husband and I began to solve the problem
again. A month later the correct steps
were determined and we began solving the problem of moving to Minnesota. Even then the problem wasn’t quickly solved,
for we first planned to move to one city, but then for various reasons pulled
out of buying that house and began a new problem until we found the right
answer – to build a home with the help of my husband’s friend and coworker in
the small town of Chaska, Minnesota on a beautiful and peaceful piece of land.
As a math student, I loved getting to the right answer and
would diligently work until I discovered the correct answer. Sometimes, it would engulf all of my
attention -- for the simple reason of
just wanting to get from Point A to Point B, from the beginning to the end,
from the problem to the solution with the absolute correct answer. As a student of life, I love getting to the
right answer and I have worked diligently to discover the correct answer with
each problem I have faced in life. There
is no giving up and tossing in the towel and crumbling up the paper refusing to
try again because there is no running away from life, problems do exist and
always will, but solutions can be found.
In my case, I rarely find solutions the easy way, it has taken a lot of
hard work, perseverance, a pile of crumpled steps, but oh how happy I am when I
get to the right answer! Let the new adventure begin…
