Math Prodigy

I want to tell you a story about a 3^rd grade student I knew once.  I met her during a six-week summer school program in Salinas.  I lived and worked in San Jose during the academic year but was lucky enough to find a teaching position in Salinas during the summer, which I did for the next seven years, teaching all the different elementary school grades from kindergarten to sixth.

Hundreds of kids attended these summer schools because they were eager to keep learning.  That summer, the teachers figured out pretty quickly that most of the students weren’t behind and didn’t require a lot of review.  We put our heads together and concluded that the traditional remedial program was not appropriate so we came up with a proposal for the principal.

We needed to become far more creative in order to make summer school more fun and worthwhile and he gave us his permission. One summer we decided on a thematic approach, teaching about the oceans in all our subjects, plastering the walls with murals of ocean life, art work drawn by the students themselves.

At this time, quite a few of the students were still far more comfortable with Spanish than English but they were all eager to learn and there was enough bilingualism to make it all work.

Like most teachers, I have seen my share of all kinds of kids: good ones, bad ones; smart ones, dumb ones; extraordinarily bright and remarkably inattentive.  I’ve met a student with a photographic memory, one who was an accomplished speed reader (by 6^th grade!) and an eleven year old girl who gave school concerts playing classical piano . . . but only one math prodigy.

She had long black hair and flashing sparkling eyes, a winsome smile, and a quickness about her movements and intelligence that set her apart.  Typically she wore a dark green skirt and white blouse, very neat and clean, but with a serious attitude that sometimes made you feel she was more like an adult than a child.

That summer Alisal School District placed me at a school where my classroom was a long rectangular portable, already set up with the teacher’s desk at one end; it was a long narrow classroom and not friendly to normal movement, which was both a blessing and a hardship.  My students had just finished third grade and would start fourth grade in the fall: 8 or 9 years old for the most part.

I immediately gave them a math assessment to find out where they were.  Their parents were usually migrant laborers; the children frequently had attended other schools in different cities.  Their paperwork (including academic level in reading, math, etc.) had not caught up with them; we felt fortunate if we got the records before summer school ended.

I called on a girl named Sarahí to pass out the papers as she seemed bright and paid attention to everything going on from the get-go.  She went all the way to the back of the room down the one and only middle aisle, giving papers out left and right; then she turned around, walked back and handed me the extra worksheets.  She headed for her desk but with no paper in her hand.

I called her back up and said: “Sarahí, perhaps you didn’t understand but you have to do the worksheet, too.”  “I did!” was her quick reply.

I frowned to myself.  I watched her pass out those papers and she never stopped at her own desk.  “Here it is!” she said, and pointed to one of the papers I was holding.  Sure enough, it had her name on it!  Then I glanced at the work.  Every answer was perfect!  “Okay, thank, you my mistake” I managed to mumble but I resolved to keep an eye on this magic act of hers.

As soon as I got a chance, I called on her to pass out a second set of papers.  This one had far more challenging math problems as I was now trying to figure out the upper limits of what my students knew.  Sarahí passed out all the papers, turned, came back down the aisle about halfway and stopped at her desk.  She didn’t bother to sit down; she just leaned over and started working.

I watched as her pencil seemed to fly, her fingers writing down answers in one continuous motion from left to right, then quickly dropping down to the next row.  In a minute she was done and there she was again, headed up the aisle to hand in her paper to me, a sight that soon became normal.  At home that night I decided there was only one thing to do: while I was teaching the rest of the class the usual pre-fourth grade math, I would start challenging Sarahí.

My plan was to go up the grade levels if the work was still too easy for her.  I gave her a paper of mixed operations, including multiplication and division, and she raced back to her desk (sitting down now) and that pencil started to fly from problem to problem and row to row.  I smiled to myself because I knew how quickly she would finish, stand up, and . . . and yes, here she was, finished as she came up the aisle!

I anticipated the first time she would get stuck.  Most of her classmates were working on their times table and the brighter ones handling multiplication problems like one-digit times two digits (such as 3 x 25).  Meanwhile, I gave Sarahí a problem that looked like this: 378 x 35.  No one in the class had been taught two-digit times three-digit multiplication.

Sarahí got a puzzled look on her face.  I explained to her that all she had to do was to multiply 378 x 5 and write down that answer in its usual place.  Next, she had to multiply 378 x 3 (dramatic pause!) move the answer one column over like this . . . lastly, add the two lines together and there’s your answer . . . I never got to finish my sentence!

She was gone like a flash back to her desk.  I didn’t expect to see her right away as this was a much harder and time-consuming paper.  It didn’t seem to matter.  She picked up her pencil and I watched as it went flying over the page at an incredible tempo.  It was the same story with long division; once she knew the steps, her calculations proceeded at lightning speed.  She seemed to write down numbers faster than an average person could read them.

Once she mastered a new skill (which happened very quickly) it became a part of her.  We did some fractions and geometry, word problems, a smidgen of algebra, and ended with scientific notation.  I had a strong feeling she was going to pass my “upper limit” . . . and could possible start teaching me math and not the other way around!

All the while I taught the rest of the class their regular math.  During the last week, I decided to see what would happen if I ran an experiment; I needed a control group.  I would teach the whole class the lesson I had planned just for Sarahí.  By this time she was learning scientific notation: how to write down large numbers and work with their exponents.  This was the summer after she completed third grade.

At the board I picked up where Sarahí and I had left off, explaining to the whole class how scientific notation worked.  Some kids seemed interested; others were bored out of their minds but polite; a few grappled with my language; others simply tuned out as my words washed over their heads but I shall never forget the look on one boy’s face who sat about halfway back in the room, on the right side, near the center aisle.

The phrase “like a deer caught in the head lights” does not begin to do justice to his facial expression.  As a teacher, I knew better than to laugh but this was so hilarious it took all my self-control to keep a straight face.  As I talked about how to write large numbers in scientific notation and how there was a faster way to perform arithmetic operations using the exponents, this kid’s eyes glazed over: I mean deep glazed-over.

To him I must have seemed like an alien from another planet speaking a foreign language; I don’t believe he had a clue as to what any of my words meant.  I’m sure he didn’t intend to be funny but some kids manage it without realizing it; his facial expression was hysterically funny that day!

Meanwhile Sarahí was studying what I had written on the board. She was deciding for herself by solving problems (mentally, in her head) whether what I was saying about scientific notation being a “shortcut” made any sense.  She soon confirmed that it did but I could see a new question already forming in her eyes.  I realized for the first time I was getting in over my head and that, all things being equal, I needed a mathematician to continue her education.

But by then the six-week summer school was coming rapidly to a close so I never had a chance to find out how much farther she might have gone: this young third grade Mexican-American girl who was attending summer school to “get ready” for fourth grade.  She was 8 or 9 years old at the time and doing middle school math already!

Sarahí will always remain one of my favorites and occupies a place in my heart like none other. May she grow and prosper not only in knowledge but in the wisdom that lies beyond knowledge; may she go forward with confidence and grace into her new American home!