Amami Superman Photography

My last post was about a picture my daughter drew and had displayed on her classroom wall when I went attended an open house back in January. During that open house I got to watch as the teacher taught double digit multiplication.





Here the teacher is teaching the students just what's happening in the multiplication process. Although her method of teaching the was a bit different from how I was taught in school, I thought her way was pretty effective and easy to understand. As you can see in the above photo, she gave the problem 12x23 and divided the equation into two parts: 12x20 and 12x3. She then asked the students how they would solve this problem without dividing the equation.





At first you can see that she has made a few mistakes. It was after this that I gave her a small whisper and told her to remember what we studied that morning. She then furiously started to erase what she had and started over. Jade is a very bright girl, but math and Japanese is not her strong point. Knowing that, we take every advantage we can to help her with her studies. They have a supplementary study program here in Japan called Challenge. This program has different levels gauged towards which grade the student is in providing text books to help them better understand what they learn in school and give them more practice using what they have learned. Every morning before Jade goes to school we have her complete that day's portion of the Challenge program and help her if she has any problems after we check her work. Just that morning we had been practicing these same kind of problems and my method of teaching her was a bit different from what the teacher was teaching. So she did it my way.

After giving the students a moment to try and solve the problem she gave them, she called on a few to give their answers and tell the class how they came up with that answer. The first three students skipped a few steps and came up with the wrong answer. Then she called on Jade to give her answer.





The teacher asked the first three students how they came up with their answers and wrote it on the board as they explained. The problem just to the left of Jade's paper is from the previous student's explanation. Since Jade got the answer right she just had Jade explain what she did. Since my method of teaching Jade was a bit different from how she was teaching the students, she didn't write what Jade was saying on the board. I was all "Come on!"



So the teacher asked Jade how she learned how to multiply like that and she told the teacher that I had taught her. In all honesty, I don't think my method is any different from what most people learn in America. I just think it's one of the differences learning mathematics in Japan.

Then the teacher had Jade sit down and actually went in detail how Jade got her answer as you can see in the next photo. I was happy she explained it that way. I thought it was easier for the students to understand.





After class ended we congratulated her and she got embarrassed. Jade is easily embarrassed and I'll admit that I sometimes take every chance to embarrass her. I am a proud parent and it's times like this that makes me want to stand up and say, "That's my child!" But then I would probably get a punch from my wife.

Jade made me very proud when we returned home to America to visit family last month. We only speak English in our home and I do my best to help her learn English. We only watch movies in English and she only watches American cartoons in English. You may think this is plenty for a child to learn English, but in my mind, it's completely minuscule when compared to the amount of time she spends speaking Japanese at school, with her friends, cousins and other family. But when we went to America, she put my mind at ease as she slipped into a state and English took over. Obviously it wasn't perfect English, but it was good enough that I think a few of her relatives completely forgot that she lives in Japan and speaks Japanese. I couldn't ask for anything more. So when I see that she may not be that great at math and Japanese, I know for dang sure that she can beat the pants off most Japanese speaking English.