As a child, I remember timed multiplication table tests where you had to see how many you could get in a minute. If you got “enough” of them, then you passed and got to move on to the next number’s multiplication tables. I remember how frustrating and upsetting it was to have a teacher in the background calling out “15 seconds…” and you are trying with all you have to remember 4×8. “10 seconds…” you still have 3 more to answer and you know that if you don’t get them then you cannot move on to the 5’s. Adding stress and basically forcing a child to learn something is the complete WRONG way to go about it. I look back on these days, and yes, we all knew the children who were on there 3’s when everyone else was on the 7’s and 8’s and I think about how low that made their self-esteem. In a sense, now that I am older, I can see a little logic because it almost differentiate’s the instruction so that all children are on the level that they need to be on, however, many times they were not moving on because they had such anxiety taking these tests that they just couldn’t pass, even if you would ask them 5 minutes after the test to go through all of their times tables and they would. There was no follow through. If I have learned anything at all from this, it’s that I need to find another method (other than making children feel anxious, stressed, and self-concious) to teach them so that each child is on the level that they feel comfortable at and will be able to excell in. Fortunately for me, I took a different approach to math after taking several math courses at the undergraduate level that have provided me with many other resources for educating children so that hopefully one day if they have to answer a question like this, their experiences were much different.

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