To summarize, critics have attacked the new computer engineer Barbie as being unrealistically feminine. But did you know that the very first computer programmer was a lady? Who wore frilly dresses and elaborate girly hairdos? Aw, yeah… ADA LOVELACE!!

While my article focuses on the controversy surrounding computer engineer Barbie, I want to clarify my main point: everyone (male or female) should feel that they can be themselves while doing math, science, engineering, and technology.

Being Yourself
Many times, when I’m working with my math tutoring students, they’ll spontaneously create an awesome new problem solving technique. A student will stand up and map out an angle with their body by turning a certain number of degrees. Or bust out with new lyrics to Michael Jackson’s “Beat It” in order to remember how even numbers work.

I know that the only reason my students feel free to do these things is because they feel totally comfortable. And they wouldn’t learn as much, or be able to solve problems as well, if they didn’t feel like they could do these things.

When you feel like you can be yourself, it’s easier to ask questions, challenge convention, and come up with intuitive new solutions. Most of all, when you’re comfortable being yourself, you can access everything within you, and you have much greater resources to solve all kinds of problems. If you feel like you have to act a certain way, or need to leave pieces of yourself at the door (maybe the parts that love pink), bits of yourself that could help you solve problems get left behind.

(Not only does this apply to individuals, it also applies to teams working to create products. Pamela Fox points out that one of the signs of a wise crowd is diversity of opinion—when everyone can speak up, even if they’re not in agreement with the majority. Having different kinds of people in computer engineering—or math, or science—makes for stronger products.)

I’m not saying that women must be fashionistas or wear pink or be “feminine,” but that no one should have to choose between being themselves and doing what they love.

Workplace Reality
Female readers with tech careers commented on the pressures women face in male-dominated tech workplaces. Tweeter nostruminc remarked, “Now what the heck is wrong with a pink laptop? NOTHING. But it is intimidating being the only woman in a workplace.”

A friend of mine–an electronic engineer who now engineers solar technology–elaborated: For her, the problem is older male-engineer-dominated workplaces combined with American workaholism.

She’s found that when she’s been able to work with more women and younger male engineers who grew up with female engineering classmates, the teams are more fun and more productive. The difference really just lies in the culture of the workplace and how women engineers are treated by their male coworkers.

Stereotypes?
Also, some commenters basically suggested that Barbie, in any form, just perpetuates gender stereotypes: “Boys have Legos, Playmobiles, toy soldiers, trains, workbenches, and astronauts. Girls have princesses, kitchens, sparkly cell phones and baby dolls to push around and practice raising.” But Barbie actually broke the mold. She was one of the first dolls who, as a single career girl, didn’t have to take care of anybody else—or be taken care of.

Additionally, I’m going to speak from personal experience. When I was growing up, my parents didn’t want me to internalize any stereotypes, so they gave me both toy trucks and dolls to play with. But I just wanted to play with dolls. When they gave me both pants and dresses, I only wanted to wear dresses.

Instead of trying to push me to play with trucks and wear pants, they just encouraged me, my whole life, to be myself and follow my passions, however they evolved.

Passion Turbocharges Your Brain
And there’s a neurological basis for my parents’ approach. Po Bronson points out that letting kids follow their passions actually “turbocharges” their brains.

Regardless of our potential moralistic objections to Barbie (or Pokémon), when kids are doing something they love—no matter what it is or whether it has ostensible “educational value”—their brains get spritzed with dopamine, which “depolarizes neurons and improves their firing rate; their response to optimal stimuli becomes sharper, and the background buzz of relevant stimuli is quieted a little.”

Over time, the repetition involved in pursuing your passions assists the myelination process, which increases neural speed “100 fold.” And that’s why Po Bronson is encouraging his 5-year-old daughter’s passion for princesses and Supergirl.

All kinds of Computer Engineers
To those “nay-sayers” who see Barbie as a “devil-doll,” Alison Lewis commented, “Just get the girl coding and making…use it to start a discussion about technology, sit a girl down and do a fun little program, make something with electronics, or talk about other women in tech and how wonderful they are.” Lewis also adds that you can always modify Barbie’s outfit and hair if you don’t like them.

As Pamela Fox points out, “it’s not like I want the next generation of CS [Computer Science] geeks to all wear pink. I just want to get rid of the idea that CS geeks have to like anything in particular—except programming, of course. Ideally, there would be computer programmer Barbies in all flavors—punk goth, prep, jock, nun—and all races and genders.”

Because what does a “real” computer engineer look like? Like whatever you want to wear.

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I was so excited to discover that in Malcolm Gladwell, his recent book, Outliers, presents a bunch of new research on learning math!

There’s so much good stuff in there that I can’t even begin to tell you all about it. But one thing that struck me in particular was Gladwell’s discussion of the cultural differences between Asian and Western attitudes towards learning math. (You can read an excerpt from the chapter here.)

To start, language differences give Asians a linguistic advantage. In Asian languages, numbers are more transparent. For example, when an English speaker has to do mental math, they need to translate words into numbers first. Before we add “forty-three” to something else, we have to break it down into “four tens and a three.” By comparison, in Chinese the word for “forty-three” is already broken down: “four-tens-three.”

Similarly, we say “three-fifths” to describe a fraction in English. But the Chinese for the same number literally translates as, “out of five parts, take three”: the definition of how a fraction works is built in. These linguistic differences make calculation easier in Asian languages. And because it’s easier to figure out what things mean just from the words, there’s an attitude that it’s normal to be able to figure math out.

This creates what Gladwell calls a “virtuous circle”: because the names for numbers are a little bit easier to understand, arithmetic is a little bit easier to do, which means that maybe students like math a little bit more, which means that maybe they take more math classes and ultimately achieve more in math. In contrast, Western children, by third and fourth grade, start to feel that “math doesn’t seem to make sense; it’s linguistic structure is clumsy; and its basic rules seem arbitrary and complicated.” And the trouble begins…

When I mentioned this to my friend, the Future Doctor Jones, she said, “We’re stuck with this language! What are we supposed to do with it?” Her question is valid—if I tell my tutoring students to say “two-tens-seven” for 27, will they just get beat up on the playground for talking crazy numbers?

So recently I was working with a fifth grader on fractions, and I casually mentioned that in Chinese, they say fractions like, “out of four parts, take one,” instead of “one-fourth.”

I was totally surprised when later in the lesson, this same student spontaneously started saying fractions “the Chinese way.” “Out of seven parts, take four!” “Out of two parts, take one!” When I slipped up and said, “Out of two parts take five,” she corrected me immediately, which meant she completely understood the concept.

Most importantly, she didn’t want to stop doing fractions. She was begging for more!

I’m grateful to my student for spontaneously showing me how we, as English-speakers, can adopt a “Chinese” way of thinking about numbers.

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Curtis’s use of the term “mind meld” made me laugh, but also brings up an important point. As a tutor, part of what I’m trying to do is to make my students more like me—to make them more persistent, better problem solvers, and more active learners.

But in order to accomplish this, I frequently make myself more like my students. Do you like visual explanations? Let’s draw it. Do you like to see an example? Let me show you five examples. Do you have a question? I will answer it 200 times until it is crystal-clear. I believe in “more of what works.”

What intrigues me is that it is such a two-way street. I expand my students’ tool kits by making them more like me, but they also expand my tool kit as a teacher and problem-solver by forcing me to consider solutions that I never would have seen without them.

The paradox of “mind meld” is that in order to “mind meld” with someone, you need to understand how your minds are different in order to become more similar. The differences are actually what unleash the potential for change and learning.

Also, I’m glad that Silver highlighted continuous interaction, which is a huge part of my tutoring philosophy. But I want to clarify something important.

Sometimes, when a kid gets in the “math zone” and is confidently solving a problem without making any mistakes, I’ve found it’s totally appropriate to say nothing at all.

You still give the kid your absolutely undivided attention and watch their every move to make sure they stay on track. But when a kid is on a roll, interrupting them for the sake of being interactive – even just to praise them – can be counterproductive.

Sometimes being involved as much as possible means giving your kid undivided attention while staying quiet until it’s time to speak up.

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Some parents don’t feel comfortable explaining math to their kids because they don’t understand it themselves. Other parents, even if they love math, find today’s teaching methods so different from how they learned math that they don’t know how to help.

Silver observed that even parents with advanced math knowledge might not know how to relate it to their own little geek. What’s a full-grown geek to do?

Wherever you fall on the spectrum of geekdom—whether you use math daily as part of a geek job, or haven’t done long division in decades—and no matter your kid is learning the times tables or studying trigonometry—here are some tips on how to help your kid with their math homework.

First, some thoughts on attitude:

Be an explorer, not an expert. Go into your math time in the spirit of a shared exploration instead of feeling like you need to be an expert. You can help your kid a lot, even if what they’re doing is initially unfamiliar to you. Don’t be afraid to say, “Let’s figure this out together,” or “I haven’t done it this way before. Can you tell me more about it?”

Stay positive and keep trying. Getting good at math means being willing to persevere in the face of a challenge. If you don’t get it right away, that’s OK. Kids learn a lot from watching someone model what to do when they’re faced with unfamiliar material.

Follow your kid’s lead. Just because your kid is the fruit of your loins doesn’t mean that their brain works anything like yours. So share any tips or tricks that work for you, but don’t take it personally if they don’t click with your kid.

Likewise, if your kid spontaneously comes up with their own learning strategy or memory trick, run with it. It will boost your kid’s confidence in their own thought processes.

Now for some nitty-gritty step-by-step suggestions:

Before diving in, ask your kid to tell you what’s going on. They get a chance to demonstrate what they do know, and you get a chance to review the material.

Also ask your kid to tell you what they don’t understand so they can reflect on their own learning and maybe pinpoint the missing links. (If they can’t articulate which part they don’t understand, that’s OK.)

Ask questions to walk them through the problem. Even if you understand the problem perfectly, don’t give a demonstration that puts your kid in the role of a passive observer. Instead, use really simple questions (that your kid has a 95% chance of answering correctly) to walk them through the steps of solving the problem.

Instead of telling your kid, “4 times 8 equals 32,” ask them, “What is 4 times 8?” Instead of telling them, “For the next step, we need to …”, ask them what happens next.

Asking questions keeps your kid from spacing out. It breaks down the process into smaller pieces. And the questions show your kid what they should do when they’re alone.

Plus, asking questions helps you find the disconnects. If you ask your kid, “What is 4 times 9?” and they say, “twenty-five,” you know you need to review multiplication facts.

When in doubt, write it out. Encourage your kid to write out all the steps in their work. The less they have to keep track of in their head, the more accurate they’ll be. And this lets you see their thought process.

Review an example from their textbook or handouts together. If you don’t understand how to do a problem, and you have examples of problems being worked out step by step, go over a couple together.

Once you feel confident, practice by working on similar problems. To make sure you’re on the right track, try to pick problems where you can check the answer in the back of the book.

Backtrack. You can’t build a solid foundation on shaky ground. If there’s some prerequisite knowledge that doesn’t make sense to you, go back through your kid’s materials to find where the concept or procedure was first introduced and then review it together.

Or, if your kid understands it and you don’t, ask them to explain it to you, or take time to review it on your own.

Consult different materials. If the examples from textbook or handout still don’t make sense, do not despair. Seek another explanation from an alternative source. This lets you model resourcefulness.

For an awesome basic algebra text, try Algebra: Structure and Method. More visual or tactile learners might appreciate the Math U See curriculum. Girls learning or reviewing pre-algebra might enjoy Danica Mackellar’s excellent math books for girls, Math Doesn’t Suck and Kiss My Math.

Also, Khan Academy offers great instructional math videos in an organized index. YouTube has even more math videos, but it can take some digging to find the good ones. And you can check out some instructional math videos I made here.

In conclusion: You can help your kid, no matter how remote their math homework might seem to you. These steps can help your kid hone their very own math powers.

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Simple, but not easy (2)

If you find yourself struggling to solve a complex math problem, try working through it out loud, says Scientific American. Psychologists in Spain found that college-level math students who detailed their thinking processes aloud were able to solve the problems faster and with greater accuracy than their silent counterparts.

The researchers aren’t quite sure why this approach works, says psychologist Jose Luis Villegas Castellanos, only that representing a problem verbally or visually clearly offers “more possibilities of finding the right solution.”

This new finding makes me think of all the times in high school that I’d approach my math teacher to ask for help, only to suddenly realize exactly what I needed to do as soon as I started to explain why I was confused. I’d joke with my teachers about how they radiated understanding so I’d just “absorb” it once I was in their force field. But now I’m wondering if it was actually the process of getting ready to tell someone what I didn’t understand that activated my own inner knowledge.

This new finding also potentially explains why tutoring can be so powerful. In most math classes today, students passively receive information by listening to a teacher present the material to the class and then approach math problems in silent solitude at their desk. Talking things through out loud isn’t encouraged.

But in a tutoring situation, students are forced to talk things through out loud with their tutor. Maybe the process of learning to talk things out is as powerful as the process of “getting help” from someone who is more experienced.

I wish that more people were encouraged to talk things out and draw pictures to solve problems in standard math classes.

However, what actually did come close to killing my intrinsic motivation to read was the crushing required reading lists I had during my first three semesters of college. This experience turned reading from something I loved doing to something to just be endured.

For example, in my first semester of college, I took a required course on the Epic in Western Literature. My amazing teacher taught with great passion, drawing on her experience both as a poet and a scholar fluent in multiple languages.

She was the only professor I had in my undergraduate career who incorporated the arts into an academic class. In addition to our analytical essays, everyone also completed an art project of their own design inspired by what we’d read. My art project, a cello piece based on text from the Aeneid, actually ended up growing into a much larger piece after the class was over.

Despite my teacher’s exceptional amazingness, this class almost caused me to lose my love of reading. I experienced the course as a forced march through the great works of Western literature. In one semester we plowed right through the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, Paradise Lost, and Dante’s Inferno. I read it all, but I rarely enjoyed it, and I almost lost my love of reading.

At the end of the year, I actually told one of my friends that I “didn’t like books” anymore. This is coming from a kid who inhaled literature out of sheer pleasure my entire life until I got to college.

What happened? When I had been inhaling books before, they were all books I chose freely. And I moved at my own pace. But I definitely couldn’t choose what I was reading in this course. The course itself was required. And moreover, I felt there was no time to understand anything or connect to anything.

In retrospect, it reminds me of the trips I made to the National Gallery of Art when I was in fourth grade. My teacher tried to cram as much as possible into each trip—upon entering a new room, she’d instruct us to stand by our favorite painting before purposefully marching on into the next room. At the end of the trip, she would proudly exclaim, “We saw so much art!”

I’m sure her intention was to cultivate a love of the arts in her students, but even though I loved art before and after those trips, I don’t remember anything about the art I saw on those fourth grade trips.

I feel like a work of art can be like meeting a person. There’s so much to be revealed. But what is the point of speed-dating artworks? What do you really learn from speedwalking through galleries or speed-reading through epics?

I believe the point is not exposure, but connection. If we read something but don’t connect to it and don’t remember it, does it even matter? The one bit of the Aeneid that I do remember is the piece of text I used in my art project. I spent so much time setting it to music that now it’s part of who I am.

Once, while visiting a small art museum in DC, I stumbled across a Miró painting I never dreamed I’d see in person, and I was so happy that I actually laughed out loud. The museum guard glared at me—I guess for breaking the silence of the deserted gallery. In my heart, I thought Miró would have been glad I was excited to see him.

I think the whole point is that a piece of art will pierce your heart and help you feel less alone, and move you to laughter and tears.

I wish we were encouraged to digest things more, and had enough time with what we’re learning to get to know it and let it affect us.

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“Simple, but not easy.”

I split the video into 8 brief parts. Each part features one practice problem, fully explained and demonstrated on the whiteboard.

If you, your family, or your friends would like to see me make an instructional video about a particular math topic or type of problem, leave a comment to nominate your math problem for its very own video!

And if you like the video, please feel free to click on the “heart” to show that you “heart” it. <3

#1 – Multiplying Binomials with the Box Method (alternative to FOILing) from Rebecca Zook on Vimeo.

Click on “more” for the other parts of the video — four more examples, extra practice problems for you to test your mastery of FOIL, and answers to the extra practice problems!

#2 – Multiplying Binomials with the Box Method (alternative to FOILing) from Rebecca Zook on Vimeo.

#3 – Multiplying Binomials with the Box Method (alternative to FOILing) from Rebecca Zook on Vimeo.

#4 – Multiplying Binomials Using the Box Method – extra problems for you to practice with on your own from Rebecca Zook on Vimeo.

Multiplying Binomials with the Box Method – #5 – check your answer to the first practice problem from Rebecca Zook on Vimeo.

Multiplying Binomials with the Box Method – #6 – check your answer to the second practice problem from Rebecca Zook on Vimeo.

Multiplying Binomials with the Box Method – #7 – check your answer to the third practice problem from Rebecca Zook on Vimeo.

Multiplying Binomials with the Box Method – #8 – check your answer to the fourth practice problem from Rebecca Zook on Vimeo.

But in college, I somehow stumbled on a midnight to 8 am sleep schedule that worked amazingly. I could fall asleep almost every night and frequently woke up right before my alarm. I was notorious for the regularity of my sleep schedule, which my friends called “Zook Time.”

But going to grad school really jacked up my sleep schedule. There were a few months in there were I really didn’t sleep more than 2-4 hours a night, and it wasn’t because I didn’t try! Now that I’ve finished grad school, I’m trying to regain my formerly excellent healthy sleeping powers.

I stumbled across this great article on tips for how to get kids to sleep more (or how to help yourself sleep more) by Ashley Merryman. What surprised me most of all in the article was learning that as many as 25% of people with ADHD have an underlying sleep disorder, and that addressing the sleep disorder would make their ADHD completely disappear.

I can attest that these tips work. I’ve been turning down the temperature in my apartment before going to bed. I’ve also been using low light before bedtime and not using the computer for two hours before bed. I started using the stove hood light in my kitchen instead of the overhead track lighting, a little table lamp in my living area instead of three big floor lamps, and my bedside lamp instead of my overhead light. I even put a little lamp in my bathroom so I can have low light when I brush my teeth before bed!

I know that many students struggle with sleep and wakefulness, so I’m excited to pass these tips on to everyone.

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Here’s what worked for this student:

Address the fundamentals. Before we approached the SAT math test as a whole, we had to master basic algebra and geometry topics one at a time. We started at the beginning of an Algebra 1 textbook and moved at our own pace. We focused on what was important and what would be on the test.

Solo work and feedback. Most students that I work with are sitting in math class and doing math homework at least three times a week. But this student wasn’t in a math class. Tutoring was his math class. And he wasn’t getting homework assignments unless I gave them to him. So it was essential for him to have carefully planned homework assignments and get detailed feedback from me on each one.

Adjust the textbook when necessary. We started off using the Glencoe Algebra 1 textbook, but after several months of working together, I realized my student needed more drill and better sequencing. He needed to be able to do as many problems as necessary to master the material. And he needed to be able to check his answers without having to wait to see me. So, as a supplemental text, we added another algebra textbook that had better sequencing and more practice problems. In the end, we relied on it more than the Glencoe.

Adjust the pace when necessary. When we started working together, I’d demonstrate a technique and then give him a chance to do it himself, correcting him immediately if he made any mistakes. I wouldn’t move on to the next concept until he’d mastered the material. But at this pace, he wouldn’t learn enough of what was on the SAT. So I started assigning him sections of the book to read and teach himself. This worked for a while, but then we reached a point where he’d get stuck midway through the material and have to wait for our next meeting before getting a clear explanation.

So we changed our approach and aimed for a middle ground. I would demonstrate one or two problems from each section before asking him to do the work himself outside of tutoring. This gave him a preview of what to expect and let him learn more material. I just wish that I had known about Math U See back then. It would have been great if he could have used Steve Demme’s instructional videos as his “math class,” and then used our time together as a resource to discuss whatever he had questions about.

I was so proud that he was so willing to work hard to learn something that didn’t always come easily. And I was thrilled to hear that his work allowed him to meet his goal: he got into the art college of his dreams!

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Part of what I want to teach all my students is how to customize their education when I’m not around. So later in the session, I seized the teachable moment. This particular student has dysgraphia, ADHD, and a really unique brain. I told him that everyone, whether or not they have dysgraphia or ADHD or whatever, has learning situations where they’re not getting what they need. And we all have to learn how to invent our own ways to work around it.

“It’s just like the tiny garlic melons,” I concluded. “Sometimes you don’t get what you want and you have to turn it into what you need.”

So when life gives you melons, make….tiny garlic melons!!!!

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