Sometimes math students view repetition to practice a new skill with the disdain of Allen Iverson, the legendary point guard for the Philadelphia 76ers.
So I found a recently published essay from Math With Bad Drawings to be very, very inspiring. Here are the opening paragraphs:
I’ve always felt conflicted about repetitive practice.
On the one hand, I see how vital practice is. Musicians repeat the same piece again and again. Soccer players run drills. Chefs hone their chopping motion. Shouldn’t math students do the same: rehearse the skills that matter?
But sometimes, I backtrack. “This is just going to bore them,” I fret, scanning a textbook exercise. “I’m emphasizing the rote aspects of math at the expense of the creative ones. They’re going to forget this skill anyway, and be left only with the insidious impression that math is a jackhammer subject of tooth-grinding repetition.”
(Then I assign the exercise anyway, because class starts in five minutes and— despite my repeated petitions—the administration has denied me access to a time turner.)
These two trains of thought suffer daily collisions in my mind: repetition is dull, but repetition is necessary. This inner conflict takes for granted the idea that repetitive practice is a separate endeavor, a distinct stage of the learning process. First, you learn the concept. Second, you practice it. In this view, practice is like cleaning up after a picnic: absolutely essential, but not much fun.
But this summer, a very wise teacher showed me a path forward, a way to reconciliation.
I’m referring, of course, to a two-year-old named Leo.
I highly recommend the entire article.
Mean Green Math 