In Which the Math Guy Is Reminded (Yet Again) of the Importance of Not Making Assumptions

The second graders were measuring. They'd cut out replicas of their feet (exact size, natch) and were busily determining how many of these footprints (feetprints?) it took to equal the length of a shelf, the width of the room, and other various and sundry distances. Then they were converting the number of feetprints (footprints?) to inches and recording it all on a chart.

I plunked myself down next to a child who was recording the number of feetsprint she had needed to cover the distance across a table. She'd written a 7, which sounded reasonable--seven second-grade-sized footsprint looked about right--but what was this next to it? A zero? Seventy? Surely she was putting 70 in the wrong place of the chart. Or she'd mismeasured. Or--
Wait a minute.

It wasn't just a zero. It was a bubble letter--you know, the puffy letters that kids love to make, especially when time is of the essence. The ones that slow kids' work pace down to a crawl. The ones that drive me faintly crazy. The ones that--

Hold on.

Now she was decorating the thing. Shading in part of the inside ring, drawing something unrecognizable in the middle. Decorating--during math time! Bubble letters--during math time! I mean, gee whillikers!

I opened my mouth to say something gentle, yet pointed. Okay, something not-so-gentle yet pointed. Something about saving the artistry for art and getting back to math, and by-the-way was 70 really a reasonable answer, and if you'd been paying closer attention to the math rather than to the art you'd know...But then I didn't. "Tell me about what you're drawing," I said instead, pointing. Just in case my assumption was wrong and there was method to her madness.

"Oh, that's a quarter," she explained, barely looking up.

"The coin?" I asked. "The thing that's worth twenty-five cents?" I peered closer. Okay, now that she'd mentioned it I could see that the bubble-letter zero did indeed resemble a quarter. Fine and dandy, but that didn't explain why she drawn a coin as part of this measurement project. I opened my mouth again...but instead of the pointed comment I'd intended, I found myself with a different response, again a response that didn't automatically assume that she'd messed up.

"Why a quarter?" I asked.

"Well," she said, "when I measured the table I found it was seven and a quarter of my footsprints." She tapped the seven on the chart, then the quarter beside it. "So I wrote seven, and then I drew a quarter. That's why."

And that's why I'm glad I asked!