My Background

My first recollection of my father as a teacher goes back to a Christmas celebration. I was maybe three or four years old, and my mother was preparing all the food for the celebration with the help of an aunt, as it was really a lot of food for a really big family!

The ones who couldn't help or didn't fit in the kitchen were waiting around in the living room, so my father started asking questions to kill time. "How's school?" he asked my older cousin, who was a third grader at the time. "I'm doing OK, but I don't understand math".

She shouldn't have said that. I mean, if she'd wanted to have a perfectly math-free Christmas Eve. Needless to say, my father didn't stop teaching my cousin a remedial class until he made sure she managed the four basic arithmetic operations. Her ordeal would finish with fractions and end with divisions.

So, what's difficult about math? -Asked my father.

I don't know... fractions. - Replied my already tired cousin rolling her eyes.

Oh, that's easy! Take this tortilla and fold it into two parts. How many parts do you have?

Two?

Right. Two, and what do you call them?

Fractions?

Yes, fractions but they are two halves. Now break the half into two. What do you get?

Nachos?

Yep, fry 'em and you get nachos too, but then you have a quarter.

Like the 25 cents coin?

I left the room to play with my cousins because seeing my father inflicting so much pain to a child on a holiday wasn't something you would have enjoyed, but when my cousin -after what seemed hours - came out to play with the rest of us she was the happiest girl in Mexico City.

"I can do math! I can do math!" She kept saying.

I believe that experience -without me knowing back then- may have played a role in my choice of becoming a teacher.