Storytime: I Just Want to Talk to You

I had one of my students, Mirabel, sitting in my classroom after school working on her math homework. Not only was she ridiculously good at math, but she loved it. That was strange to me as a literature teacher. It makes perfect sense to me to fall in love with a book, a story. But to fall in love with numbers? I don't get it.

Mirabel and I had a great relationship, but she struggled just a bit in my class. I was glad she was in my class so she could struggle safely through the content in my class while she excelled as an identified gifted student in her math teacher's class. I was happy to get to teach her that was totally okay and normal.

As she sat there working on her math homework she strikes up a conversation with me. "Isn't it crazy how if you divide 'this number' by 'that number' and add 'this number' here you come up with 'a number' that represents 'this'?" (I'm obviously taking some liberty with her original words here because at this point she was speaking a different language to me, but at the time Mirabel was spitting out real numbers and actual math jargon that was way

over my head.) Utterly confused I responded, "Yeah. That's crazy." She continues, "I love how when you add 'these numbers' you get 'this number' but you have to remember to pay attention to the exponent so that you don't come up with 'this kind of number'." Me, "Yeah. I know, right?" We went back and forth this way for a few minutes until I decided this wasn't a valuable conversation at all. Finally, I stopped her, "Mirabel, don't you want to go have this conversation with Mrs. Smith? She'll understand you better." Mrs. Smith was Mirabel's math teacher, and I knew she'd be just as happy to have her. Without even hesitating or looking up from her homework she matter-of-factly, but still sweetly, replied, "No. I just want to talk to you."

Her reply jarred me. She knew the entire time I didn't have a clue what she was talking about, but at this moment she wasn't looking to be understood. She just wanted to be heard. By me. She was telling me to just listen. She didn't need me to understand; she just wanted to talk to me about something that she loved. Even if I didn't understand it. So, that's exactly what I did. I listened to Mirabel talk about how amazing numbers are and all of their workings for the next 45 minutes. It was painful, and yet... lovely.