math and climbing

[ursula]

In November, my article on math anxiety and climbing came out in the magazine Math Horizons. It's about how I used what I know about teaching math to talk myself into climbing a wall. My first climbing partner, Megan, was on the magazine cover:

http://www.maa.org/mathhorizons/nov11.jpg

I've posted a proof of the article on my professional website:

http://people.uwec.edu/whitchua/notes/mathandgymclass-mathhorizons.pdf

Comments

[cathexys]

What a great article! And how very true about setting/creating our own limitations! I'm always amazed when I look at young kids who haven't been told yet that they can't sing/dance/run/... But I also think that a huge part of that is a system that has to measure everything and make it competitive. What a great analogy with the math self failure depictions. I usually tell folks like that that few people are bad at math but people had bad math teachers :)

[ursula]

And the cultural weight of expectations is heavy enough that you can have perfectly decent teachers and still end up stuck with distracting angst-- I remember quite liking my first elementary school gym teacher, for instance.