|
Go Figure!
During the summer of 1995 I taught an accelerated geometry class to two very bright 8th graders who wanted to move ahead in our mathematics curriculum. One day I assigned an age old Euclidean geometry problem to them. . . and as I left I exclaimed, “By the way, fellas, you don’t have a prayer of figuring this out.” They were back within two hours with a solution, and I just about had a heart attack!! I had never seen their technique anywhere in my study and teaching of mathematics, and I thought instantly that it might be only the second such technique since antiquity. They made their discovery on a computer which, as any mathematician knows, does not constitute a proof, and so we proved it formally, both analytically and synthetically. We then wrote a manuscript and mailed it to The Mathematics Teacher, a publication of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. Five months later we were notified that the mathematics was outstanding but that the exposition needed help (smile, Mr. Curwen, smile!). We called the boys’ idea the “GLaD Construction,” G for David Goldenheim, L for Dan Litchfield and D for me. The odyssey of the GLaD team is so exciting, so unparalleled, that I haven’t yet found the best words to describe it. I have been most fortunate and, indeed, most grateful to Dan and Dave for their creativity. It has made my ever-so-wonderful teaching career even more delightful and rewarding. Hamilton Bissel (a friend of my father’s from their days together at Exeter in the late ’20s) was asked by my father at my admissions interview in 1956 how he liked working at Exeter. . . Why, Henry, I have never worked a day in my life!!” That describes perfectly the way have always felt about teaching mathematics. Our manuscript was published in January 1997, but one month prior to that the Wall Street Journal ran an article about us. . . and with those two worldwide coverages, all cannons broke loose. During the next three years we gave seventeen presentations to groups of mathematics teachers throughout America and Canada, were on international television and radio shows, were written up in magazines and journals throughout the world, had hundreds of newspaper articles written about us throughout the world, had hundreds of emails and scores of math treatises sent to us, won an international award, had a summary article in the New York Times on March 7, 1999, and were invited to Washington, D.C. last July for a meeting with Richard W. Riley, the Secretary of Education for the United States of America. WOW! Amid all the hoopla, however, there is one moment that stands out for me. For a number of years I had been attending the Anja S. Greer Mathematics and Technology Conference at PEA. When I telephoned Tom Seidenberg in April 1996 to explain what Dan and David had accomplished and boldly suggested that we make a presentation at the conference, it took Tom about five seconds to agree. . . for which I will be eternally grateful. That presentation in June of 1996 was the one which gave me the deepest personal gratification and satisfaction. . . not because it was the first, but simply because it helped to compensate for all those feelings of self-doubt and discomfort I had as a student at Exeter. I would like to think, that on that day my former Exeter math teachers (the dignified Mr. Swift who required precision, brevity, and clarity, and the ruby-cheeked Mr. Booth who forced us in Calculus to explore, create, and think differently) watched all this from above . . . with, of course, Mr. Curwen. Oh, for the honor of that moment . . . thank you Dan and Dave!! One last comment. On the morning we gave our speech at Exeter the two boys had changed the opening slide in our slide show. When I introduced Dan and Dave and saw what they had done, I thought “Here I go again!” because they had spelled “Phillips” with one “L”. —Charles H. Dietrich Charles H. Dietrich has been a teacher of mathematics for the past 36 years and counting. After Exeter, he earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Trinity. During his teaching career, he has served variously as department chair, associate dean of students, on the SSAT Test board, as president of the Women’s Western New England School Soccer Association and, in 1996, was honored as Lacrosse Man of the Year. |
My fondest memory of Exeter was when, proudly, I toured Exeter for the first time with my wife, seven years after I had graduated. I made a beeline for Darcy Curwen, who was by then in retirement. With not a little bit of trepidation I knocked on his door, and as he opened it he said “Wait, don’t tell me, let me figure out the name.” Shortly he exhorted, “My God, it’s Dietrich . . . the worst English student I ever had.” He was right, of course, and I knew it. “Nevertheless,” I said smilingly and strongly, “I am going to be one of the very best mathematics teachers in the country.” He had the kindness not to laugh. And though I may still have trouble distinguishing
an adverb from a dangling participle, Mr. Curwen taught me one of the most valuable lessons I have ever learned . . . simply, if you don’t want to do something but you just plain have to, give it 100 percent. For me, it was that or fail English.