About ten years ago we rejoined with my classmates for some days (30 years since graduating highschool) and talked a lot about our teachers, about our experienc

About ten years ago we rejoined with my classmates for some days (30 years since graduating highschool) and talked a lot about our teachers, about our experience with math/physics/literature etc. It seriously amazed me how different our experience was. We were in the very same class with the very same teachers. Some of us loved how math was taught and some of us hated. Some loved math since grade 7, some "finally started to get" it in grade 10 and some still don't get it why it all was even needed. Some hated the math, but started to love it because of physics. Some loved the geometry and algebra, but still don't get for what this calculus is even needed. And so on with every single subject. And most of these people had very strong feelings how things should be taught in schools – based THEIR personal experience of course! I have now some experience teaching math for 11-14 years old kids and this experience strongly resonated in me. The most important thing I learned about teaching is that we don't learn about what we read, see, listen etc. We learn about what we think. A teacher or not, we have very limited influence about other peoples' thoughts. The idea that there are some magical methods all or even most of kids will understand all the math is naive at best. Most of kids in the class don't get "why?" regardless what you do. But that's OK. You of course will talk about "why?", but it's important to give them "how?" skills for the times they will decide to think about math and they will find out "why?".