Factoring trinomials

I stay up too late on Wednesday night. This is a common occurence in the middle of the week, I think it is a symptom of being engaged. Even when I go to bed on time I lie awake, excited about life. It is hard to sleep when you're in love.

But this means that on Thursday morning I am dragging. I keep guzzling coffee but to no avail. I mix up my students names, forget what time the period ends, and mess up several examples. Right now I am teaching polynomials to my algebra students and it is tough going. Frankly, it is boring. My students have told me this. But I have had no great epiphanies about how to make x^2+8x+7 interesting. Just looking at it I get bored. On Thursday I was in the middle of my lesson on factoring trinomials when Precious raised her hand.

" Ms. Bell, when are we going to use this in real life," she said interupting my example. I was halfway throug! h factoring the trinomial. I looked at her and drew a complete blank. In the moment I muttered something about her needing good grades to get into college. But can I confess that I thought about it the rest of the period and I couldn't figure out why in the world we factor trinomials. What's the point anyway? I think it is just to drive people crazy. Look at this problem:

Factor.

3x^2-34x+63

Instant headache. I know, I know, there are probably some strategies and shortcuts I could use. But why? Why go through all that just to rewrite that polynomial in a different way? I think we should just put it on the graphing calculator and use the trace button.

Anyway, I am still teaching my poor 9th graders how to factor. Imagine trying to factor when you do not how to divide. Yup. It takes the headache to an instant migraine. My students struggle to factor 4x! +16. They keep telling me 16 divided by 4 is 12. Sigh. Hope! fully so meone is making progress.

But there is still a third of the year left. After I finish teaching them about polynomials I am going to go back to teaching them how to divide :)



p.s. This post is dedicated to my student, Tiara who came to tutoring after school every day this week so she could learn this factoring stuff. She's the kind of student who makes me excited to teach each morning.

trinomials