Yet, to some degree, I AM a math person. I'm bad at math because my weakest area involves spatial things. I'm also pretty bad at Chess.
I'm fine with arithmetic; I have better mental math skills than most.
When math steps out of the concrete and into the abstract, though, I get lost and confused. I always have.
I could DO it, when forced to, to get through school. Not without what, to me, was an excessive amount of time, stress, and hard work. And, since I didn't use it for anything after college, I lost most of the gains.
Abstracts? I'm great with them when they involve ideas, rather than numbers or space.
I also freely admit that I had zero interest, other than wanting to pass classes with good grades, in memorizing theorems, formulas, etc.. I simply couldn't bring myself to care enough to embed them into my understanding, rather than my short-term memory.
I'm a math person because, when I started teaching elementary grades, I wanted to be sure that I didn't pass my ambivalence for math onto students. So I sought out non-traditional, non-textbook ways of teaching, and discovered that I actually liked math, and enjoyed doing it. And so did my students. They never guessed that I grew up "bad at math" and "just not a math person," and they all loved the portion of our day spent on math.
Having long since moved on to older students, I don't teach math anymore. I am, more appropriately, placed teaching humanities, which I have a strong natural affinity for.
I do, interestingly enough, still occasionally counsel elementary teachers about math instruction. Only when they contact me and ask, lol.
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