Michael Crehan wages war on a common brand of hate. Twice a week in an Everett Community College classroom, he helps students embrace what vexes them — math.
“Nobody hates music or horticulture,” Crehan said Tuesday. “You don’t transfer the dislike of a horticulture teacher into a hatred of shrubs.”
Crehan can’t begin to count how many times he’s heard people say they hate math.
“Math has a nerdy aura to it. Popular culture makes fun of math,” he said. Yet math proficiency unlocks doors to sought-after careers, among them engineering and nursing.
With “Overcoming Math Anxiety,” a five-week course Crehan teaches at EvCC, struggling students find success.
“I failed last quarter,” said Stephanie Groves, 26, who is working toward a nursing degree. Since attending Crehan’s class this winter quarter, the Marysville woman has made it through required exams in Math 070, the basic class she didn’t successfully complete last fall.
She credits Crehan’s practical advice, and now sees more confidence even in her 8-year-old. “It’s wonderful to teach them not to be scared of math,” she said.
“Overcoming Math Anxiety” is a Human Development course, not a math class. Crehan’s expertise is in counseling. With a master’s degree in counseling from Seattle University, he worked many years as a counselor at Renton Technical College. Now in his early 70s, the Irish-born Everett man came out of retirement to work at EvCC’s Counseling, Advising and Career Center.
He invites EvCC math instructor Mike Nevins to speak to his class, but Crehan doesn’t ask students to solve equations or figure percentages. His work is meant to build confidence and study skills.
His first assignment? “I have them write a math autobiography,” Crehan said.
Students are asked to explain where their troubles began, whether in second grade or with a high school algebra teacher. “Then I have them take it home and shred it,” he said. “That was then, this is now.”
It’s recommended, but not required, that students also be enrolled in math while taking his class. There is a textbook, “Winning at Math,” by Paul D. Nolting.
Longtime readers of this column may recall that I’ve had little success in winning at math. I revealed my deficiencies in 2005, after Washington’s Higher Education Coordinating Board suggested requiring four years of high school math for admission to our state universities — a plan that didn’t come to pass.
In 2005, I wrote that “I cried my way through algebra at Spokane’s Ferris High School.” I did fine in 10th-grade geometry, but that was it for me and math. Still, I graduated, with a degree in English, from the University of Washington.
It wasn’t my aim to celebrate stupidity. Who knows where I’d be now if, in the 1970s, I’d had a chance to take “Overcoming Math Anxiety”?
Unemployment sent 33-year-old Scott Wilkes to EvCC. He wants to become an engineer. After earning A’s in his first two math courses, Wilkes said he hit “a roadblock.” The concepts were so foreign, he said, “it was like French.”
“I came here to try to face that problem. I’d recommend it big-time,” Wilkes said Tuesday during a break in Crehan’s class.
In class, Crehan presented ways to gain confidence, including looking at Super Bowl game statistics from Monday’s Herald. He shared online math resources. For assignments, students write math glossaries and keep journals of encounters with math in everyday life. Crehan offered time-management and study tips.
“You wouldn’t think it would help as much as it does,” said 25-year-old Ashley Smith, who hopes to become a nurse.
Marissa Whybark, 18, said she struggled so much at Snohomish High School that she didn’t complete algebra until senior year. “I’d be fine in class, then turn in a blank test. This has helped me relax. It helps a lot,” she said.
Crehan sees hatred of math — like math itself — as learned behavior.
“No one comes out of the womb with a stamp on their head, ‘This child is math-anxious,’ ” Crehan said. “Many find out they’re a lot smarter than they thought.”
Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.
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