I didn't like arithmetic in elementary school, simply because it was so easy for the teacher to give us one page of multiplication problems that took a long time to complete. It felt like simple busy work, and I still feel that way after being an elementary school math teacher myself, and a college professor working on preparing elementary school teachers. When I taught the 5th grade, I taught all subjects, as most elementary teachers in the US do, but just for the first two years. For my last two years, I taught the arithmetic and other math to all four 5th grade classes.
While still teaching elementary school, I began night classes for a master's degree. One of the first required classes was basic statistics. For four or five weeks, I didn't understand what we were doing or why. Then, the main ideas opened up and I saw what it was all about. Later, in my doctoral program, I learned many statistical techniques of analysis.
I hadn't been aiming for statistical analysis, just for improving education of all kinds and in any way possible. Before, as an undergraduate, I was required to accumulate a given amount of credits to earn a degree. When I looked at the offerings, it seemed that some of the math courses would be useful in my life, in my work and outside of it. Near the end of undergrad studies, I was informed I needed a minor to graduate. I had taken enough math courses that taking a few more would give me a minor.
During grad school in a program designed to produce educational researchers, I was interested in testing and grading. As a doctoral student, I taught night school classes in testing a few times. When I was hired as an assistant professor, it was a period when large computers where just making an entry into campus life. In my first semester, I was hired to be the local director of academic computing. I had already depended on computers to analyze the data for my dissertation, which was about formal and mathematical decision-making.
Several academic curricula try to get master's students and sometimes undergraduates involved in doing research. Historically, teachers have been trying to get a four year basic education, plus in-depth knowledge of subjects they are planning to teach along with knowledge of teaching techniques and educational psychology. When actual teaching experience gets piled on top of all that, there is not time left for formal research efforts. So, in some master's programs, a experiment is required.
To analyze the data produced by experiments, statistical techniques can be a necessary tool. Before long, I was teaching basic statistical methods. Many people who have a basic attraction to teaching have a basic fear of numbers and math. I tended to teach the subject as clearly as I could manage, with no tricks or "challenges". My campus was headed by a former professor of communication who had been involved with classes that used electronics to teach in America and France classes across the Atlantic Ocean simultaneously. So, I became a teacher of basic statistical methods on state public television. After 24 years, my materials were deemed too old for current needs. At the same time, educational research has moved to more emphasis on biographic and personal methods. The whole world is beginning to see that we need to know much more than how many questions a student got "correct".
