Ed Dillon, who teaches math at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, hopes to be "doing this well into my elderly years. I don't feel like it's work. I'm just paid to have fun. I hope everyone in college can do the same thing -- find something they're passionate about."
It took Dillon a while to find his passion. After high school, he got a full-time job at Arby's. There, he learned two important things: "A: I had skills that weren't being used. And B: there are more gainful ways to make a life."
A roommate finally told him, "Hey, you're a bright guy -- why don't you go to college?" Ultimately, Dillon earned both bachelors and masters degrees in math. "I studied topology. It's non-utilitarian, but it's beautiful. I was good at it. I got out of college and couldn't find a job."
Dillon did some computer programming and worked as an actuary for a couple of years. "I think that's a good experience. At the time it didn't seem like it was going to be that helpful. But I tell stories about how to use math in those jobs. It's way more authentic. I've become a storyteller."
What's the secret to being a good math teacher?
Most students can pinpoint one time when someone said something degrading, or a female was told, "You don't have to be good at math," or they had a mean teacher. Students are smart -- they know when you don't really care if you learn. Then expectations aren't high, and they don't learn. You can't do this abstractly on the simple promise that "eventually you're going to use this."
Does that mean anyone can learn math?
I don't know. What's the baseline we need? What's the most important software in the business world? Excel -- 90 percent of people in business use Excel. It's all algebra. We make a mistake by not including Excel when we teach algebra. You can actually do an example and show, "This is the distributor property," or "you're solving for a variable."
