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Crewton Ramone
Crewton Ramone Quick Facts
Main Areas: Teaching math to children, teaching teachers how to teach math, training trainers to teach teachers how to teach math.
I was taught by several mentors, who I will name as appropriate. The
method I have had the best results with was taught to me by a man by
the name of Vernon J. Mortensen: Jerry.
Jerry Mortensen is
quite a colorful character, and his story can fill pages and pages if
not books. Please indulge/forgive me while I pause for a fully abridged
version of my background and relationship with/to Mortensen Math.
Suffice it to say Jerry started teaching young students after winning a
scholarship to Italy to learn under Maria and Mario Montesorri. By his
own admission he was more interested in going to Italy than the
scholarship or teaching. When he came back he found he wasn't exactly
suited to teach young kids.
He tried to get out of the commitment
he made which was a 2 year stint teaching in exchange for the
scholarship...they wouldn't let him out of it. So he decided that if he
was stuck with the position that he would at least cause no harm...he
might not teach them anything but he wasn't going to try to be an
authoritarian while trying to herd cats...“the little buggers were
driving me crazy.”
Little kids always ask why...often repeatedly.
Long
story short he found quiet by accident that children learn best through
play. And that you could play with kids and teach them math...he went
on to take the Montessori method and the math manipulatives they had
and improve and refine them. He basically picked up the ball and ran
with it. You play but there's a way to play and direct their discovery
of math concepts.
Much to the chagrin of many Montessori purists.
From my experience the Mortensen Math method is indeed an improvement
and the most effective way to teach math I have ever seen. Jerry
Mortensen got his certificate from Mario Montesorri, I got mine from
Jerry Mortensen, sort of. Kind of.
I was never given a “formal
education” per se by Jerry Mortensen, but I have completed many hours
of study and training that were about as formal as it gets. 10 hour
trainings and 30 hour trainings, and then I graduated to Math seminars
where I did the teaching and then was brutally critiqued by Jerry and
other trainers. Brutal means brutal, they pulled no punches and didn't
try to spare my feelings. I am well known for being a say anything kind
of guy who is blunt and a straight shooter. I got a healthy dose of my
own medicine.
Then I was sent on the road...and my real education
began. “Why” is a question that is on quite a few people's minds as it
turns out. Fortunately I had already asked a lot of these 'why
questions' myself. But quite often I got questions I couldn't answer
and that evening was on the phone with Jerry getting answers, along
with reporting sales figures and attendance and so on.
I went to
3 cities a week and did seminars selling Mortensen Math kits and
training. These seminars ranged in size from 7 people in a room to 750
in a room and everything in between. In larger cities 200 wasn't
uncommon, but I'd say the mean was around 50-100. Here I got every kind
of question you can imagine. I also heard math horror stories;
sometimes met some very interesting men who taught physics or higher
math; other times I met home schoolers who were fed up with the
resources available at the time. It has since gotten better but not
much. Here is where I earned my wings. I also noticed some patterns
among the people who came that turn out to very common experiences of
students and teachers of the mathematics. More on this elsewhere.
(Ain't hypertext great?) But I try to remember that you are unique just
like everyone else.
After this I did "a few" seminars for
Mortensen Math where we trained teachers, and then I eventually moved
on the the level of Master Trainer, where I trained trainers to train
teachers. To do this you have to know how to use the system but you
also have to know why you do the things you do so that they understand
how important it is to do things a certain way. The journey continues
because I constantly get answers to questions which of course leads to
more questions, leading to some to observe “the more you know the
dumber you get.” I have exponentially more questions about how children
learn and how the brain works and why we came up with math in the first
place than I did when I started this odyssey.
I also have run
tutoring businesses out of my house off and on for years, and looked
into many programs and methodologies for the teaching of the
mathematics. In this time I have taught out of many text books and met
students of every skill level imaginable, from "learning disabled" to
one student who was in college at the ripe old age of 12. One and all
taught me as much about teaching math as I taught them about math and
somehow I tricked their parents into paying me for playing blocks with
their kids and had fun doing it.
