Dear Problem Solvers,

Think of math class as practicing scales on a musical instrument. You don’t go to a concert to watch someone play scales, but scales teach us something central about patterns in music. And if you play scales enough, you start to “see” those patterns in real music.

Also, playing scales strengthens your music-making muscles; we call that chops.

Likewise, most of the problems you’ll solve in real life are much more complex than the math we practice in class. But in math class we work with the patterns that exist everywhere around us. And we also work on our chops.

And then we’re ready to make music.

Sincerely,

Mr. Heimbuck