About the Author

How HOW DO WE KNOW? Yes! You Can Learn Algebra  came to be:

After working as an analytical biochemist for fifteen years, I left industry in 1979 and set out to see if I could make some sense out of the world. Somehow, “The ways of God” had not been justified to me, yet.  I had been rather successful using numbers and thought I could share this knowledge with kids.  Didn’t take me long to find out: that “ain’t” easy.

After four years of stumbling around trying to teach High School Math, I found myself teaching Chemistry and as I relearned my chemistry, I was able to see the most extraordinary order and beauty in the organization of the material world (the same sort of magnificence I had seen years before in The Calculus with Integration in Polar Coordinates).  Yet for students the thrill of this sort of discovery was hidden by a layer of arithmetic complexity they couldn’t seem to penetrate.  

I spent ten years teaching chemistry and physics mostly as remedial algebra.  In 1999 at one of the preschool presentations at the high school, a speaker talked about Metacognition being the key to learning. I asked him “How the do you teach that?” and he said “well, uh…”  When I went to the internet, it seemed that people just threw words at the thought process and were just saying “well, uh…” also.  Now you might think I have presented a problem with no solution: not so. 

At the NCTM conference in Orlando in 2001 I heard a speaker (Dr. Fred Fliner) describe the amazing success of a group of students that had been taught Geometry by a Dr. Fawcett at The Ohio State U. Lab School in 1937 (The same year that Bill W. wrote the Big Book, incidentally). Dr. Fawcett wrote a book that described what he did and it was selected as the NCTM Yearbook for 1938 (The Nature of Proof).  As I read this book, I discovered that this guy was teaching Metacognition.  Three years later I sat down and wrote a book which will get Metacognition into the classroom.  Extravagant claim you might say.  Yet again, I reply: not so.

 I also plant mayhaw and pecan trees, and blueberry bushes, and muscadine vines, and I am married to a wonderful lady.  I have grand kids here in Louisiana, and Tiger Football, and great food, and Cajun dancing. 

From the Mayhaw Orchard of Life, Keep list’nin’ to Willie…..

Best, Ralph

Geaux Tigers!!!!