Mr. No Zero

In this story you will hear about what happened at a Learning Center, a room at the local Library where students can get help from volunteers with their studies.

This story comes from my Short Story collection, available on Amazon

A young Somali man, aged about 16, is struggling to make sense of the incorrect answers he is getting. He asks for help.

Part of the calculation requires finding out the distance between points A and B where A is (4,0) and B is (7,0).

He points at the A (4,0), then (5,0), then (6,0) and says, in turn, “One”, “Two”, “Three” and finally, points at B (7,0) and says “Four. The distance is four.”

I shake my head.

I show him four fingers and ask, “What is the distance between the index finger and small finger?”

He counts the fingers, starting at my index finger, “One”, “Two”, “Three,” and arriving at my little finger, “Four”.

I shake my head. “It’s three,” I tell him, showing that I mean the space between my fingers.

I pick up a ruler and offer it to him. “Find the four. Find the seven.” He finds them. “What is the distance between the four and the seven?” He counts, starts counting at the ‘4’ saying “One”.

I interrupt. “You start at one?” I show him the end of the ruler, point at the ‘0’. “This is where we start counting.” He stares at the zero for a long time.

Again, he points at the (4,0) and says “one”.

I point at the (5,0) and say “one”, then I point at the (4,0) and ask what it is.

He does not say zero, he says “ah?”

I extend the “ah” into “ah-one”, as I move his finger along the distance from (4,0) to (5,0), landing on the (5,0) as we say “one” together.

We continue “ah-two” at (6,0) and “ah-three” as we land on (7,0).

“Three,” I repeat.

He is silent.

I wait until he looks at me.

“What are you thinking?” I ask him.

“I didn’t know. I never used that in school,” he says, pointing at the zero on the plastic ruler.

I teach him. “When you count, it’s ‘ah-one’, ‘ah-two’, ‘ah-three’…,” I say showing first one, then two, then three fingers. When you measure the distance from here to here, I point at (4,0) and say “ah-one” as I slide my finger from A (4,0) to (5,0), then “ah-two”, as I slide from (5,0) to (6,0) and then sliding my finger to B (7,0) and wait.

“Ah-three,” he says, grinning from ear to ear.

I grin back at him, and ask, “What have you learned?”

“When I count I have to say, ah-one, ah-two..”

“We usually say it very quietly and just speak the number out loud.” I confided. “What else?”

“There is another number here, right here”, he points at the “0”.

“It’s called Zero”, I tell him.

Teachers coach. All the time. At most clearly when they are having a one-to-one conversation and lead the student to a deeper understanding, or improved skill. The coaching aspect here is the teacher showing respect for the student's misunderstanding of how to count distance. Gently guiding students to unlearn incorrect knowledge to make space to learn correct knowledge, is a beautiful blend of teaching and coaching.