Isaac Newton’s Wonder Trip

Confused…. All Isaac Newton feels is confused. Standing in front of the village, all the stuff looks
unfamiliar and strange. 

“Where am I,” Sir Isaac mumbles to himself. All he can really remember was staying alone with his
niece and feeling lonely. He felt sleepy and next thing he knew was he standing in front of this un-
known village where everyone dresses differently and he is young again, “I need to figure out what
is this place first.’”

Isaac calls one of the pedestrians and asks what this place is and he gets a name that he never heard
—‘Mathematic Town’ where people group up and discuss the important stuff happening in the
Math world of all time. When Isaac tells the pedestrian who he is, the pedestrian shows great sur-
prise and admiration to Newton, “Sir, with all due respect, a lot of your work helps our development
in the field. Especially your calculus creation basically builds most advancement in modern society.
If I may, I can show you where the calculus field is.”

Newton feels surprised about the contribution of calculus in modern society and he decides to look
around the calculus field. When he reaches the calculus building. He hears a lot of discussion about
calculus. String theory, matter displacement, all of the new theories which are all helped a lot by the
calculus knowledge. When Isaac hears all the discussion, all he feels is pleased and glad that his in-
vention helps a generation of people. 

As he passes several parts of the calculus department, Isaac

finds a room with a small group of professors discussing
their way of teaching calculus. Since Isaac invented calcu-
lus and used to teach it, he decides to listen to the discus-
sion of these people. He leans against the doorway under
the board that says ‘writing in calculus’.

“I know it is hard to teach calculus for the students nowa-

days. It is a difficult topic after all. I am  thinking, what if
we incorporate the knowledge of writing into the learning
of calculus.’”A half bald and tall man spreads his hands
and suggests it. 

“JB, I think you make a clear point of this and we have heard it several times. Thank you for repeat-
ing it again by clarifying only few points by you.” A guy crosses his arm in front of his big beard.
Isaac glances at the name tag on that guy’s shirt which writes ‘Patrick Bahls’. 

“And I will repeat one thing one more time, my name is James Beidleman! Stop calling me JB, I
don’t like it! Also, what’s so cool about Patrick? How do you enjoy being a starfish.” James looks a
little annoyed and fights back at Patrick Bahls.

“Hey, chill bro. I think you should take this as a compliment. A lot of famous people come with the
abbreviation of JB. Justin Bieber, our dear president today.” Patrick smiles and continues to tease
James. 

As James is going to engage again, a woman’s voice brings his thoughts back, “Stop fighting, you
guys, I don’t know what’s wrong with you two but what’s so fun about the names?” Following the
reasonable voice, Isaac sees this woman with a serious face and white hair. She has this name tag in
front of her on the table which writes Martha Alexanda Goss. Isaac frowns when he sees the name
and he wonders why everyone has strange names in this room and why Patrick is a starfish? “Al-
right gentlemen, can we please now hear what James is going to say about his research in calculus
writing? I read his recent paper, it is pretty convincing.” Martha’s voice breaks Isaac’s thought. 

Gratefully giving Martha a nod, James Beidlman stands up and illustrates his work, “I recently did
research with my colleagues about increasing students' conceptual understanding of first semester
calculus through writing. I found out students are more easily able to understand the concept of cal-
culus if they write descriptions and essays about specific questions. It is even more helpful for the
professors to understand which part of the question they don’t understand.”

While Isaac is still figuring out the meaning of the writing in calculus,  another woman’s voice
draws his attention, “James, your viewpoint is quite interesting. Recently, I have been focusing on
this kind of study too. Are you willing to elaborate more on your subjects?.” Isaac now notices the
woman who didn’t speak before. 

“Yes Sue, I am willing to explain everything just let me open my book.” James replies to the
younger but more serious woman. He knows Sue Doe is a tough woman and her research on such
topics is also well-known. Thus, he needs to make strong 
points. James opens his book, takes a sip of the tea and contin-
ues, “In order to prove our students have the abilities to use
writing to improve their skills in calculus, I did a series of ex-
periments. I let the students write about what they think about
one topic or a question and lead them to solve the questions.
Their instructors will try to find what’s wrong with the ques-
tions and make comments on it. I will give an easy example
which is the basic knowledge of the mean-value theorem. One
of my students writes the following example of the mean-value
theorem.” James shows what’s in his book to the rest of the par-
ticipants, “It is clear to look in this way right? The assignment
required some creativity to determine that at least once during
the race the runners had the same velocity at the same time. The
students were given one week to work on this assignment and
an informal peer review was conducted in the middle of the
week in order to provide feedback and allow students to revise
their work before turning in the assignment. I know this one is
not perfect because it is only the beginning of this research. However, it is still a huge success and a
great example of writing for calculus. Later when I assigned work for students to write about, they
are all able to articulate the situations and problems. Later students grades just go higher.” 

Isaac nods his head, as a well-known scientist, he wrote and published hundreds of papers in his
life. However, he was still a little surprised by the effectiveness of helping students learn calculus
through writing. Then, he hears Martha agrees with James’ point, “Thank you James, I read your
whole book about the writing, it was fascinating and I even used this book as a reference to my own
paper.” 

“Oh, is it called Writing to Learn: An Experiment in Calculus? I read your paper too, I like the way
you try to prove how effective writing is. Care to talk more about your research?” 
“Thank you James, It is merely an extension of your work. All I did was just build on your idea.
From my perspective, students nowadays in calculus classes mostly focus on the graphs, lines, num-
bers and symbols. It is too restricted in the way of teaching and that’s why most students sometimes
don’t understand the topic and knowledge. I believe writing can help students free from these
thoughts and try to truly understand the concepts instead of just committing them to memory. In
other words, I really appreciate the idea that students think the writing assignments helped students
to gain a conceptual understanding of calculus rather than just memorizing the formulas. Mean-
while, the writing assignments made students think about what they were doing and also helped
them retain the information from the course longer than they might have otherwise. Students also
stated that the writing assignments ‘have greatly strengthened our ability to solve calculus problems
because we better understand the 'why ' and not just the 'how' to do a problem.’ ” 

Everyone in the room becomes quiet because they are all thinking about what Martha says except
James because he already has similar thoughts, “Enough talking about the simple writing in the cal-
culus. Writing small paragraphs and essays is only a small branch of the writing form. I am aware
that there are different genre choices in the writing and Patrick, maybe you have comments on this
one? I am even bored by my self discussing too much about the general writing.” Laying back on
his chair, James’ voice amuses everyone.

“Why all of the sudden?” Patrick rolls his eyes. 

“Because I said I was bored and I wanted to hear something differently.” James smiles. 

“Maybe you can write a song to express your feelings. ‘JB~’.” 

Once again, Martha interrupts these two men’s conversation, “Okay. How about Patrick starting
first and Sue, you can make your point next?” 

Patrick and James look at each other angrily and Patrick stood up, “Ok, I will talk about my way of
teaching calculus. It is kind of interesting because I write an essay about how to use poetry to teach
a class.”

“Wow poetry, want an elegant way, I hope you didn’t learn it from Sponge-bob.”

“James!!!”

“Sorry Martha, I will stop. Continue your discussion Patrick.”

Patrick chose to ignore James, “I know some of you guys may feel skeptical of how poetry can help
students learn math. I claim that poetry can be made to serve two important purposes in an introduc-
tory mathematics course. First,  poetry offers
a new sort of cognition, a new lens, one
based in linguistic metaphor, through which
students can examine and re-examine
mathematical ideas. Second,  writing poetry
emboldens students and gives them confi-
dence by allowing them a more familiar id-
iom in which they can express themselves
mathematically.  These two factors are signif-
icant in mathematical development.”
 
Patrick opens his laptop and types some
words in it and it shows some poems on the screen. Isaac never saw this technology before and gets
intrigued by it immediately. He sees the words and lights and colors one the screen. In the middle of
it there is a paper-like page and he hears they say this is a Word document. Patrick chooses one of
the poems in the document and shows it to others, “This poem is written by a girl who got so frus-
trated by mathematics and he writes a poem to express her feelings. She usually is a shy girl and
hides her frustration inside, but with poems, we can see how she acts toward the calculus study and
we as teachers can give her a hand. As a result, poems could be really strong aids as a writing genre
to teach a calculus class.”

Everyone claps in the room, even James because he is even surprised by how Patrick provides his
points of poetry. “That is such a good idea.” Martha acknowledges Patrick’s idea, “I hope more
people can apply methods like this. Sue, it is your turn. We know you also get a different way of
teaching Maths.”

Finally, Sue stands up, she is always the quiet one. The only reason she comes here is that she wants
to learn more about how writing in calculus can help students. She also did some research and con-
ducted some experiments. “I did research and wrote a paper about how storytelling can help stu-
dents understand calculus. I always believe the narrative students learn is the story they will carry
into their subsequent courses to inform them as to why they need to know the definition, the theo-
rems, the proof techniques. If they are not going to continue in mathematics, they will probably for-
get the body of material they have studied; but, if they have written about the course they will be 
much more likely to hold that narrative in their memory as their record of what that area of mathe-
matics is about.” Sue also shows one
of her students’ work on a laptop. It is
about a zombie story, “In this story
written by a student, it does demon-
strate a clear understanding of velocity
with respect to time—indicating the
appropriate changes of running slower
and faster—and it is also a creative
story that demonstrates that the student could generate a fun correlative to the principle in question,
thus suggesting confidence in the student’s knowledge. In other words, the student’s understanding
of knowledge can be seen clearly by how good the story they write is.” 

As Sue finishes her last sentences and everyone falls in deep thoughts. All of the writing genres dis-
played here are effective in teaching and all of them make great points. Suddenly, the sound of slow
claps emerge and Isaac Newton enters the room. 

“You are?” Wondered by Sue.

“Newton!!” Exclaimed by James.

“Sir Isaac Newton!!!?”Exclaimed the four professors.

“You four are truly good professors, incorporating different writing styles and genres into calculus
and mathematics learning. I am so intrigued by your teaching ideas. Can I join your discussions?”
Isaac Newton sincerely asks. 

“Sure! It is a huge honor!” Four professors then gladly invite  Isaac into the room and continue their
discussion. 

      The End
 

Work Cited
Doe, Sue, Pilgrim, Mary E., & Gehrtz, Jessica. (2016). Stories and Explanations in the Introductory
Calculus Classroom: A Study of WTL as a Teaching and Learning 
Intervention. The WAC Journal, 27(1), 94-118

Bahls, Patrick. (2009). Math and Metaphor: Using Poetry to Teach College Mathematics. The WAC
Journal, 20(1), 75-90.

Beidleman, James; Doug Jones; Pamela Wells. (1995). Increasing students' conceptual understand-
ing of first semester calculus through writing. PRIMUS: Problems, Resources, and Issues in Mathe-
matics Undergraduate Studies 05.4, 297-316.

Goss, Martha Alexander. (1998). Writing to learn: An experiment in calculus [doctoral thesis]. Hat-
tiesburg, MS: University of Southern Mississippi.

I am trying to make a cover to the first page and an introduction.

I will add this pedestrian as my point of view