Teacher Puts His Ideas to the Test

Sarah Benefield didn’t want to take algebra, not in eighth grade, probably not ever. Sarah’s 13, a smart kid and good student at San Juan Capistrano’s Marco Forster Junior High.

“I was supposed to be in the lower level,” Sarah says, talking math. “I don’t know, algebra, that seemed, uh . . . I don’t like logical things. I just, like, do whatever.”

In other words, Sarah knew what all kids know: Math is hard.

So what does hard mean? Solve this problem: If hard equals unpleasant, and unpleasant, in turn, equals a coefficient that can be multiplied to the nth degree, what is math?

Answer: Living hell.

This is logic that millions of American kids, and the millions of grown-ups who begat them, can understand. They have an attitude problem when it comes to math.

This attitude has been passed down through the generations, with ever bizarre mutations so that it is not unheard of, say, for a highly educated columnist for a major metropolitan daily newspaper to become sort of dumbstruck when asked for a percentage of something. Even when she has a calculator in hand.

But then along comes math teacher John Boomer to, as he says, “break the cycle.” Mr. Boomer, as Sarah and his other students know him, is also a certified master hypnotist.

Not that he puts the math haters under a spell or anything, but Mr. Boomer gets his students to first open their minds, then use some simple problem - solving techniques that he’s developed over the years. He breaks problems down, stands them on their heads, looks at them differently than the norm.

This starts the light bulbs flashing in his students’ minds. Mr. Boomer calls this the “A-HA!,” a highly addictive rush.

To prove it, he recently put his theories to a test that even math dimwits can understand. He got his algebra students, including one seventh-grader, to submit to the standardized SAT test three or four years before they would take it as required for college entrance. No strong - arm tactics were reportedly involved.

Mr. Boomer gave the first test in October under simulated official conditions using an old SAT. The second time came in January, when 13 of the 28 kids--a mix of A, B and C students--took the official and for - real thing. (Mr. Boomer took the test with his students this time around.)

Sarah, needless to say, was initially not too high on the whole idea. She owns up to not trying in Mr. Boomer’s class, because she knew she couldn’t do it and “I just didn’t care.”

Naturally, her parents got mad. “I was going to get grounded,” Sarah says. “I got a big lecture.”

So she gave it a shot, after her first SAT score came back at about 200, which is pitiful. (Sarah didn’t bother to tell Mom and Dad about that.) Then she started listening to what The Boomer had to say. Sarah got a math score of 460 on the SAT the second time around. Nationally, this is better than 45% of college-bound high school seniors. And Sarah, former math hater, is in the eighth grade, being taught eighth-grade math.

The rest of the class results were more spectacular still. Lori Buchheim pulled off a cool 630, a math score higher than 87% of the nation’s college-bound seniors. Kim Shelton and Ryan Bunker, each with a score of 600, had the second highest score in the class.

The class’s average SAT math score was 545, beating out the average college-bound senior by at least 20 points, while the median was 560. That means that half the students scored higher than that.

“I feel proud to beat out most of the seniors, and I’m not even in high school yet,” says Amy Warren, aspiring pediatrician, who scored 490 on the math.

Mr. Boomer--who, thankfully, scored a perfect 800--says the genesis of this whole scheme was way back in 1979, when he took a UCLA extension course offered by Betty Edwards, author of “Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain.”

Mr. Boomer, an elementary school teacher at the time, had always wanted to draw but had assumed that he could not.

“Before I was taught how to draw, I thought it was something that only gifted people could do,” he says. “But you just use certain techniques and everybody could do it.”

Case in point: It is Mr. Boomer’s portrait of a woman’s face that is on the cover of Edward’s book.

From there, Mr. Boomer began teaching drawing himself and, later, SAT prep courses at a private program, Pegasus, which is now defunct. He used the same problem-solving principles in each class. Now he also teaches courses at UC Irvine’s Talent Search, sort of an early college prep program for academically high - scoring junior high school kids.

Mr. Boomer hopes to one day teach the same problem solving techniques at the high school level and produce a class average of 700 on the SAT math.

“It’s often acceptable to not be good in math,” he says, “whereas if a student came home and said, ‘I’m just not good in reading,’ a parent would worry . . . .

“What I do is sort of a sales job. The kids have to believe me. Then when they do, the fear goes away.”

And their confidence goes up.