Sometimes the Bear Eats You

If I'm lucky, you didn't hear about the complete debacle that was our maze lesson on Friday. This summer when I read "How to create a labyrinth" I thought, "No way — it will just bring them to tears." Enthusiasm got the better of me, however, and on Friday we learned about Chartres Cathedral and the famous labyrinth on its floor. The Herons readily shared the difference between a labyrinth and a maze ("You told us this already!" one child said. "I know, I'm just checking to see if you remember." I replied. "Of course we do…you told us!" said another, slightly bewildered at my ineptitude. If only I had the same power when it came to math facts!) I was thrilled when they quickly and correctly told me that the network for a unicursal (one path) labyrinth was simply A —> B.

"They're ready," I thought as I passed out the template — 11 concentric circles marked into quadrants. Creating a labyrinth is a painstaking, exacting process. One's eyes start to cross and its easy to get lost in the steps (no pun intended). A host of new vocabulary words had to be learned "concentric," "parallel," "bisecting," "turn," "passage width," "exterior," "interior," "intersecting" for us to be able to communicate about the directions.

Things were going better than I could have expected. EVERYONE was getting it. We were sitting at tables and I would circulate to make sure that one child from each table was successful and could model to their tablemates if there was any confusion. Forty minutes into this very intense lesson I was hearing more and more "I get it!"s and "Oh! Now I see it!" "I can do it from here…"

And then it stopped. Suddenly there were choruses of, "Michelle, I need help!" "It's going wrong!" "I messed up but I can't figure out where." "This stopped making sense." I asked for quiet as I compared my model with one of a student and realized, with a horrible shudder, that I had made a mistake — a mistake I couldn't fix. I had made my model by hand but had used a graph paper generator to make their templates. In setting the parameters, I had not counted the inner most circle. My directions talked about "11 rings" and I programmed the generator to make 11 concentric circles. Of course, the 11 rings go around a central circle — thus 12 circles. I explained my mistake, apologized profusely and shared that I didn't know how to fix things quickly.

They faced the situation pretty bravely. Several were excited to find ways to make it work to their satisfaction. Many seemed to nod when I explained that, painful as it was, fighting it and getting confused actually made their understanding stronger.

I tried to assuage my own guilt by telling myself that it's useful to model making mistakes, diagnosing the mistake and coming up with solutions to fix things (even if it's an apology and a promise to have the right template if we tried it again.) Sigh. I just wish I hadn't made a mistake on something they were working so hard on.

Here's the correct template, Download Polar-6, if you want to give it a try yourself! I promise I won't be hovering over you giving impossible directions.