About a week ago one of my students was asking for assistance on an assignment for my geometry class and I wrote down some formulas for his reference on a blank piece of paper. I wrote the distance formula, midpoint formula, and the point-slope form of an equation of a line.

The student replied with “How do you just know all of that?” He was referring to the fact that I just wrote it from memory and did not need to look anything up. I replied with “It just lives in my head rent free!”

He proceeded to say something along the lines of “Wow, you’re so smart!” I mean, he’s not wrong, but that’s not the lesson to be learned here.

He also said something to make me think he didn’t believe he would have the capacity to raddle something off like that. So I replied with something like this: “I bet there is some knowledge that lives in your head rent free that doesn’t live in my head rent free– how about Spanish? You can speak Spanish fluently and not all people can do that.” His face lit up and he said “Spanish DOES live in my head rent free!”

The deal is that every one of us have something unique to offer the world, and more specifically, ever student has something unique and valuable to offer to the classroom. Each student has their own experiences and perspectives that help others grow–students and teachers included.

Another lesson that comes to mind from this interaction is that in order for something to live in one’s head “rent free” they must devote an inordinate amount of time and energy in learning that topic. Just like I have devoted much of my life to the teaching and learning of mathematics, that student grew up learning Spanish and English in his household.

What lives in your head “rent free?”