High school teachers have to come up with all sorts of creative ways to capture the attention of detached teenagers. But surely racist stereotypes aren't the only way to teach math concepts. A painfully cringe video is making the rounds all over social media that features a math teacher 'war hooping and tomahawk chopping' all around her classroom. Though the purpose of the lesson doesn't seem very evident in the video, some have clarified that the teacher was likely using the antiquated 'Legend of Sohcahtoa'—a mnemonic device used to remember the three main functions of trigonometry (sine, cosine, and tangent). In the video, the teacher chants 'SOHCAHTOA' over and over again, her voice getting shriller as the performance goes on. At one point she gets up on a desk to continue the humiliating display as a student buries their face into their arms.
Let this be a lesson to all the high school teachers out there—there are plenty of ways to help your students remember complex concepts for the rest of their lives by embarrassing yourself. Doing a racism isn't one of them. Keep scrolling to see the mortifying video and how people reacted online.
According to @corn_maiden_designs, who reposted the student's video in an Instagram carousel, 'This was taken at John W. North high school in Riverside, CA. At first the student noticed the teacher was pulling out a fake feather headdress and when she put it on he thought, "what is she going to do?"'
It's surprisingly easy to find lesson plans online that use the fake tale of an Indian chief called Sohcahtoa. I think it's safe to say that in 2021, we don't need to use racial stereotypes to teach trigonometry.