I believe I had the potential to be reasonable at maths but was fucked over by several terrible teachers and lack of deaf-aware teaching methods.
Primary school taught us maths well and in a deaf-friendly way. Teacher talking was slow and concise, and backed by blackboard writing. We then did worksheets to consolidate stuff. Maths was done for a short period every day, and we were encouraged to build on progress as well as refresh things. I left primary school a child rated as 'good at maths'.
I had mostly bad high school maths teachers:
In Year 7 we mostly worked through workbooks, each child doing different ones while the teacher walked round. I found the workbooks moved from intro to "skipping the steps" too quickly which I found confusing. Our good teacher got sick and left, so we had numpty supply teachers or not-maths for months. I finished the algebra books still never fully understanding how to rearrange equations and still don't understand that properly. My primary school grounding meant I scored well on setting tests.
I was put in Set 2 in year 8 and 9 with Mr R who loved maths, whittered endlessly about the subject and lots of off topic stuff. I couldn't process what was maths and what was other. I asked Mr R why maths was useful cos at 13 I didn't see how algebra etc was useful outside a classroom and got a useless answer. So I gave up and mentally switched off. Mr R retired after my year 9 as he'd "lost the plot" (apparently he'd been a great teacher in his heyday).
For GCSE years we had Mrs T who also loved maths and wanted more women and girls in maths/STEM but seemed to think shaming us for being less good than her or her engineer-daughter was the method. We were an oversized Set 2 and Mrs T wanted us to be Set 1. Mrs T raced through the GCSE syllabus at 200mph, repeating some bits 3x and some only once. When asked to slow down, re-explain or even repeat something, she'd say "Come on Sunshine, don't be Thick!". Mrs T even said this to me as a deaf pupil who had missed several weeks of school. Our set all did horribly in our mock GCSE, I got a U. They had to downgrade us from the top-paper which (rightly) reflected on Mrs T's terrible teaching which Mrs T took out on us.
I scraped a GCSE C, thanks to my amazing GCSE chemistry teacher Mrs P who had taught us exam strategies for staying calm, using logic to work out the answers and if completely stuck, using made-up figures "If we assume X is 6" and still doing the process-steps so we could pick up marks.
At college I did A-levels in chemistry/biology/physics. College did do GCSEs but only the B grade maths paper and I wasn't permitted to resit cos I had passed my GCSE. I would not have survived A-Level maths. I struggled with physics, again I think I was struggling with audio-overload/health and I missed (didn't hear or was never told) the context for the material so I was trying to learn something I didn't understand the purpose of. Chemistry was easier cos our Salters course was actually applied-chemistry so everything was introduced with 'why it is useful' which was great for learning, and as a grounding for every chemistry-useful degree except actual chemistry!
I started a degree in chemistry, got an unconditional offer for arguing with the admissions tutor about whether my hand impairments would stop me working in the lab (I was furious cos he was SO disablist). We actually had a good first term tutor Dr S for "maths for people without the A-level" class, who explained everything carefully, wrote it down and explained the shortcuts visually so we understood. We started to gain confidence and skill. I think we all passed Dr S's exam. Unfortunately in Term 2, Dr S was replaced by a computational chemist Dr G who tried to cram 4 major topics into one class and babbled at 200mph. I took my hearing aid out in class after 15 mins for the first time in my life cos Dr G might as well have been speaking Greek for all I could understand him. I didn't bother attending more maths classes, it was pointless. I was already realising I'd got 2:1s for everything except chemistry, I realised it wasn't the right degree or right academic department for me.
Maths was one of the 4 main reasons I ran away from the chemistry degree.
In adulthood I have realised through learning British Sign Language (BSL), meeting many other deaf people (signers and nonsigners) and supporting my mum through her Teacher of the Deaf training that deaf people like myself have poor auditory working memory. Deaf children in properly taught classes are taught slowly and clearly in speech/SL + given key info in writing and things are explained properly rather than just assumed.
It is now commonly understood that deaf people easily auditory-overload in education and some of us get very confused and or become ill as a result (massive rates of chronic fatigue, poor mental health and similar conditions in deaf communities). Sadly deaf children are still not taught in small classes with fluent BSL access as well and there remains a widening deaf-hearing attainment gap.
I haven't used significant maths except arithmetic and spreadsheets since university. I have to look stuff up like calculating percentages cos I never did understand it and can't seem to get it to stick in my brain now (I blame bad memories). I have to triple check even if I've looked stuff up cos I don't really understand why or how even simple stuff works and I know it's easy to plug numbers into the wrong place. I am sad and angry that my maths teaching was largely poor and that deaf people like myself are not taught in BSL and in deaf-focused environments - mainstream and speech/English only is a disaster for us.
