Frank Behrendt: How “Lehrerschmidt” became my kids’ math guru

F. Behrendt: The guru of serenity
How “Lehrerschmidt” became a YouTube star and my kids’ math guru

He really doesn’t look like your typical Youtube star, but he definitely is one. Because most self-proclaimed influencers often dream of over a million subscribers their entire digital life. Kai Schmidt now has 1.2 million and the number is growing every day. He doesn’t need blue hair, beauty tips, sponsored beach trips to Dubai or crazy dances to loud hip-hop music. He explains math plain and simple. But he does it in such a way that even absolute zero-checkers of the numbers like me can easily follow him.

If my children don’t know what to do with their homework or the revision of the material taught at school, they ask my wife. If even my wife, who is also really good at mathematics, has question marks in her eyes, a video is clicked on: by Lehrerschmidt. There are now around 1,700 of them for everything you can ask about numbers, calculation methods and formulas. Explained simply and casually, on squared paper with a pen by the nice Mr. Schmidt, who is also a teacher in real life. “His students have it really good,” my little daughter Holly remarked recently with a sigh, “they have YouTube live in class every day”.

From the school server to the Internet

Kai Schmidt took over the graduating class at a secondary school in 2016. He found that his students were missing a lot of mathematical basics. A debacle threatened in the upcoming exams. So he began to create small explanatory videos parallel to the lessons. Thanks to the helpful clips, the kids quickly caught up on their deficits, and the unorthodox teacher was celebrated. At first, the films could only be accessed via the school server, but that was soon overloaded. So Mr. Schmidt put the explanatory films “not publicly” on YouTube.

But his digitally savvy students copied them and quickly spread them in WhatsApp groups. More and more children – also outside of his school – were able to enjoy the very special didactics of Kai Schmidt. He wondered why every video got 150 clicks in no time, even though there were only 19 students in the class. The answer was a collective grin. The clips are now publicly available to all learners online, and parents, grandparents and tutors are also enthusiastic about using them.

The problem with math anxiety

My parents didn’t have a digital tutor when I was at school, they found an analogue specialist: Ms. Pfennig. She was paid in German marks. She had the patience of an angel and above all was a good psychologist. I had a real math phobia at the time. When a test was coming up, I couldn’t sleep for days beforehand. “Fear” was my standard saying, my mother still tells me about it today when we meet in the family circle. We’re laughing about it now, I wasn’t in the mood for merriment at the time.

Fear created a massive blockage. I saw the sheet with the tasks in front of me in the classroom and couldn’t start – the wall was full of question marks, had no exit. So I regularly screwed up the work, my grade on the certificate was accordingly.

By the way, I’m not the only one with my fear of math. The learning platform scoyo recently found out in a study together with the arithmetic foundation that almost every tenth child is afraid of the school subject. Less than half of the students surveyed in grades 1 to 7 really enjoy arithmetic. dr Silke Ladel, professor of didactics with a focus on mathematics at Saarland University, sums it up in two sentences: “It is crucial that teachers and parents together convey a positive attitude towards mathematics. This succeeds when children understand how it is applied in the experience everyday life or are motivated by a playful approach to mathematical activities.”

Ms. Pfennig took my fears away, she was a kind of early checker Tobi. She explained mathematics to me in a playful way, found reference values ​​that had something to do with my life: “Frank, let’s calculate the area of ​​your BRAVO.” She filled the word problems I hated with a story about the bike rental business I ran with my brother. I was safe on the turf and suddenly found it fun to pour the ratio of rented, free and defective bikes into mathematical equations. “Best storytelling” I would say today, the woman really had it and we laughed a lot in the private lessons.

Eventually the fear went away. I wrote a three plus, for someone like me that was like being awarded a Nobel Prize. I brought Mrs. Pfennig a pack of Merci and decades later she wrote me a letter because she was one of my “star-Voices” columns. Now she appears as a heroine in it and I can’t say thank you often enough, even 39 years after my graduation.

Luckily today’s suffering math kids have Lehrerschmidt. My eldest daughter Emily, who is now a great teacher herself, has nothing against the colleague from Uelsen who explains on YouTube. With a mischievous smile, she told me: “It’s better for the kids to watch Lehrerschmidt 24/7 than for the Elevator Boys.”