Janis A. Abbott

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Author facts:
It seems incongruous that a Native New Yorker should be happiest living off-grid on a narrowboat, foraging for nature’s bounty and brewing a Kelly Kettle whenever the opportunity arises but it proves God has a wonderful sense of humour!

Life in the Big Apple gave way to life in The Wide Prairies of Manitoba and then to the Majestic Highlands of Scotland.

Summers were spent fruit-picking, grouse-beating and pony-racing at the agricultural shows in Aberdeenshire before returning to the city-life to study in Edinburgh.

My teaching career of 30 years was interspersed with occasional forays into ‘real jobs’. I pulled pints, stacked super-market shelves, liveried horses, cooked for royalty and through it all, tutored budding mathematicians!

Ah, Mathematics! The UNIVERSAL language. Throw in a deck of cards and get the conversation flowing.

Nothing in life is as rewarding as watching confidence blossom and bloom in someone (of any age) who once shrank in terror from times-tables and ‘problems’.

I am grateful to my mother who taught me many card games. She learned them when facing potential paralysis from Guillain- Barre Syndrome, in a New York hospital, aged just 14. Young doctors and nurses were sent to play cards with her to keep her hands from seizing. She just thought it was great fun; no thoughts of her illness or recovery.
Cards, I found, were a source of entertainment that had the added bonus of cultivating understanding, agility and problem-solving with numbers, surreptitiously. The skills just creep up on you!
Always adaptable to any entry level and to extend to greater challenges, how versatile is a humble pack of cards? And so ECO-friendly. So off-grid! Solitary or multi-player options abound!

It has become the Jack of All Trades and The Ace up the Sleeve of any maths teacher with imagination.

I hope the deck of cards will be celebrated as a great tool in the teaching of number-skills for centuries and maintains its rightful exalted place amongst the PCs, tablets and ever-evolving electronic learning devices the future is bound to present.

And when the skills are honed and the challenges met, well, “Rummy anyone?”

More about Janis:
Janis is the author of our addictive book – Deck Ahoy!

Contact Janis through the Deck Ahoy! facebook page with any questions you may wish to ask about the book! Janis would also love to hear of your experiences ‘on deck’ with your young mathematicians.