When our children were very young, Kathy and I decided to homeschool them. “It’ll be great,” Kathy enthused. “I’ll handle English and History, and you can teach Math and Science.”
Fast-forward twelve years, and I think I’ve taught a handful of science lessons and have engaged in only sporadic, drive-by math tutoring. As a homeschooling Dad, I’m a washout — Kathy has had to carry the full weight of pretty much all the schooling for all five kids. Even our recent discovery of IXL fails to redeem me.
Now that the kids are older, math tutoring is accompanied by a certain amount of terror: how can I tutor if I don’t remember how to solve the problems, myself? It has been more years than I would care to admit since I was in Algebra I or II, and I only learned it so well the first time. Contrary to what math teachers may say, a lot of mathematics learning is never used again in real life. It is often a ticket to other learning, and certainly some fields are more math-intensive than others, but I think I’ve avoided all but the simplest math ever since I was out of school, even though I’m a programmer by trade. That is, after all, what computers are for.
It has been a long time since I solved a quadratic equation.
The other day, Kathy asked me to help Rachel prepare for her upcoming Math test. Even with the answer key, nothing was making sense to her, so I reluctantly stepped in. Rachel is an excellent student: tenacious and stubborn and diligent. For some reason, she has very low confidence in Math, even though she consistently receives grades in the low 90′s. I am determined that she conquer this self-perception problem — I don’t insist that she enjoy math, but (for all the work she puts into it) I really want her to enjoy the rewards of proficiency.
[Parenthetically, the kids tend to avoid me as a math teacher. I usually have to re-discover whatever mathematic principle they are studying, and it takes quite a while -- they'd rather have a quick-fix (or better yet, just have me give them the answer).]
Rachel has recently entered the Federal Math-Witness Protection Program.
But Rachel is really taking her math seriously, these days — so she swallowed her reluctance and cheerfully bore my ponderous tutoring. At one point, we found ourselves united in our anger toward the suspension bridge word problems. “If that stupid cable company delivers one more cable to our bridge without labeling it, heads will roll,” we agreed.
Father-daughter bonding, or fodder for future therapy? Only time will tell.
Tim
Oh my, yes. How quickly I have forgotten everything about math I learned in high school…
~Luke
Ohhhhhhh I can soooooooooooooooo wait till I get in tenth grade!
Yeah me too!
Tim, try Life of Fred for a refresher course! Okay, so I admit we’ve only used it for First Grade, but I’ve heard excellent things about Fred’s upper level courses.