Round 1:
“Mommy, I need your help,” my daughter calls from the kitchen table.
“What’s up?” I reply from my office, a full six steps away.
“How do I know what “x” is?”
“Ugh!” I think. “What’s the problem?” I ask, and get up so that I can actually look at the equation in question.
It’s a standard linear equation (y=mx+b, for those who need a reminder). Her task: identify the point where the line crosses the x-axis.
“Okay,” I begin, “What is “x” whenever the line crosses the x-axis?”
“Zero,” she responds. “Whew!” I think, “This is promising.”
“So calculate ‘y,’” I tell her. She responds with a blank stare.
Okay. So I try again, “What is ‘y’ when x=0?”
“Oh, she says.” She grabs a pencil and starts working on her scratch paper. “I get it.” Ecstatic at the complete lack of fireworks involved in our exchange, I return to my office.
Our “teaching moments” in math are usually much louder and tearful. In fact, by the time Reiley reached third grade, our daily homework marathon had nearly made me an alcoholic. I’m not exaggerating. I needed a glass of wine to maintain my composure until her dad could take over when he came in from work.
Don’t get me wrong. Reiley’s a bright girl. It’s just that what she learns in one context doesn’t always “travel well.” At six, she could respond accurately to any math problem generated by a given “fact family,” in the kitchen, but drew a blank when quizzed on the same problems next door in the living room. By eight, she was a quick study in division…when the story line concerned balloons, but transform the items to be divided into, say, books, and the result was tears, often accompanied by a screaming fit on the theme of her “dumbness.” I had to bite my tongue not to join in with my own lament, “Why can’t I make this child understand? What is missing here? I wish she would just ‘get it,’ so that we can move on and out of this hell!”
And I was doing better than her teachers! At least she didn’t “check out” of our sessions altogether. More than anything, this marginal success proved to be the tipping point in our decision to homeschool.
We’ve actually been making terrific progress until this year…when she started Algebra I.
Round 2:
I hadn’t been back at work in my office long before my daughter called again, “Mom…my…” I knew better than to respond verbally; after all, this was the second math “crisis” in less than 30 minutes.
“What’s the problem?” I ask.
“I have to pick the ‘right’ graph…What do I do? Do I make x=0?”
I look at the equation: y=2/9x + 2. “Sure.”
“So the answer is this one?” she asks and points to one of the possible responses, featuring a line that crosses through the origin (0,0).
“No,” I explain, “If x=0, then y=2.”
Tears come to her eyes. “Oh. Then is it this one?” she asks, pointing now to one of the two graphs of lines that pass through the point (0, 2).
“Could be,” I tell her, “Graph it.”
“How do I know what ‘x’ is?” she asks.
I immediately draw a quick table with two columns, and write “x” at the top of one column, and “y” at the top of the other; then I write “0″ under the “x” and “2″ under the “y,” and instruct her to complete the table like usual.
“But how do I know what ‘x’ is?” she asks again. And my tummy tightens as I remember arguing with two-year-old Reiley, who would only eat “peaches.” I might say, for instance, “You had peaches for breakfast, how about a banana now?” She would say, simply, “peaches.” “How about applesauce?” I’d try. And she would tell me again, “peaches.”
I tell her, “It doesn’t matter. Just pick some numbers. Small ones are better…0, 1, 2, 3…”
“That’s not what the book says,” she informs me.
“What does the book say?” I ask.
“It gives you the numbers.” she explains.
I take a very deep breath before answering, but can’t help myself from raising my voice, “Then the book just picks numbers.”
“Why?…I don’t get it…” she blubbers, now entirely teary-eyed.
“What don’t you get?!” I find myself on the verge of screaming now: “All you have to do is pick ‘x’ and calculate ‘y’! That’s it! Graph a few points and see which one of the possible graphs looks the most like yours!”
“But I don’t know what ‘x’ is!” she screams back.
I yell, in the nicest and most understanding way possible, “It doesn’t matter; use the ones in the possible graph answers…-2, -1, 0, 1, 2…,” while simultaneously filling in the “x” column. “You can use bigger numbers, but the math is harder…”
“Okay…” she says, still crying.
Still appearing to be completely unconvinced that solving a math problem can involve “just picking” numbers, she completes the table, graphs the line, and selects the correct answer.
She beams. I leave the room to cool off, feeling like the worst possible mother, not to mention entirely incompetent as a math teacher.
Before I’m out of earshot, she has the temerity to ask, “What’s next, Mom?”
“Linear equations,” I tell her.”
“Want me to pray?” my eldest son asks. I wish I could say it was only in jest.
.
. Now I know what I want for Christmas. Santa, are you listening?
In the wake of our weekend road trip just over the border into Arizona – remember, it’s not the distance that matters here, but rather the HOT, wide open desert – I’ve been doing a bit of research on “road trips with children.” I’d like to say this little project was in the interest of ensuring that we steer clear of emotional meltdowns during our next trip, but it was all about commiseration. In that respect, my research flopped.
