A mathematic crisis
I don't have a lot of great memories doing math homework. In fact, they either feature very long hours of trying to complete a set of problems or very lengthy bouts of crying.
My conflict with this academic subject started from the very beginning. I'll never forget sitting at my desk in first grade, staring blankly at set of simple addition problems. I had absolutely no idea what to do. Later, my mother tirelessly worked with me to hone my subtraction and addition skills. It seemed she flipped through an endless pile of flash cards and even strung a set of plastic beads around one of the dining room tables so I could visualize numbers being added and taken away.
When the math got more complicated, my father stepped in. It is a blessing to have a parent who knows algebra and needs no assistance from any textbook or cheat sheet. But it can also be their curse to have child who is extremely slow at this stuff. In short, my father would get frustrated and I would just bawl.
Recently I had the chance to step into my father's shoes. My sister's oldest son is struggling with math himself. He too had that troublesome addition worksheet and couldn't figure out what to do. My sister was out at a meeting; my brother-in-law was at work. So I attempted to show my nephew how to add numbers together. It didn't work. The poor kid burst into tears and no amount of drawing sticks or counting fingers was going to soothe him. I felt bad for him and told the story of my own woes with mathematics. In my ears, I sounded just like my parents as I said, "you just go to stick with it; you just have to keep working at it."
I could feel the tables turning on me as the roles were reversed. My nephew became my younger self - all he wanted to do was flee while I became my father, demanding over and over "do you understand?!" "Show me that you understand!"
My conflict with this academic subject started from the very beginning. I'll never forget sitting at my desk in first grade, staring blankly at set of simple addition problems. I had absolutely no idea what to do. Later, my mother tirelessly worked with me to hone my subtraction and addition skills. It seemed she flipped through an endless pile of flash cards and even strung a set of plastic beads around one of the dining room tables so I could visualize numbers being added and taken away.
When the math got more complicated, my father stepped in. It is a blessing to have a parent who knows algebra and needs no assistance from any textbook or cheat sheet. But it can also be their curse to have child who is extremely slow at this stuff. In short, my father would get frustrated and I would just bawl.
Recently I had the chance to step into my father's shoes. My sister's oldest son is struggling with math himself. He too had that troublesome addition worksheet and couldn't figure out what to do. My sister was out at a meeting; my brother-in-law was at work. So I attempted to show my nephew how to add numbers together. It didn't work. The poor kid burst into tears and no amount of drawing sticks or counting fingers was going to soothe him. I felt bad for him and told the story of my own woes with mathematics. In my ears, I sounded just like my parents as I said, "you just go to stick with it; you just have to keep working at it."
I could feel the tables turning on me as the roles were reversed. My nephew became my younger self - all he wanted to do was flee while I became my father, demanding over and over "do you understand?!" "Show me that you understand!"
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