LetMeBeClear

CC had her first classroom trauma. She has lived 8 years without this feeling. I am sorry that it found her. In class, her teacher was putting math problems on the board "for fun" they don't do math at her school. CC tried raising her hand for every problem and knew the answers to all the ones going up. The problems kept getting harder, and she kept raising her hand.

When she was finally called on, she got nervous. Her palms got sweaty. The problem was 55 - 36. She knew it needed borrowing, so she mentally removed one from the first digit, did that subtraction and wrote down a 1 on the tens place. Her face was flushed, she wasn't thinking. Everyone was staring at her, she added the second two digits together instead of subtracting, remembered she had already taken care of the tens place, and wrote down a 1. Her answer was 11. She looked back in time to realize her mistake, but before she could tell her teacher that it should be 19, (Here comes the worst part) the teacher said - "That's okay, You probably haven't gotten to that level yet."

Oh. The worst part is that the teacher thought she didn't know how to do it and felt sorry for her. Her tongue tied in knots, and she couldn't speak. We've all been the victim of our nerves. All I could do was hug her and tell her that she is human and it happens to us all. My poor baby. She kept raising her hand to try to redeem herself, but didn't get called on again.

Since we homeschool our kids and plan to continue to homeschool the littlest two through highschool, I have been researching math programs for high school. If that seems strange to you, you should know that my oldest is graduating this year from high school and hates math. I blame myself. I can do math and have had a couple of years of calculus way back in the 1980's. However, I learned that being able to factor has nothing in the world to do with being able to teach someone how to factor.

I have been looking at math programs for high school with the hopes of finding one that will teach my kids how to do math - not just arithmetic, but actual math. I realized that I cannot evaluate these programs until I am more comfortable with math myself.

I came across a plan for math for myself, and a definition of educational philosophy that make me feel like a simpleton. I am going to work on this, right after I finish up with my British Lit reading for my son and try to remember that I once knew Latin. And there is the little matter of Medieval History and working for a living.