I Know You Think I Understand What You Thought You Said
Last week, my young sister-in-law came to stay with us for a few days. She is still in school and it was my responsibility to ensure she had her homework done. The first day, she worked on it on her own. I was happy because it was math homework. Math and I are not friends.
The second night, I asked her if she had homework. She said (rather miserably) "Yes, and it is algebra and I don't understand how to do it.". I assured her that there were enough math whiz-kings in our household to help her conquer this mountain. (One of them would NOT be me but I didn't mention that)
Fast forward to early evening. I was on my way to doing some errands and suddenly remembered I needed to follow up on the homework thing. So I asked her to get out the page of math. She brought it to the table. I asked her if she had a pencil (Stall tactic - because I took one look at the page with all those "X" and "Y" combinations and I began to panic. Not. A. Clue. How. To. Do.) She went and got the pencil. I got up and got her an eraser. (Another stall tactic. "Where is my husband??? Why isn't my son home yet to help us with this?" running through my head)
Then I decided I needed my glasses to see better all the numbers I hadn't a clue what to do with.
After that, I had no more stall tactics. It was time to get down to brass tacks. So I did what any good teacher does. I asked questions. "Is this new material? Or does it look like other assignments you have had?" "Why don't you get out the old material and we can look at the corrections". "O.k. so here are the corrections. What did you find out about the formulae and how to use them from these corrections?" "All right, let's take a look at the first one. What do you think is the way to go about doing this?"
Finally, I ran out of options. I had no more questions, and she had no more answers. And neither of us knew how to proceed. It was time to call in the reserves. I found him, in the living room. "Honey, could you come and take a look at this math and give us some advice?"
And in came my knight in shining armour - armed with a calculator and fresh paper for us to do the calculations. Phew! That was a close one.
The second night, I asked her if she had homework. She said (rather miserably) "Yes, and it is algebra and I don't understand how to do it.". I assured her that there were enough math whiz-kings in our household to help her conquer this mountain. (One of them would NOT be me but I didn't mention that)
Fast forward to early evening. I was on my way to doing some errands and suddenly remembered I needed to follow up on the homework thing. So I asked her to get out the page of math. She brought it to the table. I asked her if she had a pencil (Stall tactic - because I took one look at the page with all those "X" and "Y" combinations and I began to panic. Not. A. Clue. How. To. Do.) She went and got the pencil. I got up and got her an eraser. (Another stall tactic. "Where is my husband??? Why isn't my son home yet to help us with this?" running through my head)
Then I decided I needed my glasses to see better all the numbers I hadn't a clue what to do with.
After that, I had no more stall tactics. It was time to get down to brass tacks. So I did what any good teacher does. I asked questions. "Is this new material? Or does it look like other assignments you have had?" "Why don't you get out the old material and we can look at the corrections". "O.k. so here are the corrections. What did you find out about the formulae and how to use them from these corrections?" "All right, let's take a look at the first one. What do you think is the way to go about doing this?"
Finally, I ran out of options. I had no more questions, and she had no more answers. And neither of us knew how to proceed. It was time to call in the reserves. I found him, in the living room. "Honey, could you come and take a look at this math and give us some advice?"
And in came my knight in shining armour - armed with a calculator and fresh paper for us to do the calculations. Phew! That was a close one.
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