Today I went out driving with my sixteen year old son. It is fair to say this is not yet his favorite activity. (I was the one who added that "yet" — he is pretty sure it will never be something he wants to do.) You see, it's really hard for him. He can't sense what to do. There are so many things to watch for. He has to think about everything. Nothing is natural. Nothing is automatic. It's hard and it's not fun.
My son was trying to logic out which way to turn the wheel so that he could pull out of a parking place on Division Street (don't worry, we were there very early on a Sunday) and then he had to think about when he was twenty yards from the stop sign so that he could begin signalling and then he had to remember to start to break. The joy of a road trip seemed very far away.
When I wasn't thinking about how close they put mailboxes to the road these days, I was thinking about our math night on Tuesday. There are a striking number of similarities. For kids who don't have facility with their basic facts, math exploration can lose much of its joy. They can't sense what to do; they have to think about everything; nothing is automatic. It can make math a battle and no one wins. When you don't know your basic facts, patterns aren't obvious. Relationships evade you. Everything can seem arbitrary. And everything is a lot more work.
Indeed, many of us were taught math in a way where joy and even understanding weren't expected. One memorized how to do things and questions of inquiry like, "Why does this work?" were often shut down. Many folks learned math facts in a way that didn't lead to greater math understanding — just more things to memorize, often in stressful timed situations. It's not surprising that many people feel that math's "not their thing." But, importantly, it can be your thing (and your child's thing!)
On Tuesday at math night, the whole faculty will talk with families the shift in how we are developing math fluency from kindergarten through fifth grade. We'll share the research that has led us to this place and provide supports for all parents so that home math activities are successful and lead to powerful, deep math fluency. I hope you can join us.
The Rookery 
Leave a comment