For a couple of months now, I’ve been working with my foster daughter on catching up in math class. She’s “significantly” behind her peers (and continues to fall further behind each month), but I didn’t realize just how deep the problem ran.
At first, I thought, “Okay, she’s not doing her homework. We can change that.”
And then I realized that she wasn’t doing her homework because she didn’t know how. I thought, “Okay so she doesn’t know how to convert decimals to percentages. No big deal. I’m a math teacher! I’ll just work with her on it until she understands.”
But she still wasn’t getting it.
So we backed up and started working on simpler concepts of splitting numbers into parts. But she couldn’t divide anything because she doesn’t understand how to do long division. So we backed up again to work on long division.
But then we found out she couldn’t do long division because she didn’t know her multiplication facts. At all. So we backed up again.
Long story short, we eventually discovered that she’s missing fundamental math skills, such as adding double-digit numbers, subtracting with regrouping, and organizing her thoughts on paper.
This problem started with missing skills from about first grade. She started falling through the cracks, academically, FOUR YEARS AGO and never caught up.
I realized pretty quickly how completely pointless it was for us to even attempt decimals when she didn’t know how to add. We had to go all the way back to the place where she started to get confused and rebuild that foundation.
Do you know what is exactly the same as being behind in math? Being behind in emotional healthiness and coping skills.
Adults often wonder how they can get their children/students to stop a certain behavior, but they often forget just how far the problem goes. Teachers are usually great about recognizing the skills that a student is missing, but I think sometimes it’s forgotten that those missing skills stem from an entire group of skills that might be lacking.
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