When Numbers Divide and then Multiply

When I think about Who I Am as an educator at this moment, you could say that I’m 40% teacher, 40% student, 20% teacher-leader, but I am always 100% parent. Everything I think and care about in education is definitely shaded by my perspective as a parent and my hope for my daughter’s future. In fact, my love for her is the fuel which creates an urgency for changes in education and can blind my decision-making.

Although I am not a proponent of homework for young children, I do spend an evening a week “doing math” with my 3rd-grade daughter because, during our transition to Laos, her academics have dipped. We usually sit together to play Math For Love games but after her MAP test, we’ve been doing some lessons on Khan Academy to supplement her classroom learning. My husband and I have been trying to investigate other more “fun” options for self-directed learning since she is getting older and desiring independence. Since my daughter just recently stopped counting on her fingers, we’ve decided to explore the math website Reflex Math that was recommended by a colleague:

Full of games that students love, Reflex takes students at every level and helps them quickly gain math fact fluency and confidence. And educators and parents love the powerful reporting that allows them to monitor progress and celebrate success.

Sounds like its worth a try, right? We felt that if she could become more proficient in her math facts, she’d feel more assured when engaged in math. So for the last few days, she’s been “playing the game”, and the report we got made us gasp:

So then we asked her to do this game daily, while she found fun in its novelty, excited to do it independently, eventually, it became a drag on her motivation for math learning. Last night, when I came in and asked her why she was staring at the screen, it brought her to tears. Perhaps it wasn’t one of my “good parenting” moments when I asked her that, but I was afraid that she was just allowing time to elapse until the “store” opened, and she could take her avatar shopping-something that a lot of kids might do to”play the game”.  I really felt awful that my words stung her heart. When I inquired further behind her emotion, she told me that she didn’t have enough “think” time to solve the unknown facts. Oh man, I really had misunderstood her blank stare!

And I, like many parents, had fallen into the trap of thinking that fast=fluent. Instead of creating confidence, I had crushed her esteem. Darn it! As an educator, I know better, so why didn’t I do better?

After dinner, I decided to give her a little quiz and any math facts that she needed more than 5 seconds to solve, went on a flash card. On the flash card, along with the answer, we’d create a strategy to help her remember it better. We only focused on addition and subtraction.

Now all of a sudden, what had become a drudgery of math practice had suddenly become strangely exciting. Whenever she could quickly give me an answer, she started dancing around the room and laughing. And the ones she got “wrong” (aka, not quick)?-well, when she shared her strategy for solving it, she had solid mental math strategies such as using derived facts. I started giving her harder ones like 17+17 and, as she exclaimed “34”, I wanted to get up and dance around the room with her. Suddenly a “bad parent moment” had turned into a “good teaching moment”, for both her and I.

So what did I learn? Technology isn’t a teacher. I am. Conflict can help develop a deeper understanding of one another. Time may be relative, but conceptual thinking is not.

And most importantly, when I think about homework/home learning–it’s never the worksheet or activity that improves the performance of a student, instead, it is the parent relationship that builds understanding through compassionate attention and love of learning–it’s the US, not the IT.