Helping Your Child Struggle

One of the first things I tell my high school freshmen is that I have a math degree.

I then ask if that means I can just do a bunch of math problems, and naturally their response is always, “Yes”.

A degree in math is a lot more than the ability to complete higher (and lower) level math problems. Math majors are attractive to the real-world employers due to their ability to think.

When a student enters a math class at Darlington, our main objective is to teach them to think. Sure, we want our students to be successful on the ACT/SAT and have the highest GPA they can possibly achieve, but our main goal is to teach them the life skill of thinking their way through a problem.

For example, I am locked out of my car. How can I get out of this?! Yes, making your way through math helps you solve this problem.

Last year, my daughter was having trouble with a math problem. I was tired from a long day so I started telling her exactly how to do the problem. Mrs. Massey always makes her students write “got help” when they receive help on a problem. My daughter wrote “got help” and was happy to get the answer correct.  

The next morning in math class I had a student asking me about a problem. My response was, “You can do this. I want you to think your way through it.”

Then I thought, "Wait a minute! This should have been my response to my daughter."  

It was my tiredness and my daddy instincts that made me want to help my daughter. I didn’t want to see her cry over not being able to do the problem, which was happening.

I also didn’t want her to possibly be the only student in the class to not get this problem correct.

But, did I really help her?

I don’t think I helped her at all. She still didn’t know how to do the problem and she didn’t learn how to get through a tough situation on her own. 

In the Math Department we set up our classrooms for students to struggle. Not to the point of emotional breakdown, but struggle. 

We are going to support every student in our classes. We will build them up when they need lifting and will never allow them to give up. 

But at the end of the day, we want them to struggle, because “to struggle is to learn.”