Do You Have a Heart for Math? [Show]

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Gretchen Roe: 00:00:05.283
Welcome to The Demme Learning Show. Our mission here is to help families stay in the learning journey wherever it takes them. This bonus episode was previously recorded as a webinar and was not created with the audio listener in mind. We hope you will find value in today’s episode. Hello, everyone. My name is Gretchen Roe, and it’s my very great pleasure to welcome my colleague today, Lisa Chimento. We have so much to talk about today. Welcome to this Valentine’s Day episode of our webinar. And today we’re going to talk about whether or not you have a heart for math. And really, the joy of this particular episode was created in the thought that many of us do not have a heart for math. And so sometimes that’s the greatest obstacle to a successful homeschooling journey is being concerned that perhaps we don’t have the mathematical chops to teach our children. So Lisa and I are going to talk about that today. We’re going to give you some practical strategies. And I’m going to let Lisa introduce herself, and then we’ll get started. Lisa?

Lisa Chimento:00:01:18.360
Thanks, Gretchen. Hi, everybody. I’m Lisa Chimento. I’m a Customer Success Consultant and Placement Specialist here at Demme Learning. I’ve been with the company full-time for nearly six years, and before that, for about 10 years, working at homeschool conventions. My husband and I homeschooled our four children for 25 years, and we used Matthew C for most of that time. So it’s been a pleasure to work with the company, to work with customers, and we’re really excited to share this webinar with you today.

Gretchen Roe: 00:01:50.367
Absolutely. And my husband and I homeschooled six children, 21 years. And to be wholly honest, I did not have a heart for math. I knew when we became overnight homeschoolers when my eldest daughter was told there was no need for her to memorize her multiplication tables, that I had to do something else. I was a math-hesitant parent, and I wanted something more for my children. And it took me six years to find my way to Matthew C. But I sure am glad that I did because it made a tremendous difference for my children, and it will make a difference for their children as well. I think one of the things that is most important for us to talk about is recognizing that there is not a point in your life where math learning just ceases to exist. Math is one of those things I laughingly say like death and taxes. You don’t get out of this life without both of them. And so can we talk a little bit about why it’s important to change our mindset as adults so we can impart that proper mindset to our kids?

Lisa Chimento:00:03:03.086
Yeah, like it or not, we’re all lifelong learners. And whether or not we actually learn anything depends on how well we embrace that idea. To be willing and open to learning new things, no matter how old we are, no matter how long we have been an expert in a topic or familiar with information, we are always learning. I’ve learned a million things since I stopped homeschooling my children that I wish I had known while I was homeschooling them. But it’s never too late to continue learning. And I think we do need to model that for our children. We’re going to be using math and the other skills we learned in school and afterwards throughout our lives, in every area of our lives. So it’s really important to just be mindful ourselves first, and then we’re going to be able to take that attitude in to our children while we’re teaching them. And that modeling of that attitude for them is going to be so critical. There’s a difference between sitting in a classroom with a teacher in front who you know is an expert, and they’re telling you things that you don’t understand yet. And I remember feeling this myself, and you probably did, too, sitting in the room and going, well, that’s easy for you to say because you already know it. You already understand it. But when we are able to come alongside our children with that attitude of being a lifelong learner, and I’m going to be learning things, too, with you, you’re not alone in this journey. That’s powerful. That’s a powerful thing to do for a student. They don’t feel alone. They don’t feel isolated. And you’ve let them know that you’re not going anywhere without them. So I think that that’s something that we can impart to our kids, but it needs to be in us first.

Gretchen Roe: 00:04:55.917
Absolutely. And one of the things that we had talked about when we were planning this was the presuppositions we have as parents and as adults about mathematics. One of those is more means better. So if you’re weak in math, you do more math, and you’ll have a better result. And that’s not really the case. Book learning is the only kind of learning. I know we talked about that as well. And being able to model for our children the perseverance of being able to stick with something until you understand. I just watched a very interesting YouTube video last night with an educator talking about how boys, mathematically, boys and girls, specifically fifth graders, when presented with a mathematical challenge, a difficult mathematical challenge, researchers have found that boys tend to rise to the occasion of that challenge and girls tend to give up because we have been acculturated to believe if we don’t know it at the beginning, then we’re not going to know it. And I want to take just a hot pause here, Lisa, because I think you have a wonderful story of encouragement. And that’s Bob’s story. So can you talk about revisiting as an adult the things perhaps you didn’t grasp well when you were first a student?

Lisa Chimento:00:06:31.904
Yeah, my husband had an opportunity at the age of 50 to take college courses. He had never gone to college before, had never been a college student, and had admittedly been a terrible high school student. And so, all those years later, faced with the daunting thought of going to college, it really made him nervous. And so we talked about some of the things that would be a consideration for him. And in the coursework that he was going to be taking, he knew he was going to need math. And I said to him, what worries you the most about taking these courses? And he said the math. And I said, well, aren’t you the lucky guy because I happen to have every level of math you see there is, where would you like to start? And we talked about what he felt confident with up to that point and the four operations he was fine with, but he was a little concerned about fractions. So we started with the epsilon level. And I basically just handed him the materials. I gave him the DVD and the books. And I said, what do you think? Do you want to try this yourself? Do you want my help? And he said, let me try it myself. He went into his office, closed the door, and came back out at the end of that night with an astonished look on his face. And he just went, wow, he couldn’t believe that he was understanding something that had made him so nervous for so many years, and it seemed so simple to him. And he continued through that summer. And in one summer, he put himself through two of the Matthew C levels, went on to take those college courses, and got an A in every class, made the Dean’s List. I mean, it was a huge confidence booster for him to take on something that he thought was so scary and dreadful. And to realize that he could do it as a 50-year-old man, it was a huge thing, and it was really fun to watch. I really was so happy for him.

Gretchen Roe: 00:08:32.774
Lisa, did you still have kids at home when he did that?

Lisa Chimento:00:08:35.685
Yes. And I was still homeschooling. Some of them were– one of them was out at college already. One was in high school and doing some dual-enrolled courses. And the other two, I was still homeschooling.

Gretchen Roe: 00:08:47.653
What a powerful model of an example of being willing to be that lifelong learner [crosstalk].

Lisa Chimento:00:08:52.670
Yeah. Absolutely.

Gretchen Roe: 00:08:55.093
And that leads me to the statement that we developed of modeling the struggle of being– I was the parent who – when my kids would say, “Mom, I need help with a word problem,” – would say, “Oh, word problems. I hate word problems. I really don’t like word problems.” And it wasn’t really until I found my way to math, you see, that I understood that word problems are the practical application of math in real life. And you got to get comfortable with them because that’s the way math is going to come to you as an adult. So being able to say instead, if you have been that parent like me who has said, “Oh, I really dislike this,” and you’ve said it in front of your kids, it’s time to have that conversation of reframing what you dislike and what you like and be able to say, “I have not liked math in the past, but I’m going to come alongside you, and we’re going to learn together.” That’s a huge, huge paradigm shift. So can you talk a little bit about why it’s important to have just not the mechanics of math, but the underlying understanding as well?

Lisa Chimento:00:10:09.081
Yeah. And you just mentioned it. The reason is because we’re going to have to employ math in our lives in real-life applications. And that means more than just memorizing facts and formulas. Those things are necessary as well. But if we don’t understand those underlying concepts, the why behind what we’re doing, then we won’t know how to put it into practice in different applications. And that’s a big piece of this. So if you’ve got a student– and I was this student who had a great memory, so the facts and formulas came quickly, and I really struggled with word problems. When I began homeschooling my own children and began to see that why behind the math, it was some really interesting jaw-dropping moments because I hadn’t realized, as an adult, all of those things that I was having trouble with in applying math in my life, like finding the area of my living room so that I could purchase carpeting. I didn’t know how to do it because I didn’t understand those underlying concepts. And learning this alongside my kids gave me a moment of embarrassment, but then a real sense of joy that I could now understand why I was doing what I was doing, and now I knew how to apply it to what I needed to in my life.

Gretchen Roe: 00:11:35.285
And we might be talking about a larger principle here than just anxiety with regard to math. Willing to be that teachable spirit and to model that teachable spirit in front of our kids is a huge aspect of why we take this different journey. Being able to come alongside our children and learn right along with them makes all the difference in the world for them. And and being able to teach them that there is value in the mistakes that they make. And you do a wonderful job talking about why mistakes are really the place where the rubber meets the road. So can you talk a little bit more about that?

Lisa Chimento:00:12:16.317
Yeah. And the importance of this didn’t hit me until I put myself through the Algebra 1 course. I had done it four times with my kids, but only gave as much of my brain as I needed to to see them through, because, as a homeschooling parent, you have a lot of things going on in your life. But once they were finished and I was done with them, I put myself through it. And I began to see that when I had made a mistake, it was an opportunity for me to learn that thing in a way I had not fully understood it. Sometimes it was a quick catch. Sometimes I needed to go to the solutions and work that thing backwards, and then it clicked. Sometimes I had to ask. No matter what I did, I was just getting stuck. And I reached out to some of the other folks in the company and said, “I’m still not getting this. Can you please help?” and their explanation. Sometimes you just need to hear somebody else say it in different words, and then I got a hold of it.

Lisa Chimento:00:13:13.489
And then the opportunity to put that thing into practice over and over and over again until it became second nature, what a difference that made. So this is the opportunity that we have as adults to reframe that thinking about making mistakes. And we need to be able to then convey that to our kids that, “It’s okay if you make a mistake. Now is your opportunity to go and look at that thing and find out what happened? Where did the mistake happen? Why did it happen? And then how can I correct it myself?” And you might need help with it, but if you can do the correction yourself, even better. It will do a couple of things. It will make your children have to show their work. And so if you have been that mom – raise your hands – who has a lifelong battle with your kids about showing their work, this is one of the things that really helps with that because if you give them the opportunity to correct their own mistakes, they will have to be able to look back at what they’ve done and go through the steps to see where did this go south and how can I fix it? If they haven’t shown their work and they’ve done everything in their head, then they don’t know where that happened. And then they kind of have to do it all over again. So that’s a motivating thing there.

Lisa Chimento:00:14:30.666
But this opportunity of learning it better, it’s so valuable. Chances are good they won’t make that mistake again. Or if they do, they’ll catch it more quickly. And that’s really, really a helpful thing. So we have that chance now to do that. And sometimes it’s helpful as a parent to model that yourself. When you make a mistake, how do you respond to yourself? Do you kick yourself? Do you go, “Oh, that was dumb.” No. We need to start to think about– our kids are– I mean they’re watching. They’re listening. They catch more by the way that we behave than the things that we tell them they’re supposed to do. So we’ve got to model it for ourselves and to be able to show them, “How do I respond when I make a mistake? If I can respond with, ‘Oh, wow, that was wrong. Let me go and try that again,'” then we let them know that. And then they can do it in their own lives because they’ll have seen it modeled.

Gretchen Roe: 00:15:30.632
So, Lisa, what you’ve said has merit for me and gives value to what I’m hearing you say. But dialogue with me as a parent, I’m sitting here with a student who has an Algebra 1 mistake. And I know I’ve watched you do this over the phone with families. Talk a parent through here’s a problem that has the wrong solution. What are the kinds of questions a parent needs to ask in order to help their student unpack that process?

Lisa Chimento:00:16:04.921
I think one of the first things to do, and I’ve seen the value of this many times when I’m supporting kids over the phone and I can say to them honestly, “Well, Gee, I can’t see your work, so you’re going to need to narrate to me what you did.” But even as a parent sitting right next to them, you can do the same thing. So have them pull out one of their problems and say, “Okay. Now talk me through your steps.” There is such value in having them verbalize each step that they’re doing. Oftentimes, while they’re speaking, they catch their own mistakes because they hear themselves say it versus keeping all of that thought in their head. It’s not as easy to catch. So have them verbalize their steps, narrate as they go. And if they can catch their own mistakes, great. If they don’t, let them finish the process and then go, “Okay. Let’s go back a couple of steps. Why did you do this here?” And then let them look back at that step because we’re talking about multi-step problems for the most part. And so let them look back at that step. “Why did you do this?” And let them say why they did it. If they’re still not catching it, certainly you can give them the answer. But very often in those kinds of conversations and those questions, they will catch it. I just had a conversation yesterday with a student and she had forgotten to carry over a negative sign while she was going. She was manipulating the numbers so that she could isolate a variable on one side of the equation. And in doing so, she subtracted this number from the left side of the equation and put it over to the right side, but she hadn’t carried it as a negative. And so I said to her, “Okay. Go back a couple of steps. Tell me what you did there. What did you do with that number? How did you move it from the left side to the right side?” She said, “I subtracted it.” And then I just was silent. I didn’t say a word. And so there’s this deafening three-second silence. And then she went, “Oh,” because she realized what she had just said, “I subtracted it.” And when she looked at it on the other side of the equation, it hadn’t been subtracted. It had been added. She caught her mistake that way. So we need to be able to be willing to take a little bit of time. It doesn’t have to be with every single problem, certainly. But on some of these that the kids can’t find their own mistakes, you can have that conversation and ask those questions. Why did you do what you did? Or what did you do here to get that answer? And let them answer it and see what happens.

Gretchen Roe: 00:18:39.378
Absolutely. And I think one of the things that we need to take into account is the world is– we divide the world into lots of ways. And the world is divided into those of us who process externally and those of us who process internally. And if you are a parent who is an internal processor, you’re going to find this a heavier lift than those of us who easily process externally our feelings, our thoughts, what we feel about things. So this may be some mental calisthenics for you to work your way through being able to learn how to ask the right questions. It’s not necessarily give them the right answer. It’s teach them how to learn. That’s right. And if you start that when they’re really young, it’s much easier. But it doesn’t mean the ship has sailed if you haven’t done it to this point in time. Being able to walk yourself back through what you’ve done and say, “Oh, here’s where I made my mistake.” That’s much more valuable than just getting the right answer. And it extrapolates to well beyond mathematics as well. So I think that’s a really important thing for us to remember. Lisa, I know you have another thought there. I can see in your head So what did I miss in the encapsulation there?

Lisa Chimento:00:20:07.566
No. You said something really good. You used the word “learn” with regard to the adult. This is another piece of lifelong learning. We’re going to learn how to study our own students and learn about them and learn how to respond to them because they are all different. If you’ve got multiple kids, you might have to approach one child a little differently than you do another, depending on their own personalities and their temperaments. But studying our students is another piece of lifelong learning. And the thing to remember is this. Think about when you were in school, you learned a body of knowledge when you were in school. How much of it did you remember automatically all the years after coming out of school, and how much of it did you have to revisit to relearn? That’s going to go on over and over and over again with everything. So if somebody doesn’t remember something from one day to the next, it’s not the end of the world. It can be repeated and they will repeat it. I think we went through certain portions of history three times during the course of their school years. And whether or not they still remember it today, I don’t know. But my kids are still learning things, and they’re teaching themselves things that they never learned because we have so many tools to do so now, which is marvelous. But that aspect of teaching a child how to learn versus giving them bottom line answers because it’s not just about filling their cup with a body of knowledge. It’s about teaching them to learn how to continue teaching themselves throughout their lives, no matter what they want to learn. Whether it’s finding their own resources or seeking help from someone else who already knows how to do that. All of those are parts of lifelong learning.

Gretchen Roe: 00:21:54.505
Lisa, let’s talk a little bit about– and I am this parent. So I cast no aspersions to those [laughter] who are joining us live or who will watch this video later. But if you’re that parent who is busy spinning multiple plates, and you don’t check up on the math regularly, it can be a very discouraging experience when Friday rolls around. And you say, “All right. Let’s check five days of math.” And all of a sudden, your child has learned that process, and they’ve learned it in the wrong way. So I want to encourage you to think differently about the process of checking in with your student and their progress. And Lisa, you explained this well. I’ve listened to you at conferences as you’ve explained it to other parents. So can you talk a little bit about as a student becomes older, and the math is not purely computational math, the value of checking in to make sure today that they have it and then checking in again the next day? Do you still have it, or do we need to reteach something? Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Lisa Chimento:00:23:08.856
Yeah. I think it really comes down to that we get better at things that we practice often. And so think about working on similar types of problems using the same process over and over on one day’s work, a second, a third, a fourth, and fifth day’s work. That student has just gotten an awful lot of practice. And if they’ve been doing it the wrong way, it’s going to be harder for them to unlearn that. And please hear me. I get it. We’re busy. And if you’ve got multiple children, you’re busier than maybe some of us are. So one thing to think about, I tried this with my kids, and it worked really, really well. At the end of their math day, I would hand them the instruction manual and say, “You may look at the solutions and compare the answer, the final answer, against your answer. If you got it right, that’s great. If you made an error, put a circle around the problem number. Don’t write what the correct answer is, just circle the problem number. And when you’re finished doing that, hand me back the book. And then once they had done that, they could look and I gave them the opportunity to go back and check those problems that they had gotten wrong and check them themselves and see if they could find the error and if they could correct it. And if they couldn’t, then come to me and we’d work on it together. And that really helped free me up a little more so that they were getting some of their own done, but they were learning an awful lot during that self-correction time that wasn’t me actively teaching them. There was a self-learning going on as they found their own mistakes, corrected them, and then got the right answer. So that’s another opportunity too. And, of course, you have to have conversation with kids, trust has to be built, make sure that they’re doing this on the honor system. But it’s a valuable process, it was for me and it’s a solution for some of you too, but the idea here is don’t let it go for a whole week. Because now if they’ve been doing it wrong– I mean, think about this as a student, somebody said, “You just did all of that work, and now you have to do it all over again,” that’s overwhelming.

Gretchen Roe: 00:25:22.024
Absolutely. And I think one of the things– I’m talking about my own foibles here. But the first year that we homeschooled, we used a math curriculum where half of the answers were in the answer key. And I have to tell you all, it took me about 10 weeks to catch on to the fact that my student didn’t miss the ones where the answers were in the answer key. Now she was a very creative young lady, obviously she wanted to do it right, so she was checking the answers before she did the work. But when that support was removed, it was five or six steps back. And I think if I’ve learned anything over the years, it’s we want to set our kids up to feel like they are successful, not that they had to sneak something by us. And so in that process, I think that, like Lisa said, being honest in the process is a huge factor there. Lisa, can you talk about the value of math as stretching the brain? I loved what you said about this, and I would like you to revisit that part of our conversation.

Lisa Chimento:00:26:36.665
So like I said, I had graduated all four kids, I started working with the company full-time, and some calls came in asking for some support and I thought, “Oh, well, I put my four kids through algebra. I can help them,” and I realized very quickly that I couldn’t. I had forgotten some things and I had lost the ability to explain it cohesively. And so I said, I asked my manager, “Could I please put myself through this course,” and he said, “Absolutely,” and so I began to work on it in my free time and it was an amazing thing. Because up until that point, I had started becoming a little worried about my brain. I was in my late 50s and I said, I’m forgetting things, I’m forgetting words. I’m really kind of worried about myself. And I began to go through, first, the pre-algebra and then the algebra 1 course, and it was almost like I could physically feel a difference in my thinking. I was thinking more clearly. I was remembering things better, I was speaking better, and I just thought, “This is really interesting. This is a benefit I hadn’t counted on.” I just did it so that I could support users calling in, and here it was affecting me personally in a very positive way. So it has been really interesting after I finished Algebra 1, I went through geometry. And geometry is very different. Algebra is very abstract and complex and geometry is very concrete and visual. But there is one page in each of the geometry workbook lessons that does some Algebra 1 review. And I found myself craving it. I couldn’t wait to get to that e-page so I could do a little algebra again. I was missing it. I thought, “What in the world is going on? This is not me.” But it has become me. I’m no expert mathematician. I’m a student, but I have begun enjoying something that I have never enjoyed before in my life. So I don’t know if that’s what you will find as well, but it has had some unexpected moments of joy here for me.

Gretchen Roe: 00:28:51.799
Absolutely. And I laugh because my fifth child was my differently-abled learner. And well-meaning educators told us that he really wasn’t college material. He wasn’t going to be able to make it academically. He’s gone through every level that math UC has offered. He did quite well. He actually has a degree in computer science. And about three weeks ago, he was sitting here at my house. And I looked over, and he had all these numbers on a piece of paper. And I said, “What are you doing?” And he said, “Oh,” he said, “When my brain gets anxious and it gets a little bit out of skew, I do long division to pull–” [laughter] and to be perfectly honest, it looks exactly like me. But I’m thinking, “Where on earth did you come from because [inaudible] would never go there?” But he said the methodology and the logical process of being able to have to push everything out of your sphere of influence and just focus on what the numbers say is very calming to him. So I’m not there yet. The numbers still kind of freak me out just a little bit. But I thought it was a valuable story to tell because this is a child for whom nothing was easy in his academic experiences. But he has taken those difficulties. He’s made them his own and has been a very positive experience.

Gretchen Roe: 00:30:26.574
That’s amazing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:30:27.215
Lisa, before I move on, is there anything that I have forgotten as far as our conversations because I’d like to move? We have some great questions for this. And I’d like to move on to those, but have I missed anything?

Lisa Chimento:00:30:42.488
Yeah, there’s one thing that I did want to hit, and that is there is that aspect of recognizing your own feelings about math. A lot of parents– and this has been me because being at the convention booth and being on phone with parents, I hear this often. “I’m not good at math. I don’t know if I can teach it.” And we have seen over and over again parents who did not feel comfortable or confident to teach math come back a year later and say, “Wow, I know things now that I never understood before,” or, “I wished I had been taught this way when I was in school,” or, “I feel so much better doing this alongside my students.” So I think I want to reiterate, first of all, you will gain confidence [laughter] as you work alongside your student. And that’s going to change a lot there. But secondly, this course, Matthew C, was designed to equip the homeschooling parent. It wasn’t designed for classroom use initially. It was designed to equip a homeschooling parent because Steve Demme worked alongside them in a co-op. And he heard these comments. He heard people saying, “I I can’t teach math. And he said to them, “Oh, yes, you can.” And I’ve seen it over and over again. We had a mom that I met the first year I did a homeschool convention. And she came to the booth and she was like, “Yeah. Go ahead. Tell me your spiel, but I don’t think I can do this.” And I showed her the books and I explained my own story with math. And she took a chance and she purchased it. And she came back the next year. I mean, literally, she was waving the book in the air as she came to the booth going, “I do understand it now.” And it was the most hilarious thing. Well, I saw her year after year at that same convention and she would come back and say, “I’m ready to order my next level. I’m ready to order.” Well, she came back last year at the Florida Convention. And I was just talking to the folks I was working with about her and telling her the story. And here she comes walking up to the booth. And I said, “I was just telling them about you.” And so she repeated the story to them.

Lisa Chimento:00:33:03.005
But it was a success story for them because here was a mom who almost bowed out of teaching math to her students because she thought she couldn’t. And not only was she able to teach them, but she learned alongside them, she gained confidence, and she began to enjoy the experience and look forward to the next year and the next. It was really such a wonderful story to hear. And it was really so neat for me to be a part of it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:34.234
Absolutely. Because we do enjoy being a part of our families as they journey in this home education adventure. So these questions were all terrific, and you and I have highlighted some of them. So I think the ones we’ve highlighted speak to the larger context of the questions that parents are asking. And the first one is this, and we’ve touched on this already, but I think it’s important to emphasize. It says, I barely have enough time to teach my son, let alone time to learn it well enough to teach it too. And one of the things I think that’s important here is I understand this mom’s pain. I know where she’s coming from. So how do we capitalize on the fact that we’re teaching beside our students? What can we do to make it a learning journey for ourselves that doesn’t add to the plates that are already super full?

Lisa Chimento:00:34:33.238
Yeah. Well, first of all, like I said, the course was designed to equip homeschool parents. So the materials that are there are available to you. There is video instruction where Steve Demme demonstrates visually for you. There is written instruction, which I think maybe a lot of parents aren’t utilizing on a regular basis, but it goes hand in hand. And they serve two different purposes. One is to show you the how, the other is to explain the why, and it’s written in a very systematic way. There’s sometimes additional information in the instruction manual and extra practice problems that aren’t in the video. So using them together is a big piece of it.

Lisa Chimento:00:35:14.648
The how-to-use section in the front of each instruction manual is important because it explains the steps, the build, right, say method, the teachback that’s so valuable for you and your student both to assess mastery and to learn more deeply. And then there are resources in the back of the book. But here’s another resource that’s not in the book. It’s us. We love to support our families using Math-U-See. And it’s not an unusual thing for someone to call in and say, “Could somebody walk us through this problem?” And they’ll put us on speakerphone so that mom and student are hearing together. And we walk through the problem until it clicks, until everybody goes, “We’ve got it. We’re ready to go.” So that support is available to you. And it’s modeling for your student as well that you’re willing to learn, you’re willing to go and seek out the resources that are available to you so that you can understand it yourself better.

Gretchen Roe: 00:36:15.467
I think one of the things that we often hear when we support families is that if you are not a parent who learned a concrete representational abstract methodology. In other words, if you aren’t a parent who had the opportunity to use something like the manipulatives, sometimes it’s hard to step around and understand how are those going to help me. And sometimes we have parents who say, “Oh, these are only for little kids.” And the truth of the matter is where parents sometimes bail is when we get to multiple digit multiplication, because now I have a whole bunch of manipulatives on the table in front of me, and it’s like, “Oh, I’m just exasperated. I don’t have time for that.” If you are willing to suspend your disbelief and enter into the process itself and figure it out, that’s an invaluable support to your student, that’s an amazing experience for both you and your student. And if you can think of these not as something for a little kid, but as a powerful tool to help your student visualize the process they’re learning, it can be a huge game changer for you. I think the next subject that I want to talk about is the other side of the coin. And Lisa, you and I see this. We see this with parents who come to the booth at a conference, and they are the opposite parent. They are math adept. They’re engineers, they’re mathematicians, they might be math teachers. And their tolerance for the learning process is very short. So how do we speak to those parents who say, “I want to help my student enjoy math as much as I do.” And I’m going to throw the ball back to you.

Lisa Chimento:00:38:20.886
Oh, yeah. That’s a tough one because sometimes it is harder for a student to learn from someone who is math-adept because it’s hard to know what it feels like to not understand when you do understand. So I think maybe one thing to do is go find a topic that you don’t understand. If you’re not a musician, go sit down and try to read music or to learn music theory. If you’re not an artist, sit down and listen to someone explaining how to do perspective. Find something that you’re not adept at and put yourself into that place of learning. Every time that we have to step over this line of, I don’t understand to understanding, it’s like a little mini crisis in our brain, and it’s a struggle. So it’s an opportunity to put yourself through that struggle so that you can help your child know that it’s okay for them to come through it too and that you will be with them alongside of it. Not going, “Come on, come on, you know this,” but, “Okay, let’s take it one step at a time.” And then sometimes there needs to be a conversation where you’re going to have to draw out of your children what it is they don’t understand because if they don’t understand it, they don’t know how to ask the question, they don’t know the right words, they don’t know what it is that they don’t know, so you need to probe a little bit. Okay. And so you might need to pull that math problem apart and say, “Okay, let’s take this piece of it, this first step. When you’re doing this, tell me what you do.” And if they can verbalize it, you’re like, “Great, you’ve got that part. Now let’s go to the next step. And it might need to be a little one-piece-at-a-time process before you nail down where the problem happened or what the lack of understanding is. And then you can address it in words that make sense. And if you are using words and they’re looking at you and their eyes are glassing over and it’s not making sense, consider not repeating the same words, but finding a different way to say it. And sometimes, you know what? I’ve had moms call and say, “I understand this, and I’m trying to explain it to my son, but he’s not understanding it in the way I’m telling him. Could you please explain it and maybe it will click?” And I so appreciate and admire those parents who are willing to say, “It’s not coming well from me, but maybe if they hear it different words, it will click.” That’s an awesome thing that you’re doing there because you’re putting that child’s understanding first. And even though mom got it or dad got it, they were willing to acknowledge that someone else might have a better way of explaining it. And I just think that that’s amazing.

Gretchen Roe: 00:41:17.705
One of the things that is hard is when you’re very proficient at something, you forget that there was a period of time that you weren’t proficient. And it’s like labor and delivery. You want to talk about the baby. You don’t want to talk about the delivery process. So get that messy part in between being proficient and not being proficient. And so if parents, if we can take a step back and recognize that every student has a path to follow, I think it makes all the difference in the world for our students. I have a new computer here and trying to learn that the scroll is opposite is absolutely fascinating to me. I loved this statement that a parent made. And I think we should talk a little bit about it. And you emphasize this. And it says, “I believe something about math is inherently gratifying. And I’d like to somehow distill and convey what that quality is.”

Lisa Chimento:00:42:23.043
I loved that comment. I was so appreciative of that comment because he put into words what I feel, but didn’t know exactly how to say. Math is one of the few things in life that’s very black and white in terms of there’s a right answer and there’s a wrong answer. The way you get there sometimes can be done in multiple ways. Especially when we get into the higher level concepts, you can sometimes use a different approach to solve a math problem and come up with the same correct answer. But in the end, there’s going to be a right answer and a wrong answer. And so it is gratifying to–

Lisa Chimento:00:43:05.233
I was talking with two of our colleagues today and Sue said the words. She said, “It’s a puzzle.” She said, “And it’s like when you know you’re making a jigsaw puzzle and you’re seeing that piece and you’ve got it in your hand and you know you’re going to go click and it’s going to fit perfectly. There is a sense of gratification to that.” And so very often when we are doing math, it’s like solving a puzzle. And we can try to even reframe it that way. Sometimes the way I like to think of it is as solving a mystery. And you have to put on your Sherlock Holmes cap and get your magnifying glass out and go out and look for the clues to solve that mystery. So these are even some ideas to engender some enthusiasm for the topic when you are bringing it to your child. And I think maybe that even is going to send me off into a little tiny side route here because you and I have talked about this, Gretchen, about how we appear when we approach math with our kids.

Lisa Chimento:00:44:09.959
If we’re going, “Okay, let’s get through the math today,” that is going to be imparted better than anything else versus, “Okay, we’re going to do math today and we’re going to have fun. So let’s get out the blocks and let’s do–” and the enthusiasm that you bring, even if it’s not entirely caught by your child, is going to make an impact on them because of how you approached it, how you, your attitude, the facial expression and the tone in your voice and the words that you use are going to impart something to your kids that’s going to stick with them. So if you need to go in the room and take a deep breath yourself before you do it, then do it. But this is going to be something that they’re going to catch from you more than anything else.

Gretchen Roe: 00:45:04.433
And I think it’s important as parents for us to recognize, I will never be like Lisa in saying, “I’m looking forward to doing math.” That’s not a sentence that’s ever going to come out of my mouth. I think the important thing here is to recognize there are a few life skills that we have to impart to our children. And one of them is mathematical proficiency. If we were, as a society, adept at imparting mathematical proficiency, we wouldn’t be 27th in the world mathematically. We wouldn’t have payday loan companies that thrive. We wouldn’t have situations where you’re in McDonald’s and you hand the child dollar bills and a quarter and they don’t know how to make change. The truth is we have to help our kids become proficient in society. So the reason that I say this is because Lisa and I have lost count over the years of the number of parents for whom math has become a battleground. And they’ve just said, “Nah, I don’t want to do it.” And I’ve had those conversations with parents who’ve said, well, when was the last time you did math in your household? I had a mom last summer and she said, “Probably late 2019.” And y’all, I have a very expressive face. I have no idea what my face looked like. I’m just praying it wasn’t as shocked as I was in my head thinking you haven’t done any math in two and a half years in your household or more than that. So the truth is you don’t have to necessarily like it. You do have to be honest about how you feel about it and be willing to recognize this is part of the journey and we have to be willing to embrace it.

Gretchen Roe: 00:47:11.287

Lisa, we had talked about– I love this parent’s honesty about I just need to learn more about teaching math, which is a subject I so dislike. How do we as parents acknowledge our lack of heart for a process, but recognize the necessity of that process. And I think you’ve talked well about that. But let’s revisit that just one more time as far as a tool a parent could use to be able to say, “Okay, we got to get this done, man.”

Lisa Chimento:00:47:54.690
Yeah, in talking about this this morning with my teammates, we recognized a few things. The words hate or dislike math usually mean I am afraid of it. Or one of the people said for him, it was that he had never had a good rapport with his math teacher. They just didn’t communicate well to each other. And he knew he could learn the math. But for whatever reason, this particular teacher, there was not good communication, and so he wasn’t learning. And that was a negative experience for him. So some parents I know have had a negative experience with either the math itself or with the teacher that they had. And so like what you just said, there needs to be– we need to be honest with ourselves. We don’t need to necessarily pour this out in front of our kids but to be honest with ourselves about why we don’t like it. The other thing is– and I will mention this because we have recognized this with students that we assess when they say things like, “I hate math,” or, “I’m stupid, and I’m never going to learn math,” or, “Why do I have to learn this dumb thing?” Those kinds of words coming out of their mouth most often indicates there’s a gap in their learning. And because there was a gap and then learning was forced to– they were forced to continue learning higher and higher level concepts, that gap just carried along. I like to frame math like you’re constructing a building. Think about it like that. And with every level of that building, there needs to be solidity and security because as you’re building higher and higher floors and stories on that building, you’re adding weight to the foundation. So before an engineer even begins the process, they have to guess, estimate how much weight there’s going to be because it’s going to make a difference in how the foundation is laid, where it’s laid, how it’s laid, how much they need of it. And so as you’re going, you need to make sure that at every level, it’s secure, it’s solid, it’s stable, and it’s not going anywhere as you add that weight. Now think about math. If there are foundational concepts that weren’t quite caught by that child or by you and then more learning was added on top of it, those topics are weighty, and they put pressure on that student where there is no stability and security in the foundation. And so frustration builds, they become exasperated, and then they start to shut down. And it may have happened to you. And if it’s happening with your child, you’re going to be able to recognize it. But let’s not give up. This is not a done deal. You can go back and fill in gaps. You can do it for your child, and you can do it for yourself. We’ve got the AIM program to target fact mastery for older kids. We have heard parents come back to us and say, “I now know my math facts when I’ve been counting on my fingers my whole life.” It’s never too late to fill in those gaps. And then you would be surprised what an attitude change it creates because now you’re equipped. You feel confident because you can take on that next challenge because you have the tools you need. You’re not going to hand your child a slipper and tell him to hammer in a nail in a piece of wood. He’s got the wrong tools. He won’t be able to do what you’re asking him to do. And it’s the same thing. We need to put the proper tools into our kids’ hands so that they can do the work we’re asking them to do. And the same goes for us. If we are still missing those tools, let’s go back and recapture them. And you can do it for your child and yourself at the same time. And you’d be surprised at what an attitude change that’s going to make. You might end up with a heart for math.

Gretchen Roe: 00:52:09.154
I think that is really true. And I want to tackle one more question before we hit the top of the hour here. And that is how to teach when a parent hates math to a child who also hates math. And I think this is a little bit like the elephant in the room. And so as parents, we have to be willing to acknowledge the dislike. Maybe that means that you take an old pillowcase and you write the word math on it with a permanent marker eight or ten times, and you take a wiffle ball bat, and you just pound that pillow until you feel better. But you’ve got to move beyond that because the emotion of dislike prevents you from moving forward. So being able to acknowledge that emotion, to say, “Yes, it’s present, but we’re going to do this together.” Nobody wants to do something they dislike by themselves. It’s a whole lot easier to do it if someone’s willing to come alongside them. So if you can create that collaborative atmosphere with your student, acknowledge the dislike, acknowledge the feelings, acknowledging, as my son said, the anxiety and being able to, while acknowledging it, say, “We’re going to move beyond this,” it will be an enormous game changer for you. Lisa, in the last couple of minutes, what are your thoughts before we end here? What should we revisit or elaborate on before we conclude?

Lisa Chimento:00:53:59.473
Yeah, a couple of things that we know to do if you or your student are struggling. And the first thing that I would say is reach out to us. We can do some assessing to find out if there are gaps and identify exactly, pinpoint where those gaps are and then give you the recommendations on how to fill those gaps in. That’s the first step, I think. Secondly, when you are approaching a topic that is very difficult, consider that keeping the lessons short are very, very effective. We like to think– you topped off this hour with the words, we often think that more is better. And that’s not always the case. When a student is learning new material, you can add two or three minutes to their age. And that’s the peak performance time that you’re going to get from them. They’re going to be able to give you their best effort, and they won’t get mentally fatigued. And so if you can get through a portion of material in 10 to 15 minutes, depending on your child’s age and ability, and you’re seeing them starting to fatigue or they’re flagging a little bit, then just say, “Okay, that’s it for today,” or “That’s it for this session,” and call it quits for now. Go do other things, do things that aren’t close-eye work, and do things that are going to get their body moving and shake it off, or go have lunch, or do whatever you need to do to come away from that thing and give their brain a chance to rest and to sort and organize that information before they have to look at it again. If you want to come back later in the day and revisit some of that material for another 10 or 15 minutes, go ahead and do it. But even just the idea that you say to your child, we’re going to work on this for 15 minutes, that’s already going to bring the anxiety level down of something that they may feel anxious about. And we need to recognize that when anxiety enters the situation, learning stops. So if a child is anxious, you need to stop it already because it’s not going to go very far. It’s not going to be effective. And it’s not going to stay with them. So wait until there is no anxiety, do something they enjoy first, then approach this, do it for a short session, and then come away from it. And if they know that we’re only going to have to deal with these 10 to 15 minutes out of time sessions, there’s going to be more willingness to take those steps with you than if they knew that, oh, no, this is going to be another one hour of math with mom. And we know we’re both going to end up in tears. Don’t.

Gretchen Roe: 00:56:49.975
Right. Absolutely. And I think the other thing that is valuable to recognize in that step away is just because you’re not looking at the math materials, it doesn’t mean your subconscious is not working on the concepts. You mentioned our colleague Sue earlier today. Sue taught me a long time ago that sometimes the most valuable enterprise when you’re looking at something and you’re going, I just don’t get this, is to close the book, put it back on the shelf, and come back to it several hours later or the next day. Because you’d be amazed at how your brain will continue to work on that process and internalize that process successfully. And you might find that when you open the book the next day, what was not clear all of a sudden becomes clear. And that’s a very gratifying feeling. Lisa, what do you have to say in closing to our families? What kind of encouragement? Because you’re a great encouragement.

Lisa Chimento:00:57:51.333
Well, I do want to encourage parents, if you have been dreading teaching math, or if you don’t feel confident, reach out to us. We’ve all been there. Everyone who is going to pick up this phone has either homeschooled their own kids or are continuing to homeschool or have worked with homeschooling families for many, many years. And we want you to be successful. We love supporting homeschooling families. Our hearts are for you. We want you to succeed. Reach out, give us a call and let us know what’s going on. And we’ll have that conversation and come to some conclusion to help you on your path to success.

Gretchen Roe: 00:58:33.264
Absolutely. We want to thank you for trusting us to come into your living room today and have this conversation with you. We enjoy putting together this information, and we hope it benefits you as you continue your journey with your students. We thank you for sharing this time with us today, and we look forward to having you join us again soon. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. Thanks for joining us. You can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or go on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it.

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