The Vail of Tears for middle schoolers

The vail of tears for middle schoolers in my family is apparently math – more specifically learning the multiplication tables and long division.

Last year I wrote out my own sad story with learning mathematics here.

My poor saintly grandmother would spend hours upon hours with me going over long division, borrowing, fractions…AAAUUUGGGG!! I probably shortened her lifespan by 10 years with my inability to grasp this stuff without an unusual amount of concentrated effort. (Lest I confuse the reader, yes Patrick the mathematical genius of Orthonormal Basis is my nephew, but fortunately for him it is through marriage. He had no chance of inheriting any of my puny mathematical genetics and that is a good thing!)

Keep in mind that my grandparents welcomed my pregnant mother and me into their homes when they were in their 50s getting ready for their retirement years. My grandmother not only did the toddler/baby stuff again with me and my sister, but then in her 60s, after a heart attack and a stroke, she found herself trying to teach her dense granddaughter how to do long division, how to figure out what to do in a story problem, all of the times tables, fractions and percentages. My grandmother had a lot of faults, and I’m guessing she probably had some time to do in purgatory. But I’m also guessing that the time and patience she put in with me earned her some special graces!

Through the hours and the tears (mine and hers) I eventually made it through middle school math and managed enough math skill to earn the 8th grade math award, and graduate in the top 10% of my high school class with a decent GPA.

But what I remember about that time (besides my intense fear and hatred for all things mathematical) was how much I loved my grandmother and how grateful I was for all of the effort she put into helping me with my homework. I knew that I could never repay her.

This year I discovered that I am repaying her now. My son Gabe struggles to learn the math facts, he has worn out a copy of the times tables, and when he reads a story problem he looks like a deer in the headlights, with no clue where to start, where to run or how to get there.

With Gabe, I cannot give the lesson, assign the work and then leave. I have to give the lesson, check the practice problems, assign the work, check the work and then go over the work with him problem by problem.

Me: “Gabe okay then we carry the one. So what’s 6 x 3?”

Time passes. I ask again, “Gabe, 6 x 3 is?”

Gabe: “Enough?”

Noah, (who is supposed to be doing his Easy Grammar in another part of the classroom and hasn’t even learned the time tables yet), “It’s 18 Mom!”

Me to Gabe: “Is he right?”

Gabe with tears in his eyes and a quivering voice: “I suppose so.”

The rest of the afternoon went similarly except that I had to ask Noah to do his work upstairs as Gabe doesn’t need his third-grade brother explaining square roots to him with disgust in his voice.

Sigh… so I sit patiently and try to work Gabe through it. He cries and yells. I cry and yell too. Then we figure out the answer, tell some jokes, and give hugs. And through it all the image of a dark haired little girl with the same big brown eyes I see in Gabe, sitting next to an old women in an apron so many years ago is front and center in my minds eye.

Thanks grandma. I’ll try my best to be as patient as you while I try to teach your great grandson his math lessons. Thanks for setting the example for me.

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