I am back in high school and, for
once, it’s not my son’s fault. The kids had yesterday off because … the
teachers weren’t at school. I don’t know why there wasn’t school yesterday,
there just wasn’t. In the case of my son doing his online homeschooling, a
teacher holiday shouldn’t make much of a difference. He’s behind on his
classes. The powers that be, meaning Hubby, decreed The Boy was permitted to
take advantage of the day off and left Thursday night to spend some time with a
friend and … I expect him back sometime today so I can help him (nag, nag) get
caught up in school. He has a big project that shouldn’t be big, but it is
because he didn’t do any of the prep work assigned during the last five lessons
that would make this just the last step. No, he has six assignments rolled up
into one now.
The Girl, is caught up with her
school work. I would love to say that’s the advantage to her being in a regular
high school, but it’s just the way she is. To be a responsible little senior,
she’s taking online ACT practice tests. Yay! And she keeps having trouble with
one type of problem that comes up in math. Oh. Not to be thwarted, she Googled
it. That didn’t help. Damn. Okay, fine, time to be the mom.
I sat her down and asked what kind
of math problem it was, praying it wasn’t Trigonometry because I doubt I
remember that, and trusting it wasn’t Calculus because I don’t remember her
taking it and I really don’t remember
that. She didn’t want to talk about it.
Um, what?
Why didn’t she want to use me and
instead keep trying to figure it out by looking at online resources? It was
embarrassing. How the hell is math embarrassing? Yeah, ask that to a teenage
girl who introduced me to the Ackles
Ass Equation. She didn’t blush then. Fine, pushing that aside, what was embarrassing
about this particular math problem? It couldn’t be bad, it was on an ACT
practice test.
Sigh.
A while later, it turns out it’s
something she should have known for a long time and didn’t master then.
Factoring. YAY! I can factor, I remember that! So I sat her down and showed her
how to do the problem on her test. Just having a person show her instead of
reading it on a website seemed to make the difference. Until Hubby got
involved. The problem was find the largest common factor between three numbers.
I had her completely factor all three. It’s not difficult, and it doesn’t have
to take a long time. It does the job,
and The Girl understood it.
But there are shortcuts. Hubby
thought of three in seconds and muddied the waters trying to let her use her
time more efficiently. I shooed him away and showed her how to do it again
without any shortcuts. (They rely on tricks and having an inherent
understanding of math. I love my little girl, but math isn’t her strength. She
has to do things the long way and write it all out or there’s little chance she’ll
get it right.)
Now I’ve sent her off to take
another ACT practice test, because that’s what every overachiever 17-year-old
girl wants to do with her Saturday. Then I’ll let her spend the rest of the day
watching Adventure Time, if she’s inclined to. I hope so, that way I can guilt
her into to taking another practice test tomorrow.
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