All Of The Reasons I can't

I am going to let you guys in on probably the worst kept secret of my immediate family. This secret is, we are all absolutely horrific at math. I am pretty sure my father cried harder at doing math flash-cards with me than I did, and I could have probably filled a small lake with tears over math alone. It was so bad that growing up the one and only time I cheated on anything, was to use the answers in the back of the book on my math homework in seventh grade. Now you might be saying oh that’s obvious to get like an a hundred or a good grade right, no. See the book only had half the answers there, the odds. So I used the answers in the back of the book, so that I could get fifties on my homework rather than 20s or 30s. That is how bad at math, I am.

I failed fifth grade, sixth grade, and seventh-grade math, eighth grade was when I switched schools and they happened to use what we had used in seventh grade for eighth-grade math so I magically got a C in eighth grade, then I failed ninth, passed tenth, and passed eleventh, barely. I’m pretty sure the teacher passed me because I tried hard not because the answer was right. When I got to college, the advisor wanted me to go into remedial, and I said if you put me in with the math I’ve done in high school, I will fail. If you let me do practical math, I will pass. I can’t do algebra, but I can do taxes. She must of believed me, or maybe I just looked ridiculously desperate to not go back to that type of material, that she listened and did just that, and I did pass, with a C or a B-, but I passed.

Here I am some years later from that, with many more math failures under my belt, and I find myself a math tutor.

WHAT????

I am the first to admit, me tutoring anyone in math, is an unfathomable concept. Because by all accounts, I have a processing disorder, and that means I really just genuinely can’t do math, at least not like everyone else, and so therefore I probably shouldn’t teach anyone how to do math.

But I’ve learned a few things in this endeavor, specifically with the kid I’ve been working with most recently. The first one is I actually can do math. I can. It’s different from the way other people can just pick up a concept and then they can just do it perfectly over and over. It’s different than the people who can build on concepts easily. But I can do it.

The way I run this kid’s sessions is this, we are on zoom, and honestly, I think the fact that this is on zoom is one of the reasons why this has been able to work so well. But I pull up a whiteboard, he reads me the problem, I write down the problem, and then he tells me how to solve it. If it’s right we move on, if I think it’s wrong, we stop and evaluate it.

Every time I have thought something was wrong, it has been google telling me so. He doesn’t know that I am doing every problem along side of him and I genuinely can’t tell him right off the bat how to do the problem. I have asked him, “Does this look like your teacher taught you?” but he doesn’t know that I ask that because I am pulling information out of a well which honestly, until recently, I didn’t know existed.

This is the second thing I’ve learned. All those years ago, I did learn all those concepts. I learned them, and I remember them. I thought I didn’t because when it came time to test, or when it came time to do them on a sheet of paper by myself, I was unconfident. But I did know how to do them, or right now I wouldn’t be able to correct my student.

The third thing I’ve learned, is that I may be one of the best people to tutor someone in math. Not in calculus, or in some other ridiculously hard thing, but in the beginning stages, because by me not acting like I have all the answers, by me having to admit that we have to work this out together, it makes the kid feel brave enough to actually try to do it on its own.

I can remember being in seventh grade, under bright lights in a white cinder block room, and my teacher standing over me. She would pick up my pencil, and she would do the problem I was having trouble with, all the while narrating what she was doing, and then she would put down the pencil and go on to the next student. She had no idea that she might has well have been speaking gibberish to me. I had no idea what she was talking about, and worse, now I felt stupid. She’d come back around and say “you still don’t understand?” or “why aren’t you doing anything?” and I would sit there and look at her, and all I could think was “I’m sorry I don’t understand why what your saying doesn’t make any sense.” I couldn’t say that because to do that would have been to admit defeat, but it was true.

When I don’t just tell someone how to do something, when I work with them, I engage them in the process of moving past the shame of not knowing the answer. It really is genuinely okay to not be able to do it. It’s okay to admit you can’t do it right now, because I am not going to steamroll over you and just do it for you. I believe that someday you will be able to do it. You will because you will practice as hard as I did, and you will advance. You might have to do it through summer school, and crying, and years of extra work, but if I can do it, then you sure as hell can.

All of which is to say, tutoring someone in a skill that I really struggle in has been a huge eye-opener into why it is that math was such a miserable thing for me, and one of the reasons why I struggled to be honest about my math skills, and once it was obvious how much I needed help, it was almost like I went the complete other direction, it was either I could do math, or all math was horrible and terrible and under no circumstances would I ever be able to do it on my own. And it sounds bad to blame other people, or the school I was in, and I don’t think it was completely that, but through actually being the teacher on the other side, and seeing my student really come into his own and say “I am confident in this skill we can move on.” or “You don’t have to help me with that I can do it on my own” I’ve realized that if someone had explained to me, no, you can do math. I’ve seen you do it. All you have to do is give me the time to work with you and teach you this. I would have been a hell of a lot better off and would have had a lot less internalized shame.

I will never be a math genius. I won’t. I will never have a math degree like I have an English degree. But, maybe I can stop saying that I’m really bad at math, or that I’ll never pass the math praxis. Maybe I can start believing that if I take the extra time and focus on how I do learn, instead of hating all the ways I can’t- I will succeed.