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I love my 14 year old daughter. She is bright, warm, and funny, but she is also challenging and lacking in self confidence. We brought E home from parochial school after her fourth grade year. She had been a promising student. Sweet and eager to learn she captured the hearts of everyone she met. Everyone she met except for her fourth grade teacher, that is. She had had her little issues throughout her schooling to that point, but it was always something that we could surmount. Once she entered fourth grade, though, she changed. She was no longer the bright, sunny girl we knew and loved. She cried easily and often. She was being bullied by other students in her classroom, and by her teacher. The girl who had breezed through school suddenly was not confident that she could do well. She stopped trying.
Why tell you all this? I tell you this because we are STILL fighting the battle to regain her confidence in her abilities.
This morning I went over several Algebra lessons with my dear daughter. She had failed these lessons when she did them on her own. We went over what she was supposed to do in a couple of samples, and she did very well on making a chart, writing an equation and graphing the results. Next we went on to simplifying and solving equations. I had a battle on my hands here. My lovely daughter kept repeating, "This is stupid!" No matter how many times I tried to explain this particular problem, which included parentheses, brackets and negatives, she refused to even try to work out the problem.
I purchased a used copy of Math U See Algebra with manipulatives and DVD lessons for her this year. I had heard it was easier to understand. I had been using Systemath, and I liked it. I though it was well explained and there was telephone and e-mail support. With the Math U See, there is a decent teacher guide, but no support if I cannot explain it.
Please join me in praying that my dear daughter will recognize her God-given abilities and have the confidence to try to understand her lessons.
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