a better kind of shock
It's like my kids know JUST how much bullshit I can handle before they decide to throw me a bone and be fucking awesome. I've been working with this one eighth grade girl for the whole time I've been at the school -- she was a lot quieter than other students and I started pulling her and two other girls aside to work with me, since they were getting lost in what's a pretty wild classroom. When I started working with her second quarter, her average in the class was a D. This was because she couldn't understand the homework, no matter how hard she tried... so I got in the habit of checking her homework with her once a day before she turned it in. Her grade started to rise a bit and though I still help her out everyday, she definitely has more confidence in math.
This isn't just any eighth grade math, this is like, stuff with exponents and shit that baffled me a bit when we started on it. I actually had to reteach myself how to do it so I could help her out. Last week, the day before the "check-up" (what they call tests), she and I sat down for a few minutes so I could explain with her one-on-one the difference between using x as an exponent and just multiplying a number by x, and when to write the exponent as x-1, and how to enter this in a calculator so she can read a table. And, you know what? Apparently I taught it WELL. Because she ate that test for lunch. She pwned it. She got an A+.
"I'm so stinkin' proud of you," I told her.
She grinned at me, which was great to see because she's normally a very stoic teen. "Thanks!"
And then I had to reteach myself scientific notation so I could explain it to her.
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