Door-2-Math Blog

After completing a math program with a student and the parents, most kids’ grades stay up as they move on to higher grades. For one 8th grader who came in with D’s and left with A’s the progress actually accelerated after he left the program! He’s now routinely making the honor’s list while taking advanced math classes in a prestigious Tucson high school. This was an intriguing circumstance, so I asked “Alec’s” mom to share her “secrets”:

How do we keep our child academically motivated, especially when they have struggled in the past? Not an easy question to answer, but from one parent to another, I can only share my personal experiences and challenges. My first step was to acknowledge the fact that we, my son and I, needed outside help. So, I am glad that you are reading my letter, because this confirms that you too have taken the first step in helping your child. We sought the help of Dr. Feenix Pan who not only helped my son in math, but also gave him back the academic confidence he had lost through years of frustration at school. Once he completed her program, my concern then became how I could keep him motivated and confident in school so that he will be interested in learning, especially since he would be starting high school. Dr Pan asked for me to share what I have done to help my son. So, here are a few the things I have done as a parent to continue to help my son maintain his motivation in learning:

1.)Talk to your child daily. I do it on the way home from school or at the dinner table. Ask him questions like “How was your day?” or “What did you do interesting at school today?” I feel that it is important that your child know that you care, and that you want to help in what he needs and want to be involved. Open ended questions allowed him to tell me more than if I asked specific questions, thus getting more than just “fine” for an answer.

2.)Establish a dialogue with your child’s teacher/school. Communication is key, be it by phone, in person or email. If your school offers posting grades online, check it out regularly. My advice however, is to do it together with your child. I do this with mine and believe me he knows when he has done well and when he has not way before I find out. But by checking his grades together I feel that it does not appear like I am spying on him or doing anything behind his back.

3.)Have your child read. My son does not enjoy reading and sadly he will not yet pick up a book unless I tell him to. So we read together a couple of times a week. I set aside 30 minutes and have him read to me. Reading not only improves vocabulary, but I believe it also helps with writing skills, not to mention they learn something new, too. Just have your child choose what he wants to read, hopefully making reading more enjoyable.

4.)Keep your child busy. Use the Internet to find activities that will keep your child motivated. For example, my son just completed a 10-day journalism program at the U of A. He dislikes writing, but loves sports and thoroughly enjoyed writing about sports. Best of this entire program was free. So do your search online because you can truly find programs that can be affordable for you. Volunteering in any activity can also improve self-confidence.

I hope my personal experiences help any parent who, just like me, only wants his child to be happy and successful in life.

Way to go!

Happy Zen Math!!

(c) Feenix Pan, 2007.  All Rights Reserved.

In the SUFI Master RUMI’s Table talk, there is a passage that can be taken as the backbone of teaching math the Zen Way.  The passage reads:

The Master said there is one thing in this world, which must never be forgotten.  If you were to forget everything else, but were not to forget this, there would be no cause to worry, while if you remembered, performed and attended to everything else, but forgot that one thing, you would in fact have done nothing whatsoever.  It is as if a king had sent you to a country to carry out one special, specific task.  You go to the country and you perform a hundred other tasks, but if you have not performed the task you were sent for, it is as if you have performed nothing at all.  So man has come into the world for a particular task, and that is his purpose.  If he doesn’t perform it, he will have done nothing.

So what does this have to do with teaching Math the Zen Way?
Everything!

In teaching, we let others learn.  We guide.  Teaching math the Zen Way is to realize and recognize that every one has a special purpose in this journey on earth.  This realization and our willingness to honor it will give us, the teachers, the freedom and ease to guide our students to understand math their way, and thus allowing us the joy of watching our knowledge getting passed on to others the Zen Way.

So each time you find yourself getting frustrated teaching math and you’re about to loss your patience, keep this in mind:  Every child is here for a very special purpose.  Math may or may not be it.  Our job as the teacher is to guide him/her toward finding that purpose.  His/her fulfillment of that purpose is fulfillment of his/her life!

The take away point is this: Letting go of your frustration opens up your heart where upon the Zen Way can enter and perform its magic.  Let the water flow through you and carry your knowledge and your wisdom to the one you’re teaching.

Happy Zen Math!!

(c) Feenix Pan, 2007. All Rights Reserved.

Just the other day, as I was working with a student whom I’ll call Carl, I could almost ‘see’ how his mind was trying to formulate a question that would get him unstuck.  Tried as he might, he could not find the words to string his question together and get it out of his head and into the open space.  After what must be an eternity, he looked up at me, and just as expected, said quietly, “I’m confused.”  Thus, leaving all the work prior to the ‘I’m confused’ to dust.

“I know you are,” I calmly reaffirmed him.  “What’s more, Carl, is that I can see the question you almost found the words to ask.  Can we try to put those words into a sentence again?”

Not surprisingly, he was not willing.  The trauma of gathering words and then been forced to aborting the delivery of his sentence was too much.  Sensing the amount of frustration lurking underneath, I switched gears.  Pulling out a stack of paper, I asked Carl to split a piece of 8×11 into two identical triangles. Though not quite sure what I was up to, he complied.

This was what Carl did for the next 45 minutes: fold the paper along diagonally, starting with one end, ripping it until the tear is jagging; turn to the other end, start ripping there until the paper was hopelessly uneven; getting another one and start again.  At one point, he got so close completing the task that he sit up straight in his chair, took a deep breath, just to watch his hands torn the paper into uneven pieces.  Other students in the past had moistened the folded line (gross! But it did the trick), but no Carl.  As I sat there watching him going paper after paper, I wondered what happen to his voice – the voice that allows him to ask for the proper tools to complete the task.  A scissors to cut?  A ruler to draw a diagonal line?  Somewhere in the middle of this exercise, Carl did ask ‘do you have a scissors?’ upon hearing my answer of ‘no, I don’t have one here’, he abandoned all attempts of ever questioning me again.

Now watch carefully how I worded my answer.  Of course, I have scissors!  I don’t have one on the desk where I was working with him.  I had one sitting on my other desk not even 5 feet away!  What I’ve noticed from experience is that our kids are programmed to hear ‘no’ that they forgot to keep on asking until they get it.  Remember how your 5-year-old would ask, ask, and ask until you took him to Wal-Mart and get him that pair of

Sneakers with shining lights?!  Or how your daughter talked you into buying her yet another pack of ‘cute hair clips’?  Whatever happened to our children’s innate ‘I’m worth it’ belief??

Back to Carl.  When we finally pointed out that the point to the exercise was not ‘how to tear a piece of paper without scissors’, rather ‘ask for the proper tools’, Carl’s eyes lit up: ‘Oh, so when you said ‘I don’t have one here’, you weren’t telling me you don’t want to help?’

‘That’s right, Carl.  I merely said that I don’t have a pair of scissors on this desk.  Do you see one over there on the other table?’ Being a kid, he is, he quickly learned the next time when he found out my scissors was not a lefty one.  ‘Could you help me cut this?’ he politely asked.

‘Of course, Carl,’ was my answer.

And that was the tuning point of Carl’s math program -  as he asked more an more questions, the quality of his questions went up from ‘I’m confused, what do I do’ to ‘okay, I see I need to find this variable before solving for that.  What else have I not tried?’  The Chinese have a saying ‘how you do anything is how you do everything.’ So maybe Carl won’t grow up to be ‘I’m not lost’ type while driving his family to visit his in-laws?

Happy Zen Math!

(c) Feenix Pan, 2007. All Rights Reserved.