"Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out." - R. Collier

(February 8, 2017. 12:10 – 1:45 PM)

The dreary weather has all of Athens half-asleep today.

I came and situated myself in the empty classroom at the table that was home to Q, J, and T’s banter. As class’s actual start time of 12:30 crept closer, the room slowly filled as tired but still animated students trickled in. Q sat down in a hushed huff, pulled his hood over his head and face, and laid his head and arms down at his desk. He wasn’t having it today (and with the weather today, I can’t say I really blame him). J sat down a few minutes later and T straggled in with a bag of food as class was about to start.

“Today we’re starting with a quiz. No notes because you used your notes yesterday,” Ms. S announced. The class replied with a collective groan. Tables cleared and tests handed out, I sat back and watched my three kiddos. Behind them at her own desk, R looked up at me with what might have been terror in her eyes. I knew I wasn’t supposed to help with the quiz so I mouthed an enthusiastic “You can do it!” with two thumbs up. She looked back at her papers for a few moments. Unable to idly watch her struggle any longer after another glance in my direction from those wide, frightened eyes, I walked over to her.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“I don’t know how to do this.” Uh oh.

“I’ll ask Ms. S. Give me a second,” I replied with a smile.

Ms. S came over and immediately realized the mistake. R hadn’t been here the past few days and consequently hadn’t learned any of this. This quiz was equivalent to an indecipherable foreign language. Oops.

Ms. S asked me if I wouldn’t mind taking R down to the resource room and teaching her the material. No problem! I’m always down for a new adventure.

R and I wandered down to the resource room and set up shop in front of a computer. I was a stranger to her, but at least a familiar face. We talked a little bit as I looked through her notes. (I have to re-teach myself all this math before I teach it to my kiddos- I’m an English major.) She’s a sweet girl and warmed up quickly. We started with a kind of fill-in-the-blank definition sheet that the teacher had provided.

Polynomials. Okay.

Using every student’s best friend (Google), we searched for definitions, examples, pictures, videos, and similar. In sifting through various sites and discussing the definitions and then simplifying them into a google doc (see below), we brought this weird, unintelligible language back into English. From the google doc there was more discussion until we mutually boiled the concept down into a definition in R’s words. This was a back-and-forth process permeated by “Does this make sense?” “Do you understand what it means by …?” “Now explain it back to me; teach it to me.” The back-and-forth continued until each question could be answered with sufficient confidence. It was a slow but successful process, ending in a growing confidence and resolution to work more at it. (She also has the google doc to reference, conveniently sprinkled with links to helpful websites and instructional videos.)

As I finished filling out the google doc with simplified explanations and links, I asked her to start working out some problems. They were like the problems we had done while defining the degree of polynomials, but we still worked the first few together before she was willing to navigate the worksheet alone. I checked with decreasing frequency, pushing her to trust herself as her accuracy improved. I messed with her some too, asking her if a problem was wrong when it was right so she would push herself to explain it and more deeply understand. She was irritated and a little shocked at first, but laughed heartily when she realized what I was doing. We shared smiles as we learned (her learning math as I was learning to teach) and the mood was wonderfully playful by the end of the hour. I think we were both having fun with it, which is an impressive feat for polynomials, or any math for that matter. When the bell was a minute from ringing, R looked up at me and said, “I get it! Thank you!” Her smile underlined her satisfaction with herself. It was a great moment that got even better when she raised her hand for an enthusiastic high-five.

We left the resource room more confident than we entered and trekked back to the classroom as the bell dismissed class, filling the halls with students.

“I know how to do it now, Ms. S!” she triumphantly shouted into the quiet classroom. Ms. S smiled.

That’s a success in my book.