Math Nightmares

I was never a math person. In fact, I was so not a math person that I avoided taking any math courses for my first 4 years of college classes. It was not until I came to the horrible realization that they were NOT going to give me my teaching degree without actually taking math did I cave in and take a math class.





Thankfully I happened to stumble upon the worlds greatest math teacher at Portland Community College. He believed that if you were math phobic, you had a right to be and he would hold your hand all the way through every problem if he had to. I ever so willingly accepted the hand he held out and dove into the world of algebra. It wasn't long before I discovered that math wasn't so bad. In fact, math in college was actually kind of fun. It didn't feel like this anymore...

The answers made sense and they weren't that hard to come to! I learned to love math. Really, I'm not making it up at all!

So here I am, years later teaching 2nd grade. This means I can love math and share that love of math with innocent children who aren't old enough to hate math yet. So when someone was needed to check in with the over achiever children that wanted to complete another math book this summer to get ahead, who volunteered? Yep, you guessed it, me. This will be easy I thought. I mean, good grief, the oldest kids that could do it are 7th graders. I can certainly help 7th graders with math....

Well no one told me one of the over achievers is taking Algebra 2! Yes, that's right, I, who didn't learn to love math until college is tutoring Algebra 2. I almost had a panic attack when I looked at her test and had to correct it. I could feel my chest getting tight, my vision got blurry, and I was getting warm under the collar. But then I really looked at problem 1. Hey, I knew how to do this! I didn't even need to look at the book. I could do this with no problem.

Now, those letterboxers out there who may be reading this are probably thinking, what in the world does this have to do with letterboxing??? Well my friends, brush off your algebra skills, a new box is coming soon! A box that you will need all of those rusty algebra skills for. Soon my friends, very soon!

Happy trails.