October 19 – “Common core subtraction …”

Guess what I did the other day?  I figured out the new math.  Yep.  That ridiculously silly stuff they are requiring kids to learn instead of just showing them how to borrow and how to learn what 9 plus 7 is just by knowing what 9 plus 7 is.  Common Core math.  Great stuff, you know. 

So, I was helping Cailyn with her homework.  We usually do the math part.  She is quite the whiz at it.  Problem is, she’s like her Daddy was as a kid.  She can just look at it, you can see the wheels turning in her head as she focuses on nothingness in outer space somewhere, and suddenly she knows the answer.   And in most cases she is right.  Very frustrating to the teacher who wants to see her work, as you might imagine.  I was kind of following her on the addition  word problems. They have to find different numbers to combine to make ten so they can put them off to the side and later add them to the rest of the tens and then to whatever ones are left over.  About seven extra and really unnecessary steps, if you ask me.  But no one asked me.  When we got to the subtraction part the fireworks started.  We argued (good naturedly, of course).  I tried to show her the old-timey way of doing it.  “You put the bigger number on top,” I began.  “No, DadDad, the little number goes first, then you go to the big number.”  She looked at me and sadly shook her head, quite condescendingly, I might add.  She insisted that you could combine a 0 and a 5 and somehow get a 3.  She circled every number she came to.  I stopped her and asked her to show me what she was doing.  She did.  And I still had no idea what it was.  I finally  reverted to drawing pictures.  And finally we found common ground.  You can’t argue with a picture.  It was all very confusing and quite comical, actually.  In a final fit of laughter, we just wrote down the answer.  She did know it.  It was just the getting there that we disagreed on.

Later on, when she went into the bedroom and was reading with Chris, I went online and googled “common core subtraction.”  Took me about an hour of working along with the explanations, but I think I understand it.  At least until they start subtracting in the hundreds …

Galatians 2:20 says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Father, thank you for new learning situations.  Even if they are strange and require so many extra steps … Amen.