Teaching and learning the same lesson.

This week, we hit a speed bump in the land of learning. Despite studying as a family for a math test for an hour and a half, K bombed a math test. A 47% bomb.

Ouch.

I e-mailed her teacher in a near heart attack. I knew K would be devastated. (Grades were posted online that night which is how I knew before school the next day.) I told her that our normally A-B student doesn't generally get F's, much less on tests, and I was just trying to figure out what went wrong so as not to repeat again. She was kind in responding back that afternoon that K did well at working through problems and where the big issue was was in the finer details. She added or left off a zero. She did long work on figuring out an answer, but wrote the wrong one down - that kind of thing. K was crushed that morning and cried. "But Mom, I worked very hard on that." She did say that she had the option of staying back and listening to Mrs. H talk through each question or to press on. She went ahead, got a bit behind on details and instead of stopping and asking for directions on her problems she, "Problem solved, Mom!" Mrs. H did report that the grades for the whole class were not good, but the same happened the year before. In the end, K will have a D on her interim report - something she hasn't had yet. It is fixable. I will take time, though.

K took a lesson from this. She studied from 3:30-8:45 PM on Thursday. When I commented on how long it was taking, she looked at me with tears in her eyes and said, "Mom, you tell me not to rush and I was not rushing. Now you are telling me to rush because you said I took too much time. I like to study, Mom."

Mother of the Year right here, folks!"

I felt so horrible. She is right. The ADD in me says, "GO! GO! GO!" Yet, I need to step back and take stock of the mixed messages I was giving. I apologized. We have a policy of open communication in our house and I thanked her for talking to me about what bothered her. Her teacher says it is fixable and every student ditches a test once in a while. K has learned and so have we.