Jack's Story

Jack was one of our very first high school students. His mom contacted us in May 2015 at the end of Jack’s junior year in high school and wanted Jack to take our comprehensive math assessment. When I met with Jack and asked him how he felt about math, he was very vehement when he told me, “Suzie. I HATE math!” Yikes! “Jack,” I asked, “is that a capital “h” or all capitals?” “All capitals, Suzie.”

“I am going to be a priest,” he said. “I don’t see why I need to focus on math.”

“Well,” I replied. “Your mom is worried about you getting through math next year and graduating. Additionally, you will need a 4-year degree to get into seminary and you’ll probably have to take one year of math in college. And,” I thought this would be the ringer for him, “what if you have a large parish and need to manage a lot of money?”

“I’ll hire someone to do that,” he replied.

Needless to say, Jack was not very enthusiastic when his mother enrolled him at our center. His gaps were significant. It was no wonder math was such a challenge for him that he had finally decided he hated the subject! He was so reluctant to come in and work on math, he did not show up his first month at all. I called his mom weekly to see if they wanted to cancel his membership. She was insistent that Jack would be there. He finally did show up, and he did all he could to do as little math as possible while he was there.

The first 2 months were very challenging for Jack and for us. He was a super nice young man, just completely unmotivated to do anything with math. Finally, school started and Jack began to see the benefit of at least letting us help him with his math homework. He started coming in more regularly and by November was even cheerful when he came in.

I knew Jack’s time with us was limited because he would be graduating in early May. Everyone really enjoyed Jack by the time April came around and we were all a bit sad when we told him goodbye and good luck the last day of the month. I never expected to see Jack again. He was graduating and had gotten accepted at one of the colleges of his choice to start preparing for his career as a priest.

“Goodbye Jack,” I said as he walked out our door that warm afternoon.

Imagine my surprise, when 3 days later I looked up at the door chime to see Jack strolling into the center! “Hey! Jack! What’s up?” I asked him, getting up to greet him. “You know you’re done here, right? You don’t have to come back!”

“I know Suzie,” he said, “It’s just. . .” he hesitated. “Well, I’ve only got three sessions left to earn a red binder.”

“Oh Jack!” I smiled and shook my head. “You know you don’t get to take the binder home with you, right?”

“I know,” he smiled back, “its just that I want to take a picture and show my mom that I got the red binder.”

“Of course!” I said, “Come on in. You can have 3 more sessions and we’ll get you that binder!”

The points of Jack’s story are four:
1. It takes time to fill in gaps in math - particularly if there are significant gaps in a child’s knowledge
2. While we have an extensive reward system to encourage reluctant mathers, we never know what will be the main motivator for a kid.
3. Children can still do math and not like it however the more gaps are filled in, the more a child’s confidence grows and the less vehemently they hate the subject.
4. Sometimes parents have to put their foot down and make a kid work on their math for their own good, even if the child does not want to work on it.

If you have a child who hates math (or is starting to dislike it), bring them in to Mathnasium of Littleton and let’s see what gaps they have. Most likely, they have some significant gaps that have built up over time and that is what is causing them to hate the subject so much. Our founder, Larry Martinek has a quote I love. He says, “kids don’t hate math. They hate feeling frustrated, confused and intimidated by math.”