Back to school in Southwest Minneapolis: What I'm hearing at the center

We're three weeks into the school year now, and I can already tell you what's on parents' minds. It's not really about fixing one weak spot anymore. It's homework. Parents want homework to stop being the thing everyone dreads after dinner, and they want to actually be able to talk to their kid's teacher without feeling lost. For the families who've been with us a while, that's the real goal this fall: keep the progress going once homework stops being a fight.

New families tell me something different every time. Almost every parent walks in thinking their kid has one problem, maybe two. Then we sit down and look at where things actually stand, and it turns out the gaps go back two, three, sometimes four years. I had a sixth grader last week working through third grade material. That's not the exception around here this fall. It's honestly pretty normal.

Right now the thing tripping kids up most isn't one topic. It's computation, plain and simple. Summer slide hit hard this year, and a lot of my students lost the actual step by step process of working through a problem, even when they still understand the idea behind it.

Here's what I keep telling SWM parents: math is a doing sport, not a watching sport. Basketball players don't get better at free throws by thinking about free throws. They shoot them, over and over, until it's muscle memory. Math works the same way. If your kid isn't getting the reps, talk to their teacher and give us a call before it turns into a bigger gap.

Lots happening at the center this month. We just did Celebrate South Nicollet with our students. Jenga, Connect Four, Tetris blocks, plus some grade level math mixed in. Coming up on Monday, September 28, we've got our Welcome Back to School Bash with a Kona Ice truck parked out front from 5 to 6pm. We also started a weekly poll for the kids. This week it's platypus, koala, or kangaroo, if you had to be one. And save the date for October, when UMTYMP comes to visit SW Minneapolis on a Saturday to talk with families. That one's open to everybody, not just our students.

Come say hi sometime. If it's been a while since your kid had an actual math checkup, now's a good time.