Academic Panic

I am entering the realm of mom with legal adult offspring in four short months. I am so proud of my young woman, but it's hard to believe how quickly these years have flown by.

Last night, as I was about to pass out into total delirium (I've had a minor cold and am my normal sleep deprived self in spite of trying to baby myself so I can kick this runny nose and general foggy feeling) theater-girl came to ask for some help with her math homework. Thanks to NCLB (for those of you out of the US, that's the notorious "No Child Left Behind" laws that have come close to destroying our school systems due to mandatory standardized testing that makes administrators forget we are teaching children) she will be taking her HSPA exam in a month or two. HSPA is the exam given in NJ during Junior (2nd to last) year, and if you don't pass it, you don't graduate. It's at a basic high school math level; not all students are expected to work at college prep level.

Her math teacher (theater-girl is in Honors Algebra 2) started a review with them, and she was all frantic because she couldn't remember how to do some problems. Word problems, pretty much elementary math, but she was trying too hard to figure out some complicated algebraic formulas for problems that I'm pretty sure were meant to show that you could figure out how to solve a mathematical problem. They required (again, my interpretation) some estimating and some iterations of calculations to find solutions. One problem even had a grid for students to fill out to help them calculate the answer.

She knows how to do this math, now she's over-guessing herself and trying to find complex ways to solve basic problems. And she's SOOOO worried about passing this exam, because she heard the teacher say that if any students did not pass their GEPAs (the old 8th grade standardized exam), which theater-girl did not pass because the charter school wasn't teaching any math for the early years, then she might be in trouble. I'm not sure that's what the teacher meant, and theater-girl is forgetting that she got an A in her freshman HSPA prep course, which evaluates students and helps the high school place students in remedial math classes if necessary.

Today, since I'm home anyway, I'll be sending an email to her math teacher to let her know how panicked theater-girl is about the exam, and asking if she can send some practice problems home each week to help theater-girl prep and reassure herself.

I'm so proud to have daughters that care about their homework and doing well in school and who take pride in their work. It's balm for my soul, working, as I do, in a school system where lack of caring about all things academic is endemic with the students in the school. But holey moley, I really wish I had a panacea to help her calm down when she gets frantic. Reassuring her that I know she will do fine just makes her more hysterical and she screams, "You don't understand, Mom!!!"

Hmm ... the act of writing this has made me think about my basic volunteer counselor training. Maybe I just need to give her more empathy, just reassure her that I know how scary and overwhelming this is. I'm forgetting to do that.