Don't Hate Math

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Who remembers the timed tests that showed who the fastest person at math facts were? Twenty-five years ago, I remember sitting in a classroom surrounded by students who were rushing through trying to compute math facts at a rapid pace and get the whole sheet completed in under a minute. I wasn’t a student who struggled, but I was a friend to many of the underdogs.

Our education system was set up for ranking of students and not to appreciate the growth. Even students who may go from completing one problem to solving two problems in a minute have made 100% growth – and by simply assigning correct versus incorrect we’re not showing students that with effort, they can be good at math.

As Valerie Strauss explains in Stop Telling Kids You’re Bad At Math. You are spreading math anxiety ‘like a virus’:

Mathematics surrounds us, yet we have become accustomed to avoiding numerical thinking at all costs. There is no doubt that bad high school teaching and confusing textbooks are partly to blame. But a more pernicious habit does the most damage. We are perpetuating damaging myths by telling ourselves a few untruths: math is inherently hard, only geniuses understand it, we never liked math in the first place and nobody needs math anyway.

Too often, especially in adult education, we see the students come in to our classes with the conviction that “I’m not good at math.” As adult educators, it’s our job to help students see that they can be good, even great, at math. Gone are the days when the teacher’s way of solving a problem is the only way to solve a problem. I hear it every day from one of our high school completion instructors – “If you have a question, or a different way to solve a problem, please share. It’s likely that someone else has the same question or will benefit from seeing a different way to solve the problem.” Let’s embrace the uniqueness that we each have and show students that they really can be great at math.

As for those timed-tests in math, I’m not sure I’ve used them very much – especially since I can carry a calculator with me nearly everywhere I go. 

5 Ways to Be a Successful High School Equivalency Student

5 Ways to Be Successful

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It happens. You drop out of high school. Down the road, you need to pick up the pieces, but you aren't sure where to start. Each state has their own program designed to help students who have dropped out of a traditional high school get their high school credential. Here are five steps that you can do, no matter where you live, to help be successful in high school.

1. Be ready
2. Know your support system
3. Recognize barriers
4. Attend class regularly
5. Look ahead

Be ready

The only person who knows if you're truly ready to embark on the journey to finishing high school is you. You need to decide if you want to accept the help that adult high school programs can provide. The programs can guide you, but you're the one doing the work - so you need to be ready.

Know you support system

Connect. Connect with family, friends, mentors, teachers, counselors, pastors, and classmates. If you don't already have a great one, find or make a support system. Use the support system that will help propel you forward. It might be hard to ask for help, but those people who are truly supporting you will gladly offer their support. 

Recognize barriers

Recognize that there will be barriers to success, but have a plan for encountering those barriers. If there are things you are doing, people you associate with, or crisis that you might face, what can you do to confront them - and then move past them?

Attend class regularly

One of the surest ways to have a support system is to attend your classes regularly. Regularly means that you are in class at least 95% of the time. That means that out of 10 days of class, you're present at least 9 1/2 days!

Look ahead

Set a goal for yourself beyond getting the diploma. Where do you want to go next? What's your next adventure? Sure, you want to get the diploma, but you'll get it much faster if you know what your next step is.

Microsoft Access - Work Smarter, Not Harder

There are some things in life that one must work hard at - such as maintaining a healthy lifestyle. However, there are somethings that can be accomplished by working smarter - and Microsoft Access can help bring that efficiency to the forefront.

Five years ago - almost- when I started in my role as the High School Distance Learning Instructor, there was paper everywhere! It was a generational difference, as the person running the program was getting close to retirement and I respected her need for paper-based items. Slowly, I moved toward a more paper-reduced program (due to the nature of High School Distance Learning we can't go entirely paperless). I began by moving our log book into MS Excel (it just counted the number of students). Next, I made the registration process easier on me by putting labels on the top of columns in excel. Once we'd transitioned for a year and my colleague said her final good-bye, I planned for the next move toward less paper - a database.

Between self-teaching and help from a resident expert, I never attended a Microsoft Access class until last night - and my life at the end of each quarter just got easier! I had figured out the basics of tables, forms, and queries; but, I did not know that I could easily generate a report with a few mouse clicks. Now, I can run a report that summarizes all the information that I would spend between 8 & 10 hours on manually and I have saved myself time and am working smarter.

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