Maturity (or lack thereof)

If I have a problem with this blog, it’s that there’s absolutely no predicting what’s coming next. Unless you’re reading within a series, I don’t see how you could know if you’re going to get something about family, faith, dating, how I fell down. And while I feel fine doing that with friends – just talking about whatever comes to mind, the very lack of coherence here makes me a bit surprised that a number of you keep coming back. We really should be best friends.

It occurred to me, perhaps as a result of a couple discussions about how I felt putting so much of myself in this space, that I rarely talk about work. And when I do, it’s on a deeply personal level. Not that I completed task A, or had this interaction with person B. More like I’ll mention task A at the end of some lengthy discussion on how, when I was younger, I did thing Q and that reminds me of event M that if you squint really hard and think about it kind of quickly, could relate to event A. So when I call this some sort of academic blog, I’m a giant liar. So, sorry about that. The interesting thing is that I’m kind of a bad academic too, so it all fits.

Still reading? OK! Want to hear a story?

I’m still tutoring my little Math group, and yes, I love them already. A couple of weeks ago, one of the girls made quite an impression on me.

We were adding fractions. Playing this card game that mimics blackjack (get the kids started early! We played with M&Ms, which can be better than money in some moments) and I realized that they were guessing when I asked them if their 2 or 3 fraction cards got close to equaling 1, or actually went over.

Well, that’s why I’m there, right? So we got out the little white boards and markers and started adding fractions. A little practice would get this straightened out, I thought naively. They had no flipping idea what to do. Some were adding diagonally, some were adding across, then there was this weird multiply-add-write down random number strategy I never really understood. So I’m frowning, and they’re making up math rules, and I’m feeling all inadequate and lame.

I work best with individuals – even 4 people is too much for me. So I turned my attention to each of them in turn, wrote down my method of solving the problem, then watched them work. It’s not ideal, but that’s how I work. So I was dealing with Alice, and she was doing something weird.

“Common denominators.” I said softly, scooting my chair closer to her end of the table and asking Aaron to wait a moment before asking his question.

“I wanted to know if I could have more M&Ms.” He said quickly, so I pushed the bag toward him and returned to Alice.

“What?” She responded, looking back at her board and playing with her blue marker.

“You have to make the denominator the same – so multiply both numerator and denominator by the same number, then add the numerators and keep the denominators the same.” I told her with a smile.

Now, there are a number of problems here. First, I tend to talk rather quickly. I always have. Even up north, it was sometimes a problem, and years of working with senior citizens taught me to consciously slow my speech at times. But sometimes I get excited (or have a bit too much coffee) and find myself throwing out words at top speed. In the south though, people tend to speak really slowly sometimes. The accent, the speech patterns – they’re very different than my own. Additionally, my binder told me to use the key terminology, so I was throwing around numerator/denominator at every chance.

So Alice looked over at one of the other girls, raised her eyebrows incredulously, then looked back at me.

“Speak my language.” She said simply, and I loved it. Was completely charmed by her confidence in telling me she had no idea what the hell I was talking about. That shows tremendous maturity, I think. I’m still learning to be secure enough in my abilities to stop someone, think, and tell them I’m lost. But it’s how you learn! Pausing discussions to clarify issues, check terminology, make progress. I could not have been more proud of her.

“OK.” I continued, trying to think. “We want the, um, bottom numbers?” I pointed to them and she nodded. “Right, so the bottom numbers have to be the same. That’s the denominator. Then the top numbers are called the numerators, and they get added together.”

We continued to work through the problem and I continued to marvel at how cool it was that Alice, in her 11 year old wisdom, had so easily displayed a quality that it’s taken me 27 years to refine. There are still days I nod along, completely lost, and then return to spend hours trying to understand a concept when a simple question and 2 minute answer could have provided the necessary information.

My musings, however, were interrupted.

“Can I tell you something?” Alice asked.

“Of course!” I answered quickly – more wisdom from my students! Perfection!

“OK, nobody can repeat this.” She said, looking darkly at the other 3 students around the table. “You have to promise.”

“Wait.” I said, because one lesson maturity offered me is that if “this” is good enough, it will be repeated. I’m better about keeping secrets than I once was, but the temptation sometimes lingers. And in junior high, temptations are not easily overcome from what I remember. “I don’t know if you should tell us.” I said, shaking my head.

“No! I want to!” Alice insisted, and while I considered what to do to prevent her from being vulnerable in telling said secret, she continued.

“My teacher,” and she paused for dramatic effect. I'm easy, so I was hooked. I wanted to know. “she burps. In class. And doesn’t even say ‘excuse me!’”

So they burst into giggles and I struggled not to join them. Because apparently my years of life and education have afforded me some knowledge and maturity in comparison to 5th graders after all.