Last year, I grappled with whether to enroll Lizzie in an advanced math class despite her and my own misgivings about it. Neither of us were sure of the workload and whether it would be manageable or a living hell of theorems and proofs. It wasn't quite so bad. The first two quarters she got B-pluses. But in the third quarter her grade dipped slightly to a B and she finished the fourth quarter with a C+.
Now, a C+ is not a stellar grade for a 6th grade math class but Lizzie's class is not your typical 6th grade math class. A little perspective: the work Lizzie and her peers were doing at the end of the school year was high level trigonometry. I didn't even take trigonometry until the 11th grade. And I got a D.* Naturally, I'm okay with a C+.
But now, that wee, small voice in the back of my brain is back. The one that says Don't push her too far or too fast. So next year, 7th grade year, we'll once again take math one small step at a time. If Advanced Algebra proves too much for her twelve-year-old brain, then we'll throttle back a notch. I keep telling myself It is only middle school but - geez - it sure is a lot harder than I remember.
*Thank gawd Madhubby knows his math because I gave up on it after Algebra II.
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