Helping Your Teenager with High School Math
By Linda Hinkle

Ahhh.....it's summertime and the living is easy. You have no rigid schedules to follow, no school bells to live by, and no report card hassles with your teenager. But before you know it those "Back to School" sale ads will appear in the newspapers and you will have to gear up for another school year and all that it entails. You need all the help you can get.

I am a recently retired high school mathematics teacher and over the years I observed, time and time again, parents wanting to help their children be good math students but feeling completely helpless as to how or what they could do. Parents usually feel that because it's been so long since they have had upper level math courses themselves, there's nothing they can really do to help. Such is not the case at all. Any parent, regardless of his education level, can follow some simple but effective steps that can help their student succeed in any high school math course. Let's see how.

Get your student to "talk" math with you. You don't have to understand the subject matter; just gauge the responses you get. When you ask what is being studied, a reply such as "quadratic equations" or "polynomials" shouldn't suffice. Even though that might indeed be the topic of the week, it demonstrates no understanding of the concepts at all. Instead, strive for something along the lines of "We are studying quadratic equations and the different ways to solve them such as factoring, using the quadratic formula, and completing the square." See the difference? Usually if a student can verbally express some concepts of the topic being presented, that indicates a fairly good understanding of what is being studied.