{"id":2724,"date":"2015-12-07T05:14:49","date_gmt":"2015-12-07T05:14:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stories.daddytales.com\/?p=2724"},"modified":"2015-12-07T05:14:49","modified_gmt":"2015-12-07T05:14:49","slug":"whiteboard-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/2015\/12\/07\/whiteboard-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Whiteboard, Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Click here for part 1<\/a>]<\/p>\n

Earlier this school year, I put a whiteboard up in the kitchen.<\/p>\n

Since then, I’ve been challenging the kids by writing\u00a0math problems on the board. I don’t write typical problems, though. I try to come up with things they haven’t seen before,\u00a0forcing them to use\u00a0their skills\u00a0in new ways.<\/p>\n

The kids both like it and hate it.<\/p>\n

They like it because it feels really, really good to get one of the problems right.\u00a0It’s a\u00a0high visibility challenge, and correct answers are celebrated.<\/p>\n

They hate it, because. . . well, math can be scary.<\/p>\n

This\u00a0week is finals week for the boys, so, naturally, this past weekend has seen a lot of white-boarding.<\/p>\n

My youngest was at the board this morning, working a problem.<\/p>\n

“Are you sure about that?” I interrupted\u00a0partway through.<\/p>\n

“Yes,” he said without pausing. They’re fairly used to me challenging them.<\/p>\n

“Sorry,” I said. “That step is wrong.”<\/p>\n

When one of the kids has a problem with schoolwork\u00a0I always start by saying something is wrong. I think\u00a0there’s a lot of value in letting\u00a0the\u00a0kids find\u00a0their own mistakes. I’m happy to help if they can’t, but I like to give them first crack at it.<\/p>\n

“No, it’s not.” he\u00a0insisted.<\/p>\n

I tilted my head at him, confused. He hadn’t even glanced back at what he’d done. “I’m not tricking you. There really is a mistake.”<\/p>\n

“No!” he said. “There isn’t!”<\/p>\n

We stared at each other for a few heartbeats, neither backing down.<\/p>\n

“Look at my face,” I said at last. “Would it look like this if everything was right?”<\/p>\n

“Um.” he glanced back at the whiteboard. “Let me check again.”<\/p>\n

Smart boy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sometimes, just sometimes, it makes sense to listen to your father. Not all the time, mind you… Just occasionally.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daddytales-n"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DpYi-HW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2724"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2724\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.pat-matthews.com\/stories\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}