Yesterday afternoon, I had a first meeting with a tutor student at the college. He's very nice and hard working and absolutely horrible at math. He told me he has dyscalculia in addition to dyslexia. Dyscalculia affects a person's ability to understand number-based information and math. I'd heard the word before, but never had a student diagnosed with it... as far as I know.
For example, he didn't know any mutliplication facts, couldn't count by 2's or 5's or even 10's. He struggled to add two single-digit numbers in his head. For me, as a math nerd, it was both appalling and fascinating.
After struggling through helping him prepare for a test he has today(!), I looked for more info.
Most of what I found pertained to strategies for kids in elementary school. What to do with a 20-year-old trying to do algebra?
I'll reiterate that he was super nice and friendly and "easy" to work with other than the horrid obstacle that is dyscalculia. I'll try to learn all I can to best help him before we meet again, and I feel a bit like Chief Brody
We're gonna need a bigger boat.
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Linking up this week with Mama Kat for the prompt:
3. A blog post inspired by the word: coach
7 comments:
Wow I did not know that it had a name… that is me!
I know a couple of people in this group. They have to pay a professional to do even simple tax returns, just can't manage the numbers. It must be very hard to navigate modern life which is so number and word oriented.
Linda Sue, I'm betting there are people walking around with it that don't know it's a thing.
Boud, right? The things we take for granted...
That's just mind-blowing. Trouble with numbers on top of dyslexia? Good luck to him, and to you. It's a great thing you're doing.
John, I'm sure it's frustrating for him, but he's surprisingly personable.
That must be a nightmare!
Oh wow! I've never heard of dyscalculia! I would have loved to have claimed that diagnosis in high school when I was failing all of my tests. ;) You're such an awesome tudor to be taking the extra steps to figure out how to teach him. What a challenge!
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