Feenix Pan pdf MATH: From Tears to Smiles: why math matters, why so many kids struggle with it, when to intervene to turn math anxiety into ACADEMIC SUCCESS

Dear parents,If a child in your life is struggling with math and test anxiety, you may feel lost, bewildered, hopeless, or even in despair. But please be encouraged.Hi, I’m Dr. Feenix Pan, and since 2003 I have been teaching and coaching kids to recover from math and test anxiety and helping them to realize their full academic potential. I invite you to consider this book as a practical guide to help a child navigate the landscape of K–12 math with ease. This book does not teach you math. Instead, it details a process that I have developed while working with hundreds of kids and their families, on how you, the parent, can influence a child’s lifelong relationship with math regardless of your own math level. It is my sincere hope that after reading this book you will be able to manage math-related conflicts, hear your child’s unspoken words, and impart methods of effective and efficient learning to your child, all in a way that maintains and strengthens that special bond you share with a child. In this book, I share with you the same journey that I've been sharing with other parents: to help each family raise resilient, empowered, strong, andthriving kids by transforming their relationship with math from tears to smiles. When a child’s math skills, learning abilities, and confidence improve, so usually do their grades, their joy in learning, family harmony, their college options, and their career possibilities.Five insights and a unique process from 17 years in the trenches as a performance coach1. Math is different from all other subjects in that it’s the most difficult to keep up with. This is because of its sequential nature. With most other subjects, there are many places you can start from, and the information fits together like an expanding puzzle. Math, however, builds upon itself from the foundation of counting and addition all the way to calculus in the twelfth grade. A gap in understanding at any part of the math sequence will weaken understanding of all that follows. That gap is like a sinkhole under the math highway, and the more pressure put on it, the worse the collapse.2. More than any other subject, the level of math understanding achieved by senior year in high school will influence a child’s potential career and college choices. I’m not saying I approve of this—it’s just the way it is. Many educational and career tracks are not available to kids who cannot pass college math entrance exams at a higher level.3. In most cases it is the parents’ or guardians’ responsibility, rather than the school’s, to manage kids’ math education. Why? Because even the best schools work for the interest of the school, not individual children. This may sound harsh but if you think about it, schools have budgets, limited resources, and a new batch of kids coming in every year. Schools are evaluated by kids’ test scores, not the level of understanding that they achieve. Teachers are under intense pressure to promote kids to the next grade even when they are not ready. I’ve seen many cases where kids are promoted from grade to grade, yet their math levels are years behind. Later on inthis book, I’ll show you ways to tell if a child is falling behind in math, even if their grades say otherwise.4. YOU are essential to a child’s math success. Every child with math and test anxiety needs at least one adult in their life who believes in them. Love matters. Faith matters. Change takes time and effort. When you cherish a child’s potential, you help make that potential real for the child and for the world.5. There are many ways to help and effectively guide kids on their math journey that do not require you to be a math genius.