While this is not directly college-related, I still hope people will help me with the insights and ideas for our situation. Sorry it got so long!
My D is an 8th-grader, smart, stubborn, straight-A character type. From our observations, she has clearly got the “mathematical” mind . The problem is that she doesn’t like math/science and the worse part is she is not even sure what she likes in terms of future areas of interest (I know, it’s still early, but it never hurts to search, right?). She tends to be more interested in humanities, but even she herself realizes that it’s not her strongest side - she is not very artistic.
We want to (gently!) steer her towards math and science as this is where her talent is.
So far she refused to sign up for any formal math/science EC. She tried AMC8 for 2 years, mastered all the problems there but didn’t do well on the tests (test anxiety + bad test administration from what we could tell). School is no help (at least, till next year - she is still suffering through the Common Core geometry and is bored to death). She is clearly not interested in anything technical (robots, computers, mechanics), but tolerates the theoretical side.
She is still agreeing to work with her dad and they try various random things but we are running out of ideas what to try - we don’t want to intersect with school material too much because we are afraid to make school math even more boring.
So, what would you try to interest a girl in math(and/or science)?
I agree - that’s a good idea and we like the book/approach. We are just waiting for the right moment when she is not too confrontational (teenagers!). Besides, it has this aura of “the thing” among the local “tiger” parents and she is well aware of it. Maybe we will still use them just not mentioning the title.
Just to be clear, you don’t have to be “artistic” to do well in humanities. What you need to be good at is critical thinking, which as a person with a math mind, she probably is. So I’m just cautioning not to push her away from what she likes, with the mistaken idea that she’s not as “good” at it.
^agree. Don’t push anything other than working hard at whatever it is that they want to pursue at that age. Schools will basically require more math than anyone needs unless they want to go into a STEM field. Just because one is good at something, does not mean he or she likes it.
If your child is good at Math/Science, then non-Math or Science ECs may be more important depending upon what schools are of interest when the time comes. Some colleges would prefer to have a well-rounded student than an uber focused anything.
My older son got interested in math through some of the more interesting stuff that you don’t always learn in school. Theonni Pappas books like Penrose the Mathematical Cat, and the Number Devil by Hans Magnus and later graduated to more advanced stuff like The Book of Numbers by John H. Conway and Mathematics: A Human Endeavor
by Harold R. Jacobs. He also liked doing stuff like this: http://www.themathlab.com/geometry/section10/holetrick.htm (Cut a hole in a piece of paper big enough to step through.) Science museums often have really interesting math sections.
You never know how these things will turn out. Everybody assumed my daughter who read hundreds of books a year, loved to write, was on the school newspaper, etc. would end up in humanities. She went into college undeclared and ended up a math/econ major. Her best friend who seemed like the real STEM type - ended up an english major. Don’t nudge - let nature/life play out and you may be surprised where she ends up.
Your daughter could be me just over 10 years ago to a T. I am good at math and science but it wasn’t really my “thing.” I dutifully went through the AP maths and sciences but by senior year, I said screw it and took all humanities and social sciences courses.
I am now getting a PhD in an interdisciplinary humanities field and my undergrad degree in an interdisciplinary arts & humanities program. I am not, in any way shape or form, artistic. I can’t even draw stick figures.
I am still very analytical and use math every day in my humanities field (history) because I am running an extremely large historical data project.
All of this is to say that she can use her analytical mind in humanities fields and in absolutely no way does she need to be artistic.
I think there’s only so many things you can try but you risk pushing her even further away.
My D was good at Math but found it boring. It wasn’t until she got into Chemistry that she found a purpose for the math, and it all clicked. She struggled with the tippy top math in college, but understood it enough to get through her Chem major. She appreciates the function of math, but has no love for the beauty of math.
I would keep it very low key with her, the idea of problem solving real life situations that matter to her might draw her into the math world. Have fun with your kid, and try to do things together that she is interested in, whether it is mathy or not. Building critical thinking/problem solving skills will be a good foundation for her no matter what path she takes.
My S was into gaming early on, and would have to stop his coding to find a youtube video that would teach him the physics concepts he needed to continue on with his computer stuff. (I may not even be using the right terms for what he was doing, making game visuals and such?) But he was years away from taking any physics classes and yet was digging into it just enough to learn for the project at hand.
Both my kids live for Mythbusters, and both of them would have loved to work on that show as their ultimate career choice! The figuring out how things work is hard-wired into their brains.
My D was another one who was not interested in math although she is very good at it. Got a degree in English and is working at a job she loves (it is in a large corporation). She has found herself becoming more interested in the actual business side of things (and has noticed that she is the 'math person" among her colleagues. She is currently studying for the GMAT and plans to get an MBA.
Thank you all for the ideas. @mathmom, I will definitely check out those books!
So far the most interest we got out of a book was Euclid’s Elements (go figure!). It was so different from the school math representation, she loved it (we are waiting for the paper copy to arrive now).
We definitely don’t want to push her anywhere. In fact, she currently doesn’t have a single STEM EC and never actually had it (besides spending an hour or two with her dad and some random table discussions on anything from a physics experiment to beginning Python). She always chose her own ECs and her biggest time-drain now is ballet (~15-20hrs/week) and she also takes Russian lit and French and we try to find her interesting enough books to keep her reading - so, I am not exactly worried about her not being “rounded”
What I am worried about is that she will end up like me - good all around but with no specific interest area which she would be excited about. And you cannot get really excited about anything if you don’t try it. She already knows that ballet career is not in the cards for her (due to complete lack of talent). She is also not exactly big fan of writing (her writing is good but not excellent and not for the lack of trying). Math and science is just something she never actually tried deeply enough to know if she likes it or not. We don’t want to make her try it (it will get us nowhere) - we want her to get interested to try and thus was the question
@powercropper, you could be writing about my son! He is currently a physics major (with the strong inclination to computational physics). He liked all things technical (like yours) but started actually liking math in junior year, during his calc. Since then (maybe a bit later) he started solving math problems for pleasure (Spivak’s Calculus is his best friend). I hope my D’s interest will start going somewhere once she starts her HS and will get rid of all the elementary- and middle-school mediocrity! We are just trying to give her a headstart - there are really great opportunities in our HS but she will not utilize them unless she is interested.
“she currently doesn’t have a single STEM EC” - You know that is true for most 8th graders (even those that will ultimately head into STEM careers) …right?
It might be too late, but colorado_mom’s post reminded me of something. I did this in 8th grade and loved it. It might be too late to enter but I don’t know. Probably the only STEM EC I ever did.
@kiddie - You could have been writing about my D! She was the total bookworm, always reading…loved writing, was on the school newspaper etc. She went off to college thinking about different humanities major.
It wasn’t until she was in college that she discovered her love for math, physics and computer science. She’s now a physics major, and takes as much math and CS as she can. She’s also a tutor in all three subjects.
So you just never know.
OP - I wish I had a specific suggestion for you (how about a summer camp?), but I hope my story helps you in some way.
@koshkas – our D18 was similar to yours at that age, especially the stubborn part! She was on the accelerated math path but didn’t enjoy it. All attempts to get her interested failed. So, we decided to start asking her for help on simple everyday math problems without explicitly making them “math” problems: calculating the tip and total for restaurants, calculate the length of paper required to wrap a circular object for a project, determine how long until we get to our destination on a trip, etc. Seeing the utility of what she was learning helped. However, it wasn’t until this year, her junior year, that she got serious about math and science, mainly because she knows college is coming up and she needed to get her stuff together. I think taking AP Calc AB helped since she knows she can no longer get by on memorization alone, as she could through 10th grade (she actually asks me for help now and isn’t resistant).
BTW, I don’t know if your D’s HS has “pathways” or not. Our D’s public HS did and she started in marketing. Didn’t like it. She switched to the Biotechnology pathway in between 9th and 10th grade and that helped tremendously, to the point that she’s now actively vying for a summer science research opportunity at the StateU next year (probably the first time we’ve heard, “I really want this”, from her in years).
For my girls, they did some week long summer camps that introduced them to engineering. It help a lot once they understood that engineers do things that help everyone.
My D decided she liked math when she discovered that she was better than others (this was not the case in 6-8th grade). It was algebra that really clicked for her and that’s when it became fun.
Your efforts may backfire – be careful. We did a lot of science activities as a family – museums, watching documentaries, and our kids did some science related summer camps when they were younger than your D.
I also talked to my D who was more likely to be successful in the sciences about the fact that math/science courses may be more challenging for her (whiz reader also and poet, but also good at math and science), and that pushing through and being persistent were important when it got hard. I think she took that to heart – she is now a senior physics major in college. But my other kid majored in a social science, and now has a very good job as a manager in a research department. Don’t try to force your D into STEM.
Oh, we are already dealing with “backfiring” - sort of. When her older brother discovered that math is actually fun (in his BC calc), he was exploding with enthusiasm: “let me teach you the integrals - they are so easy!” or “try this problem with trigonometry, I’ll explain, it’s so much fun!”. She was getting literally scared and started “hating” anything science or math-related (she would still pick up the problems and concepts, though). We then stopped even mentioning anything about that and now slowly creeping back.
We never tried to give her real-life “quasi-problems” - she was always the best counting person in the family and always did those things without even thinking - counting the change, estimating the amount of fabric/paint/flooring/time, etc. She would just come up with the answer on her own as soon as the question arose.
We never tried any science camps with her because she had a lot of exposure at home with her brother, besides she didn’t really want to. In addition, we always disliked the idea of any academics in summer unless the kid asked for it.
The best way to interest her would be to have a nice fast-paced, hard class at school but that’s not likely till HS (she is already at the top of the class in her “advanced” geometry and that’s as far as our middle school allows and she mastered all that material long time ago mostly on her own with some Khan academy help) We tried to arrange homeschooling just for math but the district wouldn’t allow it.
I think my husband just gave up at this point trying not to “ruin” her next year in school and just started going through whatever advanced topic comes up - be it trigonometry or something else (I believe they were playing with some easier linear algebra stuff last time).
So now we are just mining for ideas - I liked the recommended books and we have already ordered Euclid.
and she mastered all that material long time ago mostly on her own with some Khan academy help) We tried to arrange homeschooling just for math but the district wouldn’t allow it.