Often, students who are in advanced classes or honors & magnet programs feel surprised when math begins to become a struggle for them.
“Why was school so easy before and now my grades are lower?”
Students are different, and their reasons for struggling are too. After more than 10 years tutoring, however, my husband and I have seen common patterns in what is contributing to their difficulty. The 5 most common ones are listed below.
- They don’t ask questions
This one is something you may hear me say often. I feel very strongly about this one, especially as someone who was incredibly shy when I was younger. Students, both introverted and extroverted, often feel embarrassed or hesitant to let others know when they are struggling. Not asking questions when they don’t understand has a greater effect than one might realize.
See our upcoming blog post about this to read more.
- They don’t maintain healthy study habits
Some students are just not used to needing to practice or study. They may have found school easy and carefree in their earlier years. They may not have needed to put in a large amount of practice to grasp concepts. As the classes move up in speed, difficulty, and workload, the need for studying and practice becomes somewhat unavoidable. If you aren’t used to this, you may think math is ‘supposed to be easy,’ which can lead to giving up when it gets hard. Sometimes this is subconscious, even.
Adding to this problem is the fact that many students simply don’t know how to study. Passively rereading notes, or glancing at images in their textbook doesn’t actually help them retain the information.
- They don’t understand how to DO it
Sometimes students seem to be following along with notes and classwork, but then have difficulty applying the concepts to problems that aren’t identical.
This one is a little trickier to explain.
What it really simplifies to is the difference between memorization and true conceptual understanding. If you memorize, then you can just write down the formulas exactly as they appeared and plug in the numbers. But you will only know to use the if the problem is worded the exact same way, with only the numbers changed. It’s like copy and paste math! If the test problems use the same idea and formula but are worded differently, you may not know how to use it, if you learned only to copy and paste instead of learning what situations use those steps.
- Their schedule is more demanding with high school extracurriculars
Between sports, clubs, hobbies, and volunteering, the average ‘overachiever’ schedule can be a bit loaded. The reasons this impacts math links back to reason #2 and also brings in some time management skills. Even many adults struggle with these skills, but it’s essential to be able to manage a busy schedule and still enjoy your life.
- Some of their foundations, although there, are a little shaky
You would think in an advanced class there wouldn’t be learning ‘gaps.’ This is a common misconception, however. Gaps can be found anywhere. These gaps may be subtle issues and not incredibly invasive to the student’s ability to succeed until they need to on problems that use multiple skills at once and move very quickly. This is why sometimes issues do not become apparent until a student is in older grades.
The good news here is that there is a remedy for each of these.
- Confidence – dispelling the myth that you shouldn’t have questions if you’re ‘smart’
- Study skills – teaching kids how to actually record, review, and practice what they’ve learned in classes
- Conceptualize vs memorize – The first two solutions will help with this a lot. But we must remember to move students away from only memorization learning and use memorization only to store the tools we need in our heads. Instead, focus should be placed on understanding what the questions are adding and how to choose what step is next.
- Time Management – The solution, once again, is to work on study skills. With an extra focus on time management, students can learn to prioritize and break tasks up into manageable pieces. This will not only benefit them in school, but also in their personal lives and careers in the future.
- Review – Reinforcing previous materials and working on the step by step approach
These are all solutions we work on with our students regularly in helping them get back on track in their classes. If you need help implementing any of these or assessing your student’s obstacles, please reach out via email at
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