Old memories Surface...

Sometimes what prevents us from learning Math is a thought like "I am not good at Math" which may not be true at all yet it is ingrained deep inside our mind and is not easy to uproot. Years ago I had a student who was generally very talented and motivated. She was a communication major and understood the new material that was explored in class. The material had to do with operation on matrices and June never studied this before. The problem was that when ever we dealt with fractions she froze and was not able to do even the simplest operations. The semester passed and June was taking the final exam. Everyone had already left the large lecture hall where the test was taking place except June. When she finally finished her face lit up and she told me the following story:

When I was working on this test I was transported, in my mind to my first grade class. The teacher was explaining something and asking questions. Every one knew the math except me. I I thought that something was wrong with me with respect to learning math. This thought was buried in my mind until now. I feel so free.