Adding On
Spent a good portion of the morning analyzing student responses on math assessments… which basically means that a bunch of teachers took on the onerous task of trying to figure out how seven-year-olds think!
One particular math problem – in which a boy had thirty-six stamps, and was given twenty-six more – brought several responses, including open number lines, number trees, and missing addends as potential solutions. One could tell, upon review, the level of number sense students had, and what their next steps developmentally would be.
But one particular response caught my attention. In it, the student had drawn, in a neat array of four by nine, all thirty-six of the initial stamps, and then beside it, another group of circles representing the additional twenty-six. The instructor leading our session made the comment that the reason a student doesn’t simply “add on” to the initial number (the reason all thirty-six stamps had to be painstakingly drawn) is that the child has ‘no trust that the number is solid.’
How many times do I, too, count the initial “thirty-six?” How many ways do I go back to “one” when looking through the lens of a new situation? Yes, God proved Himself faithful then, but this is a new instance in which that is being tested; I’d better “re-figure.” Yes, He is “good to all” (Ps. 145:9), but what if this one time, something goes awry; I’d ought to re-count.
What I’m struck by is how much time the child figuring that stamp problem wasted; how much more could have been accomplished if – rather than distrusting the basics – he had spent the time searching for a more efficient strategy, or double-checking his work. Instead, he went back to the beginning, and forfeit growth. All the time spent doubting the essentials, the stark, immutable nature of a number, could have been spent “adding on.” He might have at least started with thirty-seven, and proceeded.
But how would that look? Yes, God has proven Himself faithful; therefore, even though I cannot see how He’ll accomplish it, I trust He will bring it to pass. “Thirty-seven…” Even though I don’t yet envision how He could provide, He has never failed before. “Thirty-eight…” Much as I’m struggling to see His goodness in this, He has proven undeniably His immense love with a crossbeam and nails. “Thirty-nine…”
As 2 Timothy 3:14 exhorts us, we are to ‘continue in the things we have learned and become convinced of…’ Even more explicitly, 2 John 1:8 states, “Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what you have accomplished…” We have no need to start back at number “one.” We would be forfeiting all we had ‘accomplished’ were we to return to the beginning, when what are “counting on” is already “solid.”
For our hope lies not in One who must be re-proven in each situation, but in Him whose character is unchanging [see Hebrews 13:8]. And it is to Him that we may declare with firm conviction, even when deluged with the “un-figured” calculations of our ever-changing circumstance, “But You are the same…” (Psalm 102:27).
One particular math problem – in which a boy had thirty-six stamps, and was given twenty-six more – brought several responses, including open number lines, number trees, and missing addends as potential solutions. One could tell, upon review, the level of number sense students had, and what their next steps developmentally would be.
But one particular response caught my attention. In it, the student had drawn, in a neat array of four by nine, all thirty-six of the initial stamps, and then beside it, another group of circles representing the additional twenty-six. The instructor leading our session made the comment that the reason a student doesn’t simply “add on” to the initial number (the reason all thirty-six stamps had to be painstakingly drawn) is that the child has ‘no trust that the number is solid.’
How many times do I, too, count the initial “thirty-six?” How many ways do I go back to “one” when looking through the lens of a new situation? Yes, God proved Himself faithful then, but this is a new instance in which that is being tested; I’d better “re-figure.” Yes, He is “good to all” (Ps. 145:9), but what if this one time, something goes awry; I’d ought to re-count.
What I’m struck by is how much time the child figuring that stamp problem wasted; how much more could have been accomplished if – rather than distrusting the basics – he had spent the time searching for a more efficient strategy, or double-checking his work. Instead, he went back to the beginning, and forfeit growth. All the time spent doubting the essentials, the stark, immutable nature of a number, could have been spent “adding on.” He might have at least started with thirty-seven, and proceeded.
But how would that look? Yes, God has proven Himself faithful; therefore, even though I cannot see how He’ll accomplish it, I trust He will bring it to pass. “Thirty-seven…” Even though I don’t yet envision how He could provide, He has never failed before. “Thirty-eight…” Much as I’m struggling to see His goodness in this, He has proven undeniably His immense love with a crossbeam and nails. “Thirty-nine…”
As 2 Timothy 3:14 exhorts us, we are to ‘continue in the things we have learned and become convinced of…’ Even more explicitly, 2 John 1:8 states, “Watch yourselves, that you do not lose what you have accomplished…” We have no need to start back at number “one.” We would be forfeiting all we had ‘accomplished’ were we to return to the beginning, when what are “counting on” is already “solid.”
For our hope lies not in One who must be re-proven in each situation, but in Him whose character is unchanging [see Hebrews 13:8]. And it is to Him that we may declare with firm conviction, even when deluged with the “un-figured” calculations of our ever-changing circumstance, “But You are the same…” (Psalm 102:27).
posted by Purple at 4:48 PM
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