My makeshift career as a special education teacher is a rocky one. First off, it’s not a career I’ve chosen, but has been foisted onto me by default. For the last 18 months, LuLu has been home with me, and we’ve been doing the best we can to continue her education (and have made some decided academic progress). Yet, most days I feel woefully inadequate, and am also in touch with the fact that I don’t want to be a teacher.

LuLu is learning division. Math is one of her favorite subjects, although she struggles mightily with memorizing math facts. We have worked on multiplication tables for years, and I now have a chart posted on the classroom wall that she refers to about half the time. We still drill on the tables, but we’ve moved on to more complex concepts. She “gets it” but literally can’t remember certain multiplication tables.

She gets the division too…except, she finds it very hard to remember all the steps. She’s at long division with remainders, and then checking the problems with multiplication. And we’ve been over and over it – for more than a week now. Usually she’s much faster with a math concept than this.

Part of the struggle is that she’s been sick with a virus this whole week and tires easily. Part of it is that we’re struggling with her attention and focus issues right now. But another part of it that I just recognized today is her inability to follow multi-task directions. She can’t do it.

So to remember to subtract from the numerator and then divide again, then subtract again, then write the remainder at the top…there are a lot of steps in a long division problem. She’s keenly aware of when she gets it wrong (and then she’s frustrated), but not able to remember the steps consistently in order on such a long problem.

I know that this is her CAPD showing. I know this from my crash course in how learning disabilities and processing disorders impact learning that has occurred from trying to teach LuLu all this many months and seeing these disorders manifested as she tries to do various academic tasks. Her visual processing causes her to skip lines and drop endings. She consistently leaves “s” and “ed” off of what she reads and what she writes. Yet she totally understands the concept of present, future and past tense verbs…she cognitively gets it, but her brain can’t “see” the word endings.

The same is true for the long division. She cognitively understands the process and easily see when her answer makes sense or not. But she routinely misses steps in doing the problem. I know that this problem is directly related to her CAPD, and is in need of therapy, of continued practice and may require that we accommodate her in some way.

It is a challenge…most assuredly…not to join in LuLu’s incredible frustration over what she calls “LOOOOOONG Division!”

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