What Champlin Park families are telling me this fall

A few weeks into the school year now, and the biggest thing I'm hearing from Champlin Park parents is that they genuinely want to get ahead of problems this year instead of chasing them. A number of parents have told me they wish they'd gotten their student more support earlier, before small gaps had a chance to turn into bigger ones.

The struggles I'm seeing split pretty cleanly by age. My younger students have lost some of their fluency with basic addition and multiplication facts over the summer. My older students stepping into middle school math or Algebra are running into trouble with fractions and integers, and that's making the jump to higher level concepts feel more overwhelming than it should.

My advice for Champlin Park families is don't wait for the first parent teacher conference or a disappointing report card to take action. If you're seeing frustration with math homework now, that's the moment to deal with it, and try to keep math talk at home positive. It's a skill that grows with practice, not a talent you either have or don't.

We're in the early stages of planning a movie night for both our Champlin Park and Maple Grove families, more details soon. Around the neighborhood, I'm watching our families settle into their fall routines, with a lot of kids coming straight from school to get their math workout in before fall sports and other evening activities pick up.