We had a student named Sarah who had struggled with maths since Year 6.
Sarah told us: "I had a hard time understanding what was going on in class and had an even harder time understanding my homework".
The difficulty persisted, and worsened, all the way through into Year 10, and Sarah concluded, in the way so many young people do, that she was "bad at maths."
Sarah, however, was willing to practice.
Neither of her parents had attended university, and Sarah wanted to be the first in her family. We began working with Sarah in the late autumn of Year 10, focusing on teaching her how to LEARN maths.
In Sarah's words, it was not simply "work on a specific topic or section" but understanding how to "approach problems and difficulties with an open mind."
By the middle of spring that year, she reported that she had earned the highest mark in her class on a maths test.
Sarah strengthened this initial success over time to the point where she saw maths as one of her strengths rather than as a weakness. She even enrolled in a business program at university, where she would now embrace rather than avoid maths.
Sarah's story illustrates a lesson we've learned from working individually with hundreds of students over the years: YOU CREATE YOUR OWN INTELLIGENCE.
Through what neuroscientists refer to as brain plasticity, we shape our capabilities over time in the way we use our brains: in short, we build our brains as we would our muscles.
When we are open-minded about our capabilities, and we are willing to learn in a way that makes use of the brain's ability to adapt and grow, we can unleash potential that we might have thought unavailable to us.
