Kathleen Calabrese: 00:00:00.579
What AIM is going to do is create a new habit. It’s going to help that child to have a different way of learning facts so that they can eventually transition those facts into long-term memory.

Gretchen Roe: 00:00:22.470
Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to The Demme Learning Show. This is Gretchen Roe and I am absolutely delighted to have the opportunity to sit down with my friend and colleague, Kathleen Calabrese, and talk to you about hacking AIM. The genesis for this conversation is because Kathleen and I see so often in different social media channels where parents are frustrated because they aren’t getting the results they want from a program that will deliver fantastic results for you. Kathleen and I want to explore why you would need AIM, what AIM purpose is and why it is so effective. And we also want to confront some of the things that sometimes we think as parents that cause us to be less than successful. So we’re going to disabuse you of a couple of notions. Kathleen, will you introduce yourself and then we’ll get to the meat of the matter?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:01:18.371
Thanks, Gretchen. My name is Kathleen Calabrese, and I work in customer service at Demme Learning. I used Math-U-See for 21 years with my two boys.

Gretchen Roe: 00:01:31.319
And you know what? That makes you a greater veteran than I am. I only used it for 14 years, but I will tell you it’s a marvelous program in the fact that it makes your children into self-driven learners. And I think that would be the goal for any of us as a homeschool journey. My husband and I homeschooled six kids, 21 years, and I wouldn’t have changed the journey for anything. But I also think what’s really important today is to recognize that when Kathleen and I started our journey, the world was a little bit different. The world is much more frenetic now. And we live in the 90-second-bite era. We are looking to get something, get a goal in 90 seconds. And we’re going to talk to you today about why bringing that attitude into AIM might not be as effective as possible. So Kathleen, I know you have developed a particular affinity for AIM being a customer service rep and talking so many families through it. Tell me why it’s effective.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:02:38.528
So AIM is a remediation program. It is meant for a child to master their facts. The addition subtraction one is meant for a child who’s 8 years old and older, who’s already had at least a year of instruction with addition and subtraction, but for whatever reason, they didn’t master their facts. And then the multiplication one is for a child 10 years old and older, who again has already had multiplication instruction but didn’t master the facts. So the AIM course doesn’t teach them how to add and subtract, how to multiply. It works on mastering those facts.

Gretchen Roe: 00:03:14.597
The other thing I think that is really important is we do something to children that corrupts their ability to fact master from the very beginning. There’s nothing cuter than a four-year-old when you say, “I have two fingers and two fingers. How many do I have in all?” And then somewhere around first grade, we say, “Tell me what two plus two is and don’t use your fingers.” And so we inadvertently create habits that cause us to not be able to remain engaged. Can you talk a little bit about that, Kathleen? Why is it important to have habit change here?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:03:51.741
Well, obviously, as adults, we don’t want to be counting on our fingers. Even as we get into more difficult math problems, multi-digit it’s ineffective to be finger counting. And it’s also a struggle for the student, which they don’t even know how to express. So we want to build habits that are teaching them how to put those math facts into their long-term memory. And what we mean by putting it into their long-term memory is that they would have automatic recall. So they can say 3 times 8 equals 24 that quickly without having to skip count, without having to use other methods to figure that out. They just know it because it’s in their long-term memory. Again, students struggle at higher levels sometimes because they don’t have that automatic recall. And again, they’re not going to say to you, “That’s why this algebra is hard because I don’t have my addition facts down.” They don’t even understand that. But when they have those facts mastered, when they have them in their long-term memory, then that’s no longer a hurdle for them, and they can just deal with whatever the problem is that they have presented to them.

Gretchen Roe: 00:05:06.789
Which, I think, is one of the things as parents that is paramount for all of us is we don’t want our kids to struggle. And I know you and I talk to endless numbers of parents who say, but my child is behind. So before we even get into the semantics of how you’re going to get the best out of aim, can we talk about the B word and why that causes so much anxiety?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:05:32.543
That’s such a funny thing because, in homeschooling, people know that it’s negative to say it, but they say it anyway. They will say, “My child’s behind. I know I’m not supposed to say that, but they are.” The reason we don’t want to say that is because it puts undue pressure on the child. It does, whether you say it verbally to them or not. But if you’re conveying to them that they’re behind, if you’re stressing that they’re behind, if you’re worried about getting them caught up, you are putting stress on that child. And it’s stress that– there’s nothing they can do about it. If they don’t know that information, they have to go through the building blocks of learning that information. You can’t just say, “Well, my child is in sixth grade. He should be learning fractions, but we’re only on subtraction. We’re just going to skip over multiplication and go to fractions.” Nope, not going to work. You have to go through the building blocks to get them there. So it’s one of those things where– it’s hard to say. You really have to set it aside.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:06:38.275
I mean, I had to do it myself. My youngest child didn’t read till he was 8 years old. And I tried every single reading curriculum there was. I kept trying it. And then I would ask other homeschoolers, “What do I do?” And they all kept telling me, “He’s just not ready yet. Maybe he’s just not ready yet.” And have you had him tested or he’s just not ready, those are the things that I heard. And when he was 8 years old, he literally just started reading one day and took off. And then it finally did make me realize, “He just wasn’t ready yet. There was nothing wrong. He just wasn’t ready yet.” And that was a really good reminder to me to not worry about the fact that he wasn’t reading in kindergarten or first grade. It didn’t happen till he was 8. And sure enough, by the time he was 10, he was reading everything that every other 10-year-old was reading. So it didn’t matter. And I think I did stress about it because I kept trying all different curriculums. I think I was showing my son, “This isn’t working. This isn’t working. This isn’t working. We need to try something else,” instead of just pulling back and saying, “Okay. I’m just going to give it some time until it happens as it’s supposed to happen.”

Gretchen Roe: 00:07:54.940
I think it’s also beneficial for us to understand as parents when we think in our head, even what if we never articulated if we think our child is behind? Or they’re not where their peers are? That kids are great at reading body language. They can feel that. So if that’s you, first of all, I want to absolve you of feeling guilty because we’ve all been there. We’ve all had that. We want more for our children. We wouldn’t be homeschooling, we wouldn’t be making this hard journey if we didn’t want more for our children. But by that same token, we need to take that monkey off the sofa, hold it up, and say, “You know what? I have done you a disservice. Because I have let you think I’m exasperated with you and I’m not. But here’s how we’re going to fix that.” So how does AIM come alongside a parent, Kathleen, and help that parent fix what seems to be broken?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:08:59.339
What AIM is going to do is create a new habit. It’s going to help that child to have a different way of learning facts so that they can eventually transition those facts into long-term memory. The thing about AIM is, it’s not instant. You’re not going to see a drastic change immediately, one lesson in, two lesson in, okay, we got this. Now everything is fine, now my child knows all their facts. No, it’s about changing a habit. Which we all know habits take a while to change. So you’re going to create a new habit for the child to learn those facts. And it’s going to be through activities and through the different things in the AIM program so that they can, again, get those facts into long-term memory so they have automatic recall. When you do that, it will free the child up then to move forward with math. To be able to progress forward much easier. Again, a child doesn’t know why they’re struggling with fractions. They don’t know why they’re struggling with algebra. They can’t say that to you.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:10:08.168
As parents, sometimes we don’t even know. We’re looking going, “Oh, algebra’s really hard, yeah, it was hard for me too. My child can’t do algebra.” Usually, it’s not that your child can’t do algebra and this is part of the reason that AIM was created. The algebra problem might be 17 steps long. To figure out what why is. Within those 17 steps, they need to add, subtract, they need to multiply, they need to be able to do fractions. Well, if a child is struggling with all of those steps, just basic math things, they’re looking at that problem going, “This is too hard, I can’t do it.” When they have that automatic recall, they can literally now just take one line at a time in that algebra problem and all of a sudden now they’re able to do it. So using AIM and getting those facts mastered makes such a difference for the child moving forward.

Gretchen Roe: 00:11:00.925
Kathleen, you had said something when we were preparing for this conversation that I want to revisit. And you said that parents who use the program don’t recognize the powers of the activities. So could you talk a little bit about why that’s powerful?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:11:17.523
Sure, well obviously if you’re using AIM, you’re using it because you came to the realization that your child doesn’t have their facts mastered, right? So with any AIM kit, there are fact-check cards. They’re not flashcards that we’re holding up and seeing if our child knows the facts, they’re fact-check cards. That we’re going to go through different parts of the program and then those are ways for us as the parent to know whether your child has mastered those facts. Well, you want to use the different methods. We have Building It, Build Right Say, we have Drawing It, we have the activities. Those are all different methods to help the child to master a fact that again, we’ve already realized that they don’t have mastered. So as we’re going through those different activities and things with them, that is what is helping them to then have automatic recall of that fact.

Gretchen Roe: 00:12:13.960
It’s also very powerful to put in the hands of your student the ability to choose how are you going to remember this to be able to use those fact check cards effectively – say that three times fast – and be able to sort between what is in my long term memory and what is not yet in my long term memory. And to be able to successfully evaluate, “What do I need to work on?” Just that motivation, that can be intrinsic motivation for a student to be able to stick in there and make it happen. But that “stick in there” part, Kathleen, can you talk about how long AIM takes?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:13:00.312
On average, AIM could take up to four months. It really depends. It depends on a few things. It depends on how many facts the child already has mastered coming into it because they are going to have some mastered just coming into the program most likely. So then it’s a matter of how long it’s going to take them to go through each fact and show mastery of it. Again, it’s one of those things that we don’t want to focus on getting through it quickly. We don’t want to focus on, “It’s October. I really want to start that next level of Math-U-See. Can we hurry up and get through AIM here and then jump into the next level? You want to just say, “You know what? My child didn’t have their facts mastered. I’m going to go back. I’m going to work through this program until they get the facts mastered. And I’m going to trust the fact that when they come out of AIM with all their facts mastered, they’re going to be able to do much better in their next level of math.”

Gretchen Roe: 00:14:01.174
Kathleen, one of the questions that we had from several parents was, “Can I do something like AIM alongside what we’re already doing for math? Because AIM as a standalone supplement is not part of the math you see sequence. Parents can use it and then go back to whatever math program they think they love. But why do we say you have to do it all by itself?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:14:26.258
Yep. And we often have that question asked very often, can I do it alongside so my child isn’t behind or so we can keep moving along? And our answer always is it is not recommended to do it alongside. And again, the reason for that is what AIM is doing is it’s creating new habits. Instead of your child counting on their fingers, instead of them looking up at the ceiling and skip counting, instead of them using whatever tactics that they normally use to figure out the math fact, we’re creating new habits of them just memorizing mastering those facts. If as the parent, you stick a piece of paper in front of your child with a bunch of problems on it and you say, “Okay, I just want you to do this.” The child knows, “I’m supposed to do that paper. Let me go back to counting on my fingers so I can get this paper done.”

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:15:15.749
So they’re going to resort back to their old method of finding the answers instead of waiting until they have those facts mastered and then they could easily just do that. So we always say just be patient, use AIM by itself. And then when you come out of AIM– again, what we hear so many times is then when a child goes into their math, it is so much easier for them. They are so much more confident because they’re no longer struggling just to get those basic facts to find the basic things that all of a sudden they will be able to go quicker. So in the long run, it balances out. You’re not to say catch up, but in the long run, you’re going to see that your child now does go through that next level without the struggle of not having their facts.

Gretchen Roe: 00:16:12.055
So Kathleen, if I’m a parent and I have purchased AIM, I have the box here. Where do I begin? What do you want me to do first? Tell me because the guide in here is lengthy. There’s a lot of words in here. So what what would you do in order for me to get the best out of this program? Tell me what you want me to do first.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:16:35.187
Okay, so you’re right. The guide is a bit lengthy. And we do have some customers reach out and say, “Okay I received the box. I have the guide. I’m a little overwhelmed.”

Gretchen Roe: 00:16:44.597
Now what do I do?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:16:45.752
Right. “Now what do I do? And can you please just tell me where to start”? So we have actually created a couple of support center articles and those articles offer a few things for AIM. There’s one of them that says how to begin, where to start. And then there’s another one that says how to work through the lessons. But the how to begin one is going to tell the parent exactly almost bullet points, not very lengthy, but just bullet points of what to do. Open the box, check your materials, redeem your digital pet code because you need to have the digital access and there’s a card inside your box. And then it instructs them which videos to watch and then how to do the assessment. So it’s kind of just a step-by-step so that if you’re feeling overwhelmed, all this information is in the resource guide. But if you’re feeling like, “Okay, that’s a lot to read through, we have that support center article that kind of narrows it down a bit for you.

Gretchen Roe: 00:17:48.504
And the support center, of course, both links to both articles that Kathleen has mentioned will be included in the show notes for this episode. So you’ll be able to find them there. I want to ask you why we felt like we had to put a separate document together when we’ve got a wonderful lesson plan. Why? What’s happening with parents? And part of this has to do with the culture we currently live in. But what’s happening that we felt like we had to revisit this so that parents would get the best out of the program?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:18:22.390
Sure. So again, I work in customer service and between that and social media, we hear from parents that they’re using AIM and either they’re overwhelmed by it or I’m not sure how to use it or I’m not sure if it’s working. Those are some of the questions we say. And of course, what we ask or what we try to determine first is, “Well, how are you using it”? That’s the first question. If I’m on the phone with someone, “How about you tell me how you’re using it”? And unfortunately, people are looking for a little bit of an open-and-go program. They really want to be able to say, “Okay, I ordered the AIM. Today’s the first day of school. It’s Monday. Let’s go. Let’s jump in. We’re going to– we’re going to do AIM. And now they’re pulling out the resource guide and now they’re looking at it and they’re going, “Okay, I don’t know what to do. I see some cards here. Maybe I’m just supposed to show you some cards.” So this is a this is a program where it is not meant to be independent for the child. It is meant that a parent is sitting alongside their child doing it with them. That is one thing that we want to make sure that parents understand.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:19:35.705
You’re doing it with your child, but it is important to do that little bit of prep and understand what the program is teaching and how to use it before you jump into that first lesson so that when you do finally sit down with your child, you have a better understanding of what you’re doing and then you’re watching the videos along with them and then you’re going through the activities. And again, as Gretchen said, you are giving that child the opportunity to to have some buy into the program. When you’re asking them, how do you want to write your the math problem? Do you want to write it horizontally? Do you want to write it vertically? And then here’s some of the activities that we can do to help you learn those facts. Which activity would you like to do? We definitely know the more buy in the student has and the more that you allow them to take some ownership in it, the more engaged they’re going to be.

Gretchen Roe: 00:20:30.181
Absolutely. That is really true. One of the things I hear most frequently from parents is they don’t understand what the mindset change is when I’m asking my student, how do you learn best? Because we don’t often ask that question of our kids. We just say, here’s how I think you learn best. Let’s go. So along those lines, why are we time limiting the sessions, Kathleen?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:21:01.509
Right. So that is one where we don’t want to present so much information that it becomes white noise. We do know, because again, because this is forming a new habit. And this is even something that as parents, we need to make sure that we hold on to that, that we understand that it’s about a new habit. So you’re not looking at this saying, well, I’m on the three facts. Of course, my child has already heard about the three facts, so I’m not presenting new information to them. Can’t I just do this for an hour and and drill them, drill them, drill them? No, because even though the three facts are not brand new to that child, again, we’re trying to create a new habit with how they learn those facts, with how they’re mastering those facts. So because it’s a new habit, we would say that that is new. We want to keep each sitting, as we would say. Each time you sit down with the child, we want to keep those to 15-minute sessions and you can do it multiple times in a day with at least a two-hour break in between. And the reason for that is you want to give their brain time to process that information that they did learn.

Gretchen Roe: 00:22:14.132
So even if a child is not actively engaged in the process of committing facts to memory, what their brain is doing is reordering the information they’ve gained and putting it where it can be recalled for the next time. And that makes a huge difference for kids as well. You said the instructor, you mentioned this earlier, and I want to revisit this. Why does the instructor need to watch the Aim for Success videos and the lesson videos? Why would that be important for me as the parent to do that?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:22:49.606
So well, the Aim for Success videos are what explain to you what the AIM program is, basically how to use it, and it even helps you with the assessment. There is a before AIM assessment that you’re going to do to see which facts your child already has mastered. And at the end, there’s an after AIM assessment. So the Aim for Success videos are very important because it helps you to learn how to use this program. Obviously, we want anyone who has this program to be successful with it. We want you to be able to use it for your child to master their facts so that they can move forward in math easier. So watching the Aim for Success videos helps you to understand the whole program. And then even as far as the lesson videos, I always suggest watch the video on your own first before you sit down with your child. Yes, you’re going to be watching it twice. It’s a short video. Most of them are only a few minutes long.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:23:48.920
But when you watch it first and you have the understanding and you grasp, okay, this is how we’re teaching this fact. Oh, I see. Okay. Then when you’re watching it with your child, you’re more able to look at your child and see, “Okay, I can see my child gets it. Yep, he’s engaged.” Or, “Wow, he has no idea what they’re saying here.” Or, “Okay, let me stop this and ask him a question. Let me have him practice it as we’re going.” It helps you then to be a little bit more responsive to exactly how your child is viewing the video at the time of the video.

Gretchen Roe: 00:24:27.680
Kathleen, if I’m a parent who’s had a child who has struggled mathematically and maybe that child has a diagnosis, I mean, I have– two of my kids are dyslexics and there’s a myth, a well-worn myth that goes around in the dyslexia community that says that dyslexics can’t memorize facts. What am I going to see if I engage in this process? How is this process different from other things I might have done? Flashcards, for instance.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:24:59.793
Well, the nice thing about this process is that we’re using different methods for them to master that fact. And when you engage different methods, your child is going to most likely learn through one of them, right? So we’re building the problem out with the blocks. We’re writing it. We’re saying it. We’re hearing it as the adult is also saying the fact to us. We’re doing all these different ways of hearing that fact, seeing that fact, practicing that fact. And then when you even add in the activities and now we’re doing some fun things and some other things with the fact, we have all these different avenues of helping the child to get that fact mastered. So it’s not just about, okay, we’re just going to try writing them out. We’re just going to try through a workbook and that’s not working. Or as you said, we’re just going to try through flashcards. Okay, that’s not working. When you add all these different methods together, it is going to help a child who maybe needs to learn a little bit differently and maybe as a parent, we’re not even positive what that way is. But when you engage all these different methods, it’s going to help them.

Gretchen Roe: 00:26:16.070
If I am a parent who has committed flashcards in in the past– I’m going to elaborate on that. I hold up a flashcard to you, Kathleen, and I say, “Okay, Kathleen, here’s five plus four,” and you give me an answer, and it’s correct. And I’m like, “Great. Good job.” And then I say, “All right, Kathleen, what’s two plus seven?” And you hesitate. And I say, “Oh, come on, Kathleen. You knew this yesterday.” What happens in that moment?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:26:46.570
Well, I guess you’re telling the child that they were unsuccessful with the flash–

Gretchen Roe: 00:26:55.133
Not only were they unsuccessful, but I’ve created anxiety. And the real point to having all those modalities to be able to step through this process is to alleviate that anxiety. Are we going to get to 100% fact mastery with every student? Is that the goal of this program?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:27:16.096
Nope. The goal of the program is improvement, is seeing progress. It may not be 100% mastery, and that’s okay. We want to see progress. And again, the biggest thing about this is changing the habit of how they’re learning math facts so that even after you come out of it, if they’re not at 100%, if you’ve changed the habit, then they can continue to use that habit and eventually pick up the rest of those facts where they are then fully mastered.

Gretchen Roe: 00:27:47.858
If we can move the ball even 20% for a student so that they have to step away from a problem 20% less, then that’s 20% more that they’re engaged in the process, and it makes it easier for them. So one of the questions that we were asked several times, Kathleen, was the program is for any child who’s struggling, but how is it going to change my attitude as a parent? What am I going to look for in the beginning to see habit change? What am I? What does that look like from a student?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:28:24.994
Well, one of the interesting things is when you do that before aim assessment, we have heard from so many parents who said I didn’t know. That’s how my child got to the fact. I didn’t know when they were looking up at the ceiling that they were skip counting. I didn’t know. Finger counting, usually, okay, you can see that. But we’ve had so many who didn’t know how their child was getting to effect. And originally they would say, oh, well, it just took my child a while. But eventually, they got to the fact. It’s important to know what is that? What is going on in that awhile? What is eventually getting them to the fact? If it’s that they’re skip counting, then they don’t have that fact mastered. If they’re actually counting up in their head, then they don’t have that mastered. Whatever tactic they’re using, it’s helpful as a parent to understand what your child is doing to find their math facts. So then you can look at that and say, oh, okay, so they were using this method. Now, we’re going to create a new method, a new habit so that we can get those facts again into the long term memory, which is our goal because when we say facts are in long term memory, that’s when we mean that there’s going to be automatic recall and that you just that fact.

Gretchen Roe: 00:29:47.854
I love the fact that you said we didn’t know. Often we as parents look at our children and like, I don’t understand. Why are you struggling? It’s even harder if you’re a math adept parent. Now, I’m not a math adept parent, so it was easy for me to go, oh, I can see you’re struggling. Welcome to my world, which is great, except it’s not great because we want more for our kids. So just that detective process of beginning with the before aim assessment, can you talk to me just a little bit about what does that assessment do? How does that work? How does it help me as a parent to be able to see what you’re describing?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:30:31.258
Again, I think the biggest thing is it helps you to understand how your child is coming to their math facts, how they’re figuring it out. So the before aim assessment has a number of math facts on a paper, and you’re going through them one at a time, and you’re you’re putting a slash mark through if your child knew that fact. And if they didn’t know it, then you’re not so that it’s giving you an idea again of which facts the child has mastered and which they don’t. But I feel like the most important thing is it is helping you to understand how your child comes to facts. Because even if they’re getting some of the facts right, but you can see that they counted on their fingers or that they used another tactic, then that’s giving you that information. One of the things that during the before aim assessment is it’s okay for a child to say I don’t know if they don’t know the answer. And that’s one of the things that we want to make sure that parents understand. If they don’t know the answer to that one, that’s okay. Move on to the next one.

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:31:34.332
And you can say to your child, okay, how did you figure that one out? Because again, when we have that information and we understand what tactic they’re using, that’s when we can say, okay, this is what they’re doing. This is where we need to get them to. Again, Gretchen, you pointed out earlier about finger counting. And I try to tell people we go through different steps in math kids are counting on their fingers and then we move along to skip counting. And then maybe we’re moving along to using the manipulatives. Eventually, we want to get a child past all of those to where a fact is just in their long-term memory, where they have it mastered. That’s the goal to eventually get them there. Those steps along the way are okay, but we want to keep progressing and moving them along.

Gretchen Roe: 00:32:26.123
I am vividly reminded of a mom I met late this summer at a homeschool conference and she wasn’t sure whether AIM was right for her student. But what I did was we took the assessment that was in the beginning of the book here and I said, “Just go sit down someplace quiet and ask your students some of these facts. It’s not going to take– you don’t have to go through the whole of the assessment to see what’s happening.” And when she came back, she said she was astonished because she thought that her child was just a four-beat answerer was the way she described it. In other words, if she asked her child a fact, it took that child four beats before that child could answer. And you said a very valuable thing here. “How did you get to that answer?” She asked her child that and she said what her child was doing that she didn’t even see was looking straight at her mom and saying 4 plus 7 is 567. She was looking at one eye, the other eye, the other eye again, and counting. [laughter] And mom came back and went, “Oh my gosh, I had no idea.” She had no idea.

Gretchen Roe: 00:33:39.610

And that will always stick with me because the downside of homeschooling is our kids want us as their moms or their dads to be happy. And so they don’t want to admit they don’t know what they’re doing because they don’t want us to be stressed out. Kathleen, you’ve been wonderful today. You’ve answered lots of questions for parents. I hope we’ve been able to fit parents in the frame for this whole thing. Before we conclude, what would be the one piece of advice you would want to share? Since you have this conversation innumerable times in a week, what’s the piece of advice you want parents to most take away from the conversation we’ve had today?

Kathleen Calabrese: 00:34:23.709
Well, one of the things that I do tell parents when they call us up or contact us and ask about AIM is I say to them, “Congratulations just on the fact that you recognize that your child is struggling because that is something– that’s fantastic. You recognize your child is struggling. You recognize that, you know, ‘I don’t want to just keep moving forward and have my child not like math and have my child not do well with math.’ So I think it’s fantastic when parents recognize it and now they’re looking for a solution. So with that being said, AIM is going to help your child to master those facts.” Again, be engaged with it. Do the prep work ahead of time so that you understand how it works, why it works, how to use it, and then jump into it with your child. And then allow your child the time that they need to master those facts because you knew there was an issue, you’re looking to resolve the issue. Now trust through the process and continue on with it and you will see progress in your child.

Gretchen Roe: 00:35:33.849
Absolutely. After having had the opportunity to work with this program now for almost eight years, I will tell you that I have watched it change countless children’s lives. And Kathleen is a wonderful advocate for this program. She has created some wonderful resources that we will share with you all in the show notes. And I just want to say thank you for joining us today. This is not a difficult program, but it does require a little bit of upfront time for you to understand how it works and then to see how powerful it is when it works. Thank you all so much for joining us today. This is Gretchen Roe for The Demme Learning Show. You can access the show notes or view a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. Be sure to rate, review, follow, or subscribe wherever you may be hearing this, especially if you really enjoyed it. Take care, everyone. Have a wonderful afternoon.

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