If Levi Vaughan, a 5-year-old kindergartner in Braidwood, Ill., makes it through math class without a meltdown, it’s a good day.
The transition to school has been tough in other ways for Levi, said Stefanie Vaughan, his mother, but math has been uniquely challenging.
“His math papers get pulled out and he’s in full-blown crisis mode,” Vaughan said. “He has to leave the class.”
So Vaughan reached out to a friend, Molly Jameson, a professor of educational psychology at the University of Northern Colorado who studies math anxiety in young children.