Algebra refresher? I'm a parent and want to help my kid...?

You are right, do unto one side as you would the other. So at this point you would want to get Y by itself. So subtract 2Y from both side and now all your Variables are on one side( you only have one though). You now have 8 =3Y + 2. the variable is still not by itself, so now to get rid of that two, you need to subtract two from both sides. Now your equation should look like this: 6=3X. Now finally, since your X is multiplying by three, to cancel it, you have to divide by three on both sides. 6 divided by three is 2. X equals two