Teaching is hard, and other observations

Man, I'm not even sure where to start with this one. Teaching is tough. Kudos to those who can do it professionally, especially in low performing schools where kids get behind and never really catch up. I've been tutoring for this after school program at Crenshaw High School in south central LA for the last week, and it's surprising to me how far behind so many of the students are.

Many of the students that I've worked with ask me for help with simple algebra problems, like the classic "one train leaves A going at 100 mph, another leaves B going 80 MPH, when do they meet if they're 200 miles apart?" I begin by trying to get them to pull out the important information of the problem so that they can set it up. Once they've got that, I try to explain to them the reasoning behind how to set up the equation. That in and of itself is a difficult concept to grasp - that of turning an understanding of a spacial relationship into numbers that are meaningful to the kids. The problem that I've come up against, which I don't know how to address, is that their basic algebra arithmetic skills are so poor that solving these problems is beyond them. It's hard to see what good it is explaining to them how to set up the problem when they don't understand how to combine terms and manipulate equations to solve for a variable. Much of the time, they don't have a strong enough grasp on long division and multiplication to do the arithmetic involved in these problems.

On talking with some of my teammates who work at elementary and middle schools, they tell me that it starts early and that many of their students are just as far behind as the high school kids. They see kids beginning to fall behind, and rather than receiving help to get them caught up, being handed the answers or trying to get them without understanding them. They're taught that they don't need to understand how to do it, only to get enough answers right to pass and get through the class. When they get to high school without not only a basic proficiency in math, but more importantly the skill set to solve problems on their own and to persist in trial and error until a solution is found, it's really hard to teach them concepts and help them arrive at the answer without giving it to them with no work on their part. Having a 16 year old ask you why you won't just give them the answer, telling them that they need to solve it themselves in order to learn it, and having them get frustrated and annoyed at that prospect is frustrating as a tutor.

Anyway, these are some of the challenges that I've been facing during the last week. I imagine that as one teaches more with these kids and understands them better, they improve and find methods that work. However, I feel like the cards are stacked against them at the middle and high school levels when they have such a poor foundation of a) knowledge, and more importantly b) the intellectual skills, drive and desire to learn knew things and have the mindset that they will not be handed the answers. Even if I don't make a difference in the education of any of these kids, I at least have a better understanding of the struggle, the state of our education system, and the tragic comedy that is public education in the wealthiest country in the world.