I think most of us would agree that math can be its own language and even as a fluent English speaker, learning math can be complicated at times. Angles of elevation and depression, sine, cosine, tangent, theorems, postulates, and not to mention two trains arriving at a station from opposite directions word problems. Now imagine, you are not fluent in a language and are having to decode these things in addition to the meanings of the individual words being used. That’s the case for some of our students.
A few students have come to the US as teenagers having never attended school in their home country. But if you met these students, you wouldn’t know right away they missed the formative years of elementary and middle school education. They are fluent in speaking English and could teach us many important lessons about surviving and adapting in a new culture and system.
2020 moved school online, and with that came an increased amount of reading and writing requirements while reducing one-on-one interactions and speaking opportunities. This transition has caused students, parents, and teachers everywhere to make adaptations to learning and teaching. We’ve had to learn new technology and new ways to interact while navigating unemployment, food and housing insecurity, and even internet access for online systems. With our students already at capacity in just surviving culture and language, these changes felt insurmountable at times. But as we know, life and education had to continue in the face of all of these challenges.
One of our students, in particular, started learning geometry theorems and trigonometric operations this school year. The previously learned survival techniques with the verbal language became all but obsolete in this new system. Have a Little Faith began to work on bridging this gap. Through hard work and many hours of tutoring, this student has been working on reading and writing the complicated language involved in math. Recently this student was able to navigate a written unit test of these high-level math concepts without assistance and received a 80%! The B achieved on that test is a victory to celebrate in a long line of daily successes. But that B means so much more to this student that can be housed in this short writing and that achievement is only the beginning.
HALF has been able to be there for this student and so many more during this pandemic because of people like you! Thank you for your support in all forms! If you would like to get more involved, please contact us.
Have A Little Faith 