The first few weeks I went for volunteering, we were working on doing standard addition addition. The age group was 3rd-5th grade. While we were doing some problems, I noticed that there was struggle with some basic addition concepts, like adding one digit numbers.
How could they understand standard addition well if these concepts are still not clear?
This got me thinking about the reason behind this confusion and unclear concepts. As I continued volunteering, and talked to my mom, I think I have an idea why:
My mom is a high school math and physics teacher, and she teaches in an urban school district. After she gets home, I hear lots of stories about her day and her students, but along with these stories, I learn a lot from her experiences in working with these students.
During her teaching, she noticed that there seemed to be a learning gap in her students. Most still having problems with some baseline math concepts that need to be strong in order to fully understand the new, harder concept that they are being taught. Another thing is that most students do not have the motivation to learn or fully understand a harder concept.
So, why this learning gap?
This learning gap is created when students start to fall behind in their curriculum. Some reasons why this happens are poverty, lack of parental involvement, limited resources and teacher turnover.
Poverty: Definitely a big factor, as it affects mental health, challenges with completing homework, affects nutrition and health, etc. Also, poverty puts people in a survival mode, they are constantly having to deal with bigger problems which causes a huge amount of stress.
Lack of parental involvement: This is an important factor to consider, because most parents do have long work days. This might give them less time to help their children with school work, or even just less time to engage their children in their studies. Parental involvement has been the biggest factor in my life, and the factor that could differentiate me, the reason I have been given so many opportunities and been able to study comfortably.
Limited Resources: Resources like books, sources, or even just role models to look up to. Often times, children from these backgrounds have a limited number of adult role models who can emphasize the importance of education to them.
Teacher turnover: This can happen for many reasons in urban school districts, but it does affect learning. When there is a high teacher turnover, students are affected as there might not be as many teachers for a class who have higher understanding of the material.
Some more reasons behind this learning gap that I was able to see during my volunteering is just the fact that they had not understood the concepts fully, might have just memorized a 'way to do it quickly', by trying to create patterns when there are none, and jumped to the next grade. So, what happens is that someone is sitting in 5th grade but still not able to add fractions.
Why I think volunteering through teaching is important:
Often times, just that extra 5 minutes or that extra hour of help is what we need for a concept to suddenly make sense to us. That definitely has happened many times with me! But, some times teachers do not have that time, as they have to divide their attention amongst many students. This makes volunteering so important, because you are providing help that will definitely make a difference.
Also, if you are able to help teach in such a way that helps students understand a topic, that could be the moment that they get an interest in the subject. Just a little spark to get the interest and learning going for a long way! Who knows where they could end up, maybe future professional at their job!
Everyone has the potential to do well. All of our brains are just machines, that can be programmed and taught to go really far and achieve great things. But, somethings that we all need to make this happen well is resources, support, and stability.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post!
Next time, I would like to start writing about some lessons that I have learnt from this volunteering.
Please feel free to write and let me know any feedback or comments you have!
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