Benoni is a senior at Forest Grove High School, and is one of the nicest students I’ve worked with this year. From what I’ve gathered, he’s been a bit of a troublemaker throughout his academic career, switching schools on multiple occasions, but he always has a smile on his face, and treats me and other adults with friendliness and respect. I started working with Benoni at the start of the semester, in a math workshop class designed for seniors to fulfill their math credit requirements before graduation. Benoni was caught up on all of his credits except in math. He needed to pass two work sample assignments in order to fulfill those missing credits. The topics for the work samples are Algebra, Statistics, and Geometry, and the students can choose whichever two they’d like to attempt.
Benoni passed the Statistics work sample fairly easy; he did fine with data sets and measures of center. However, the Algebra work sample proved to be much more difficult for him. The work sample requires the student to analyze a word problem and create a system of equations to solve for two variables, and to verbalize every step of the process. Benoni was decent at solving systems of equations, but he would often stumble when trying to set up the equations on his own, and did not elaborate enough in the writing portion of the work sample. He did not pass the first couple of times he took it.
He continued to smile and kept his spirits up, but I could tell the failures were frustrating for him. I gave him nothing but positive encouragement to keep his confidence from dipping too low. We continued to practice his algebra skills, and I tried getting him to talk about his process more when he was solving. I would ask basic questions like “Where did that number come from?” or “Why are you using that method to solve?” and eventually he was explaining his thought process without any prompting. He was asking me in-depth questions independently, and giving me his undivided attention when I would correct him or come upon a teaching moment.
He finally passed his Algebra work sample in late April, and it was one of my proudest moments as a math tutor. Seeing the excitement in his eyes when he told me about it was immensely rewarding. Benoni showed tremendous maturity and character in the way he handled his final obstacle of high school, and I can’t wait to see his infectious smile as he walks across the stage to claim his hard-earned diploma next month.
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