Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Too Much Help?

Yesterday I covered the reentry program.  This is a class for students who aged out of the continuation high school (if they didn't graduate in the June of their senior year and they turned 18).  It meets in the late afternoon from 2:30 to 6:30.

Every student is busily trying to finish his/her high school diploma work.  For the most part the students work on their own.  Occasionally they need some extra help.

One of the students was working on algebra.  He was having difficulty, so he asked for my help.  I helped for a bit, moved away to check on someone else, and then went back to check on him.  The problem he was working on was exactly the same as the problem that I had just helped him with, but this one he got wrong.  So, I was needed there.

Two hours later I was still sitting by him, helping him with his math.  After a while it started to feel like I was doing the work for him.  It wasn't that he wasn't getting it.  As soon as he understood how to do one kind of problem, he had finished that set and was working on a different set of problems.  

It's hard sometimes to know how much help to give.  All I could do was note it in my sub report and hope that I hadn't helped him too much.

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