Over the summer, my mentee was supposed to complete 250 sets of math problems using Khan Academy. She has six days left before the assignments are due and she has completed around 80. When I'm with her, we finish between 5-10 sets depending on the level of difficulty. However, each time I work with her, she never answers a question confidently. Her answers are always questions- she tries to gauge my reaction to see if she's right or not. I've gotten to the point that at every step I ask her why she chose those numbers, that operation, and what her answer means. If I don't do this, she randomly picks numbers and puts them together and then looks at me for reassurance. It's obvious that in most cases, she doesn't quite know what she's doing but most importantly, she doesn't know when to do it.
I'm worried that her smile; her sweet demeanor; her quiet nature has allowed for her to attend a highly competitive school that she is not prepared for. She's a teenager of color. She's a girl. She doesn't argue; she doesn't fight; she doesn't give you an attitude. She's sweet. She's gotten by with the doing, but not the knowing and it appears that her teachers have let her.
But now, she's in a different school. It's a different culture and she's playing catch up and relying on her smile, and her passiveness to get by again. This school, however, gave her a D on her report card. She deserves to be at this school... but she's going to have to work hard to prove it. Unfortunately, what got her by in the past won't work in the present.
It's never easy to play catch-up..