Jun Ru - First PACT Reflection

Jun Ru Anderson

March 3rd, 2016

Jun Ru/Ishani Organization

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By this point, Ishani and I have been working on our games for three weeks, and have met to discuss our progress each week. I, like Ishani, have been lucky enough to recieve an exceptional education, and I naturally wished to pass this on to the kids we were going to share our game with. However, by week three, I have realized that this is an unreasonable goal.

In addition to working on my game, I continued to tutor Joahan, a child I’ve tutored since ninth grade, each week. Officially, I am tutoring him only in English, but sometimes, when time permits, we take a look at his math homework as well. So, when his homework aligned reasonably well with the content of the game I was working on, I’d ask him a few questions about the topic, like, “Why do we need common denominators?” or “Why does the commutative property work?” His answer was always along the lines of, “Because my teacher told me so.”

And this made me realize that his math foundations were about as solid as melted butter.

    Which in turn forced me to scale back the goal of the game I was making. By a lot. The game I was working on relied on an understanding of the basic operations, something I take for granted. I just assumed that kids who struggle with fractions are only missing the last piece, the concept of a number that’s not a whole number. But I learned that even the concept of addition is not something every child is taught properly. So while Ishani continued her work on a game that taught how to multiply and divide fractions, I started making a game that taught kids how to add.

    And, I freely admit, this frustrated the hell out of me. I mean, if a kid is three, four grades behind, I’m inclined to want to introduce new content, to try to catch them up. I didn’t want to turn around and go even farther back. By making this game that showed kids how to do things they already knew how to do, at least mechanically, I didn’t feel like I was helping anybody. However, I know that this game will strengthen critical foundations, which will, in turn, allow kids to move on to more advanced math and hopefully catch up to their grade level.