Like any job, teaching has its down sides. This is perhaps particularly true of teaching SAT prep, as the kids are present because they've been forced to go, typically, and you're teaching them either after they've already put in a full day of school, or you're interrupting their holy weekend. For the most part, they really don't want to be there, and I don't blame them.
But there's the rewarding side, too. Yesterday I had one of my SAT classes and we came to the math subject of functions. For those who don't remember, functions are those questions that look like "if f(x) = 2x + 3, then what does f(9) equal?"
I've never been clear on why some students have great difficulty with these problems, as they're really nothing but simple replacement exercises, but the fact is that some of them do, and when the word functions came out of my mouth, one of my students immediately said, aloud, though more-or-less to herself, "oh, I suck at these."
I didn't acknowledge her comment, but launched into my explanation of functions as the fancy substitution exercises that they are. Maybe three minutes in she spoke up again, again to herself, "oh," as in "oh, I get it."
That's what makes teaching worth it - that 'aha' moment, particularly when it's a subject the student has tried to learn before, but been unsuccessful at.
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I agree completely! With the med students I've been tutoring, I get a huge rush whenever I manage to explain a concept that they've tried over and over to learn and they're finally able to explain it back to me in their own words. I love watching the 'aha!' moment when it happens.
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