Laws of Motion

To protect his privacy, I’ll call him Andre and just say that he hails from a French-speaking African country. I’d guess that Andre is in his mid to late twenties.

Last month, I worked with Andre in the GED tutoring program (General Educational Development) where I volunteer once a week. He was practicing computing compound interest. Earlier that day, I helped a woman with regrouping (i.e. borrowing) in subtraction problems, so compound interest was quite a leap for me, but I kept my head above water with Andre. He needed very little help anyway.

Yesterday I was assigned to tutor Andre once again. In the meantime, he had passed the math portion of the GED test and was now preparing for his last section, science. (Another of my great strengths.) The four sections of the GED are Social Studies, Mathematical Reasoning, Science, and Reasoning Through Language Arts. The language arts section includes an essay, called “an extended response,” in which you have 45 minutes to write a four-to-seven paragraph analysis and argument in response to a short reading. The GED is administered on the computer, so you have to be able to type your essay. Andre has already passed that test, in addition to social studies and math.

We set to work on Andre’s science packet. One lesson had to do with chemical reactions and involved terminology like coefficient, subscript, formula, equation, ionic and covalent bonding, and hydrocarbons , both saturated and unsaturated. I was not, shall we say, in my element. (Pun intended.)

After a bit of reading and answering questions, Andre commented that he had studied similar material four or five years earlier, but in French. I commented in reply that I had also studied this material, but not since 1968. He did a much better job balancing an equation for photosynthesis, for example, than I did. He was working in what I assume to be his third language.

Later on, working on Newton’s First Law of Motion, I really shone when we encountered the word snowshoes. It took me two drawings to explain snowshoes to Andre, who’d never encountered the word, but I eventually conveyed the idea. I imagined that few of the other GED students around us, English speakers all, would know what a snowshoe was.

We moved on to Newton’s Second Law concerning mass, force, and acceleration. We encountered the measurement of force called newtons. Andre turned to me and mentioned another measurement term, pascals. He asked me if Newton was British, and I answered yes. I assumed he was implying that in English-speaking countries, we say newtons, and in French-speaking countries, they say pascals. But some googling when I got home set me straight. They’re two different things, but don’t ask me to define them. I do know who Pascal was, but that has more to do with his famous wager than with measurements of mass and force.

We almost completed the packet, working past the normal two-hour session. Andre comes to GED class every day, always dressed in a suit and tie. He attracts some attention from some of the ladies in class based on his natty appearance. He works the entire two-hour session. He plans to take the science test next week. If he passes, I may never see him again. I wish him very well, as I’m sure you do too.

Andre’s country is not on the new travel ban list, but I don’t know his immigration status and am of course a little worried about it. He comes from a troubled country which has taken time to recover from its colonial past, like Haiti and Afghanistan and other countries on the list. Andre and the American students I see each week (who also come from a troubled country) deserve every break due to their diligence and courage. I learned from our science packet that applying effort force results in moving a load some distance. Some students have ahead of them an onerous load to move a long distance: some are still practicing, for example, their short a sound, but maybe eventually they’ll be working on newtons, joules (a measurement of energy), and solubility. Because everyone who’s graduated from high school knows all about them, right?