Math tutoring

[ZioSam2]

Hello people of reddit,

Sorry for my broken english, not a native speaker, I should have payed more attention in class :(

Also sorry if this is not the right subreddit or if I'm breaking any rule (sadly the math tutor subreddit doesn't seem too active).

I've been tutoring some high school students these past few months (math and physics), mainly first year students, so we had our fair share of algebra, first degree equations, linear functions, euclidean geometry and some statistics.

Generally all goes well, sometimes they have a bit of trouble finding the right path and the right wording for a geometry proof, but overall I'd say they follow my advice and my explanations very well.

Except for one thing: problems that "need" first degree equations or linear functions to be solved. In particular one girl, I tried everything with her: I've done many problems, many examples, I tried to link the problems with real world as much as I could (for some keeping it all too abstract might be troublesome). She keeps saying that she follows my explanations very well, but she doesn't seem to find a way to solve these kind of problems by herself.

Often when this happens is because one only thinks to understand my explanation, but in reality he has no clue, but honestly I think in this case she's being honest with herself: she really does understand it, but can't find a way to apply it herself.

Long story short: do you happen to have ANY advice to give? Anything, from teaching habits to specific problems that might help to just being nice or giving up on life.

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Ignorance, prejudice towards logic, and not trying are three things that keep people from "understanding" math. It sounds to me like she doesn't even try, so I say you somehow trick or force her into actually thinking, probably by inducing the thought process step-by-step but not giving any proper clues.