- #1
Null_
- 231
- 0
Tutoring someone who "hates math"
I just graduated from high school and have landed a job tutoring a 15-year old boy in Algebra 1. Some things in Algebra I just understand, and it's difficult for me to find alternative ways to explain them when he doesn't get it. Ex: 3x+5=10, solve for x. He sometimes gets these and sometimes doesn't. Factoring is also difficult for him to grasp. I've gone through how it's really the same equation as the binomial (we're stuck on binomial factoring for now), but it doesn't always work.
I want him to see the joy I find in math. Honestly, when doing problems such as the ones we're going over now, I found myself bored (I was 12-13 however). His mom wants me to stick to the curriculum, so I can't just show him the fun stuff.
Any advice about how to make it more interesting? I want to introduce him to Asimov on Numbers, one of my first favorite math books; however, his father is a pastor and doesn't appreciate Asimov. It's an interesting situation, to say the least. He likes reading, so is something like Newton's Principia too dense for one struggling in basic Alg.?
I tutor for 1-1.5 hours 3 times a week. I've thought about doing 1 hour of the mandatory stuff, then the last 15 minutes introducing something by a famous mathematician or a physics type problem that uses Algebra. He keeps asking "when will I ever need to know this?"
I hope to make him appreciate, if not love, math before I leave for college in August.
I just graduated from high school and have landed a job tutoring a 15-year old boy in Algebra 1. Some things in Algebra I just understand, and it's difficult for me to find alternative ways to explain them when he doesn't get it. Ex: 3x+5=10, solve for x. He sometimes gets these and sometimes doesn't. Factoring is also difficult for him to grasp. I've gone through how it's really the same equation as the binomial (we're stuck on binomial factoring for now), but it doesn't always work.
I want him to see the joy I find in math. Honestly, when doing problems such as the ones we're going over now, I found myself bored (I was 12-13 however). His mom wants me to stick to the curriculum, so I can't just show him the fun stuff.
Any advice about how to make it more interesting? I want to introduce him to Asimov on Numbers, one of my first favorite math books; however, his father is a pastor and doesn't appreciate Asimov. It's an interesting situation, to say the least. He likes reading, so is something like Newton's Principia too dense for one struggling in basic Alg.?
I tutor for 1-1.5 hours 3 times a week. I've thought about doing 1 hour of the mandatory stuff, then the last 15 minutes introducing something by a famous mathematician or a physics type problem that uses Algebra. He keeps asking "when will I ever need to know this?"
I hope to make him appreciate, if not love, math before I leave for college in August.