Tutoring someone who hates math

[DrRocket]

So you just said with a straight face that a professional teacher, someone who is hired to teach, had no responsibility to actually teach, hence to fulfil the job he gets paid for. OK...




Seriously? How many 5 year olds have you actually ever met recently?

But I must say you are right. These definitely want to learn the alphabet immediately and can't wait to do so as soon as possible. You can already imagine their conversations with their parents: "Mommy, I want to learn the alphabet right now so I can't start associating sounds that come from my mouth with those weird shapes called "letters" that always flash during commercials when I watch Dora the Explorer. Please make me sing those great ABC songs, especially the one with the Mozart tune that all my friends love so much. Also, get for me those big books so I can learn how to draw those weird shapes by scribbling them over and over again? Maybe next week I can learn cursive too, yay! By the way, why do we have both capital and lower case letters? Please tell me about the great history of the latin alphabet that I am really interested in."

Ok, now back from La La Land to Real World.



[URL]http://i772.photobucket.com/albums/yy8/photodonknome/seriously.gif[/URL]
What do you actually mean by "taught themselves"?

Sorry this is the real world.

I mean took elementary books with pictures and taught themselves to read. Did a rather good job of it too.

Some kids are a lot smarter than their teachers. That is fortunate.

 

[Bourbaki1123]

So, have you tried any tricks? For balancing a linear equation he should just be able to memorize the formula. It's always ax + b = cx + d if anything is zero, just use a place keeper.
For instance 3x -5 = 10, restate this with a = 3 b = -5 c =0 and d = 10, ax -cx = d - b => (a-c)x = d - b => (d-b)/(a-c) = x so 15/ 3 = x or x = 5. Is he unable to memorize a simple procedure like that? Or is he just unwilling? If he is just not willing to practice, that is a problem that needs to be reported to the parents.

It's pretty easy to break down all of high school math into formulas. As a tutor you should be able to figure out a way to do this on the fly, and if you can't you need to think about it outside of your tutoring sessions and become skilled at it.

 

[DrRocket]

It's pretty easy to break down all of high school math into formulas. As a tutor you should be able to figure out a way to do this on the fly, and if you can't you need to think about it outside of your tutoring sessions and become skilled at it.

If you handle mathematics by breaking it down into formulas that you then memorize you are wasting your time and learning nothing. The point of mathematics is to understand it so that the formulas are obvious, i.e. so that you understand the subject and are not just manipulating symbols. If all you do is manipulate symbols then your effort would be better spent on something else.

Reliance on rote memorization is the source of good deal of the lack of interest in mathematics, and on the ability to understand and use it for the long term.

 

[Null_]

If you handle mathematics by breaking it down into formulas that you then memorize you are wasting your time and learning nothing. The point of mathematics is to understand it so that the formulas are obvious, i.e. so that you understand the subject and are not just manipulating symbols. If all you do is manipulate symbols then your effort would be better spent on something else.

Reliance on rote memorization is the source of good deal of the lack of interest in mathematics, and on the ability to understand and use it for the long term.

Exactly. I was taught math by being spoon fed formulas. Truth of the matter is, I never learned WHY the quadratic equation or the Pythagorean theorem works. I was taught the Pythagorean theorem as a^2=b^2+c^2, and after I googled it and told my teacher, she told me that I was wrong and that the Greeks came up with the formula. That teacher was probably the best teacher I'd had, since she taught me to never trust anything that a math teacher says. If I ever had a question on anything in the book, I'd go straight to google. ^_^

I taught him the distance formula the other day, but instead of the formula, we first talked about the area of a triangle using the Pythagorean theorem. I tried giving a little talk and a picture of the simplest proof, but he wasn't too interested. He did learn the formula for it :/. But he now knows the reasoning behind the distance formula.

 

[Bourbaki1123]

If you handle mathematics by breaking it down into formulas that you then memorize you are wasting your time and learning nothing. The point of mathematics is to understand it so that the formulas are obvious, i.e. so that you understand the subject and are not just manipulating symbols. If all you do is manipulate symbols then your effort would be better spent on something else.

Reliance on rote memorization is the source of good deal of the lack of interest in mathematics, and on the ability to understand and use it for the long term.

Why would I teach mathematics in the same way that I learn mathematics when the student is clearly not interested in fully understanding it? You have to go one step at a time. If he asks you for the formula, you give him one. If he asks why it works, then you show him. If he doesn't want to know why it works, then you can only use rote. Prodding him will only make him close up, but answering his questions will pique his curiosity. If you remind him from time to time that a full understanding of the ideas will make things easier, he might eventually give it a solid shot.

Also, who's to say that this kid's time wouldn't be better spent on something else? High school mathematics curricula tend to be pretty arbitrary, and most people forget nearly everything besides what is needed to make sure they don't get ripped off at the grocery store. Maybe this kid's talents lie elsewhere. I have a friend who is a very talented and creative musician and visual artist, but he couldn't do mathematics for the life of him. He finally started to get it towards the latter half of senior year, but he had no interest in it. Perhaps this student is like him.

Either way, he needs to learn the material to get through his testing. You shouldn't totally drop trying to get him to fully understand the material, but if he's resisting there is nothing you can really do. Also, to the OP, are you certain that he understands your explanations? Can he reproduce them later?

 

[abelgalois]

Exactly. I was taught math by being spoon fed formulas. Truth of the matter is, I never learned WHY the quadratic equation or the Pythagorean theorem works. I was taught the Pythagorean theorem as a^2=b^2+c^2, and after I googled it and told my teacher, she told me that I was wrong and that the Greeks came up with the formula. That teacher was probably the best teacher I'd had, since she taught me to never trust anything that a math teacher says. If I ever had a question on anything in the book, I'd go straight to google. ^_^

I taught him the distance formula the other day, but instead of the formula, we first talked about the area of a triangle using the Pythagorean theorem. I tried giving a little talk and a picture of the simplest proof, but he wasn't too interested. He did learn the formula for it :/. But he now knows the reasoning behind the distance formula.

This is such a good point. There's a reason why it's called spoon feeding. You're stuffing crap down my throat. My arms are flailing, I'm hyperventilating, I clearly don't want it! I absolutely hhhaatedd memorizing theorems and plugging them into solve mind numbingly repetitive, trivial exercises. In fact, I can pinpoint the SINGLE pleasurable moment I had learning math in school. It was learning not THAT zero divided a number equals zero but a number divided by zero equals "unidentified", but learning WHY it was so. The simple, elegant proof behind it. I was so excited when I pulled out my calculator to check what sort of answer it would yield if I had entered 8 / 0. And sure enough an error sign popped up and I was ecstatic.

I reaaaallly wish I had picked up "Geometry" by Harold Jacobs that day.

And if the OP is still looking inspiration, someone had suggested this book in another thread:

"Introducing Mathematics"

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1840466375/?tag=pfamazon01-20

The purpose behind this book is not to teach math but to inspire some sort of purpose for learning math. Which is probably the single most important (And neglected) lesson a teacher can teach his student.

This book doesn't tutor you in mathematics so if that is what you want then go elsewhere now.

If you are looking to learn mathematics without a good cause then I would say that you better have the attention span to learn something absolutely mundane if you don't have a reason for it. A reason to learn mathematics is as vital to grasping mathematics as our brain needing a spinal cord to work.