What
one nonprofessional activity do you find most inspirational
and why? (Wharton)
A little
over two years ago I began tutoring high school students
in several types of mathematics, including preparation for
the S.A.T. Test. While I did this initially to earn money,
I have continued to tutor (often pro bono) because I enjoy
the material and the contact with the students.
I have
always enjoyed math tremendously. I can remember riding in
a car for long distances as a child and continuously calculating
average speeds and percentages of distances covered as we
traveled. In college I took upper division math classes such
as Real Analysis and Game Theory (and placed near the top
of the curve) though they were not required for my major.
All this time spent playing with math has left me with a
deep understanding of the way numbers work and the many ways
in which problems can be solved.
When I
first began tutoring I was stunned to find that most of the
kids I worked with, although very bright, not only lacked
the ability to solve complex problems, they were very uncomfortable
with some of the basic principles of math. This discomfort
led to fear and avoidance, and the avoidance led to more
discomfort. A vicious cycle began. Instead of seeing math
as a beautiful system in which arithmetic, algebra and geometry
all worked together to allow one to solve problems, they
saw it as a bunch of jumbled rules which made little sense
that they were forced to memorize.
As a tutor,
I found that it was important when starting with a new student
to find out where his/her discomfort with math began. Often,
this meant going back several years in their education to
explain important basic concepts. For some students,
fractions and decimals were the point at which math stopped
making sense. For many others, it was the introduction of
letters to represent numbers in algebra. Some students found
that identifying their weaknesses was an embarrassing process.
I explained to them that it was not their fault. Everyone
comes to understand new concepts in math in a slightly different
way, and the problem was that no teacher had taken the time
to explain their “problem area” in a way which would make
sense to them. Since math was a system, once they missed
out on that one building block, it was not surprising that
the rest of it did not make sense. Our mission together would
be to find the way in which the system worked for them.
Once we
had identified the initial “problem area,” I would spend
a lot of time getting the student to play with questions
in that area from a lot of different perspectives. For example,
if fractions were the problem, then I would create games
to get the student to think of fractions in terms of division,
ratios, decimals or other equivalent systems. This would
often be a fairly unstructured process, as I wanted to see
how the student’s mind worked and keep them from feeling
any anxiety. Usually it did not take long for the concepts
to start becoming clear to the student, as he/she played
with the numbers in the absence of the pressure of school.
My goal was to not just white wash over a students weaknesses
with a few rules which would be quickly forgotten, but to
help them develop an understanding and an appreciation for
the underlying principles.
I found
this process to be very satisfying for both myself and the
young men and women that I taught. It was a wonderful feeling
to have a student laugh out loud with relief as a principle
which had been unclear and causing anxiety for years suddenly
made sense. Once these old “problem areas” were cleared up
it was usually quite simple to make clear the subjects that
they were working on at the time, especially since I already
had an understanding of how they were best able to understand
new concepts. Again, I found it important to get the student
to play with the new material and look at it in several ways
so as to develop a true understanding of the material.
I was quite
successful as a tutor. One young man increased his Math S.A.T.
by 150 points. Another student improved so dramatically in
geometry, her test scores jumped from about 55 percent to
over 90 percent, that her teacher kept her after class and
asked if she was cheating. Although most of my students did
not improve this dramatically, I walked away from every lesson
that I gave feeling that I had helped someone understand
and enjoy math. I hope to be able to continue teaching, if
only for a few hours a week, for the rest of my life.
