Math and science don’t have to be boring!

Thoughts from Daphne, our Educational Coordinator…

Math and science students of all ages have told me that those subjects are boring, tedious, and irrelevant.  That doesn’t surprise me.  Why?  Because I work with high school and college students regularly, and I can’t believe that their math and science homework is so often the same old stuff that has been in their textbooks for years!  Two trains are approaching in different directions …, if you cut a pie into eight pieces …, what is the area of a right triangle with length … ?  You remember those, don’t you?  Yawn!

But math and science don’t have to be boring!  It’s all about making connections to the real world.  Recently, a student was studying exponential growth.  The text wanted him to calculate the growth rate of bacteria.  How tedious!  But, when I related it to why our moms put antibiotic ointment on our cuts, it brought the point home.  In 24 hours, a single bacteria could exponentially multiply into a colony of millions!!  That ointment can prevent a serious infection!  Way to go, mom!

Science and math can be taught with products and processes from everyday life.  All that’s needed is a guide who can tap into our natural curiosity about the amazing world we live in.

How can a tutor help with that?

Tutors replace task boredom with meaning and relevance.  A tutoring session is a private, individualized learning experience.  It optimizes the teaching just for you.  More specifically, tutoring provides

• Attention to your needs
• Time to go at our own pace
• A distraction free environment
• Clarification of your confusions
• An opportunity to ask all of your questions
• Links between tasks, topics, and your interests
• Personal ways to overcome obstacles
• Higher task performance results

Tutoring is the idea learning environment.  This one-on-one experience can change poor knowledge to subject matter mastery.  It can also transform mastery to expertise.  It’s a sky-is-the-limit way to learn!