I try to be low key about tutoring. If you do a good job, your students grow and no longer need you as a tutor. I try to be happy about that but it means I should be recruiting new students.
Then the grades come in after a period of no tutoring and I am called back to service. One mother called with a SOS. The teacher won't even help her with her homework. So I put on my algebra 1 hat and went through two homework assignments.
The teacher had a great trick for simplifying equations but the student had trouble remembering how to do it. So I did the low tech method. What two numbers multiplied together can give you the answer. After that we figured out what the middle number needed to be so we could get the positive and negative signs with the correct variable. After we found one in either the bottom of the equation or the top of the equations, I reminded the student, "I bet the book has one of these equations on the top so we can cancel it out." We try it and meet with success. I did check all the odd problems answers in the back of the book and we were correct.
We were so happy and were sharing with the mom about how great we did and we observed her blank stare, as she was not understanding the job of algebra. I guess that is why I am trying to tutor. I want to make life easier for parents so they can enjoy their children and leave the painful, tense experience of 'trying to learn' with someone else.
2n2 - 5n -3 divided by 4n + 5 equals n - 3
4n2 - 12n -7 2n-7 4n + 5
I could not figure out to make the number to the second power using this blog. :)
