Homework Help Today – A Tutoring Blog for Students and Tutors Where Students and Tutors can help each other out!

It’s been a while since we had a chance to review another website here on Homework Help Today, so I thought I’d take this opportunity to introduce you all to a great new web service available for teachers.  Of course, some of you students and parents might find it pretty useful also. The site is Teachade.com, one of the best teacher websites I’ve seen so far.

Billed as the first interactive website for teachers that allows teachers to create, search and share educational resources, Teachade has positioned itself among social networking sites (like MySpace or Facebook) as one of the most helpful teacher sites on the internet.  Unlike other teacher web sites, however, Teachade is completely free to use, with no strings attached.

It would be a pretty cool site even if it was just a place for teachers to network and share with each other, but I’ve recently discovered that it offers quite a bit more.  Teachers can post resources, lesson plans, and other educational tools, and then use the full featured calendar tool to schedule their entire school year! It also includes everything else you’d expect in websites for teachers, such as individual blog accounts and community groups and forum pages.

Since a lot of the tutors which either read this blog or participate on TutorMatch are also full-time licensed and professional teachers, I hope you’ll check out the Teachade.com site and let me know what you think about it.

Posted under Teaching, Website Review

by Tutor Glen D. on TutorMatch.com

This article is about the best method for ensuring that a student succeeds in math and benefits from the tutoring experience.  The primary thing for the tutor to keep in mind is that, while the parent may be paying the bill, it is the student who is the primary client.  The student’s needs may sometimes be at odds with what the parent perceives as the best approach to getting a better grade.   The tutor’s focus should always remain on the student. 
 
My strategy is a “two step” approach:
 

Step 1:

 
Regardless of how poorly a student is currently performing in class, I always immediately start every new client by teaching the student “ahead” of the class.  In other words, I teach the course material that the student has not yet been taught by the teacher.  Why?  Because one of the biggest problems with most students is that they are “lost” in class.  They do not understand the material that is being presented to them by the teacher, and they are reluctant to raise their hand due to concerns about how they will look in the eyes of their classmates.  Their natural fear is that they will look foolish and that they will be the only ones who do not understand the material.
 
The way to conquer this fear and build up the student’s confidence is for them to hear the material first from me in the privacy and safety of their own home.  Here they can freely express their thoughts on whether they understand the material without fear of looking “bad” in the eyes of their classmates.    I also have the student demostrate their proficiency by doing problems in front of me, so that I can be sure they really understand what I am teaching them.
 
The power of this approach is that when the student then hears the material from their teacher, they are already familiar with it.  This yields two very important benefits.  The classroom experience is now a positive one instead of a negative one.  The student develops more confidence and less anxiety about attending class.  Most importantly, the teacher now becomes my ally in teaching the student new concepts.  Now I do not have to play “catch up” by attempting to teach material that the student has already heard in class, but did not understand.  Instead, the teacher reinforces concepts that the student has already learned from me. 
 
This approach has been extremely effective at building up the student’s confidence, and enhancing their understanding of the material presented in class.
 

Step 2:

 
Many of my students are already “under water” with a poor grade and a lot of confusion about the material.  So, it is important to also go back and review prior material that the student did not grasp the first time through.  Since mathematics tends to be cumulative, it is important to fill in the missing gaps.  So, I try to spend time each session to go back and review old material. 
 
This two step approach has been extremely effective.  The humorous analogy I use with my students is that they are a little bit like a sinking ship.  We must keep the ship sailing along (by working ahead of the class), but we must also pump out the water that is already in the hold (by going back and filling in the missing gaps from prior material). 
 
The students love this tutoring method because it immediately builds up their confidence.  The classroom experience becomes more positive, the teacher becomes a valuable ally, and the students invariably improve quite dramatically in their academic performance. 
 
To my fellow tutors, I hope that you will consider trying out my approach.  I think that you will find it very effective. 
 
In a future article, I will outline my approach to SAT training, which is very different than the approach outlined in this article.

About the Author: Glen D. is a math professor at a local Boston area college and a math tutor on TutorMatch.com. His expertise is in math tutoring for elementary through college students of all ages and abilities. He also offers a very successful SAT training program. Glen lives in Natick, Massachusetts with his wife and two children. He does most of his tutoring in his students’ homes. He has turned many frustrated “C” students into confident “A” students by using the approach outlined here.

Posted under Math Tutoring, Parents and Children, Tutoring

States are making little or no progress in providing affordable college opportunities or improving college completion rates for their residents, says a report released today by the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education. The findings come as states face massive budget shortfalls that threaten higher-education funding, and the U.S. continues to lag behind other advanced nations on measures of higher-education performance.

According to the report, the rising cost of college, even before the recession, threatens to put higher education out of reach for most Americans.  Published college tuition and fees increased 439% from 1982 to 2007 (adjusted for inflation) while median family income rose 147%. Student borrowing has more than doubled in the last 10 years, and students from lower-income families (on average) get smaller grants from the colleges they attend than students from more affluent families.

The report, Measuring Up 2008, is one of the few to compare net college costs — that is, a year’s tuition, fees, room and board, minus financial aid — against median family income. Those findings are stark. Last year, the net cost at a four-year public university amounted to 28 percent of the median family income, while a four-year private university cost 76 percent of the median family income.

“This study reveals that higher education is becoming a roadblock, not a gateway, to success for low-income and middle-class students,” says Gov. James B. Hunt Jr., chair of the National Center For Public Policy And Higher Education board of directors and former four-term governor of North Carolina. “States must confront these roadblocks to ensure that the United States can remain competitive with other industrialized nations that have made expansion of opportunity and affordable higher education national priorities.”

Posted under News, Parents and Children