Life Update

I got my 1st (official) job as a math tutor!!! :nerd_face:

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That is going to be great to see faces light up when they finally understand something they were getting frustrated about. I remember a lot of things sort of just clicked for me after being completely mystified at first.

Seriously, Itā€™s just a little frustrating when students are not willing to learn because then it makes everything less fun. I referee soccer (non-american football) as well. That was usually fun. I do have some stories of crazy parents/coaches/situations though. Iā€™m currently doing the training vids for my tutoring position.

My daughter struggled with Math for the longest time. A combination of her dyslexia and being very left brained ā€˜artsyā€™.

It took a lot of time with me and her working on her homework to find methods that would help her. Then something happened the first part of this school year where things just started falling into place for her. Her math grades have been going up ever since.

She still comes to me for help every so often. Usually when itā€™s a new concept and sheā€™s trying to figure out how to make it ā€˜clickā€™ again.

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Itā€™s funny, Iā€™m very spectrum-y, and got a mid-life diagnosis for my ADHD, so itā€™s no wonder I was a massive under-achiever in school. I was usually bored and easily distracted. But I digress. One of the things that helped me out (I think; it may have hindered me, given my lack of diagnosis and treatment) with my advanced math skills was an old (70ā€™s) calculus book my dad had kept from when he was a math teacher. It was chock full of groovy illustrations and diagrams of how all the formulas and calculations worked together (like the derivative of a curve being the tangent of the curve, and other fun party tricks). The visualizations helped a lot, and being able to connect an application to the math was fundamental for me being able to synthesize it. Otherwise, itā€™s useless gobbelty-gookenā€¦ It also meant I was one of the few people who could close their eyes and visualize the three-dimensional vectors created and manipulated when doing ray-tracing in computer graphics, specifically when doing specular or phong shading.

So Brayden, I suggest that you spend some time learning a variety of ways to present the material youā€™re given, as people learn differently. Some learn aurally, and you can lecture to them, some learn visually, and youā€™ll need some sort of visual aid, and some learn kinesthetically, so having something to manipulate will help. And everyone gets better with practice, even the teachers, so donā€™t beat yourself up if you stumble early on. Even Mr. Chips had to start somewhereā€¦ :smiley:

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For me, it was the fact I was very competitive, so I always wanted the highest score in the class on everything. That lasted untilā€¦ Wellā€¦ Ummmā€¦ Girlsā€¦

Ha, I love to hear the struggles of ADHD. And yeah, 100% agree with learning how to teach to a wide range of students. I, myself, am much more of a hands-on learner/kinesthetic. My favorite thing to do right now is to mess with ppl by estimating the physics of things. Like, I just so happen to be standing at a door talking to a friend, then explain that if I push the door with an Impulse of (insert random number) and this door is 15kgā€¦ you get the idea. Only issue is, I still have yet to get good at rotational motion. That test is today, iā€™m 100% gonna bomb it.
Wow, I squirreled a bit. But yeah, all the training videos show different methods and such and Iā€™m constantly thinking of new ways to show things.
I have yet to actually have to calculate in 3D such as ray tracing, however, every time I see it, I just see lines in my head of what it would look like and it drives me INSANEE!!! (Same with trying to do mental physics, I rlly need to keep stuff written down)

Thank you! :man_dancing:

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Just donā€™t use your left hand for coordinates :slight_smile:

I think there were studies that showed there arenā€™t any inherent learning styles in each person. There arenā€™t ā€œauditoryā€ learners. But certainly some people will get it better one way or another. Just donā€™t expect that to be true with the next lesson. Someone might use the language to understand the first lesson and a picture to get the second. We always make sure to out key points in text and visuals in reports. Sometimes people just read the text and sometimes they just read the pictures.

At any rate. In a 1:1 tutoring situation, hopefully Brayden will get immediate feedback on what works. And Iā€™m guessing motivation is going to be 85% of the battle.

Congratulations on your new job. Keep everyoneā€™s contact information. You never know when one of your students or their parents could be the decider on a future job. Or maybe you will decide to be your own boss and want the tutor customers.

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Oh, the students motivation is such a battle. When I went to the place to receive tutoring, (I got really far behind in classes due to personal reasons) there were always kids just not doing stuff. Iā€™d see tutors just battling with them to try and do work.
This ainā€™t what Iā€™m planning to major in or anything; however, I do enjoy it though.

And yeah, every lesson has multiple ways setup on how to teach it and highlights key parts to teach larger concepts.

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Just had my 1st official day on Saturday, went pretty good. Forgot how to do simple addition for a small bit, but all went well. So many things that I didnā€™t know. A lot of multitasking is required.

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