Take your education seriously - part a

This semester I have begun tutoring two college students in Calculus I through Goshen's Academic Support Center. One year in high school, through our NHS, I was able to tutor a third-grader once a week through the whole year. Though it was extremely frustrating at times, it was definitely a formative experience as I considered entering the teaching profession. While tutoring is something that I had always been interested in doing during college, it had never worked out for one reason or another. This year, I had one night a week that was open for me to tutor and luckily it was also available for these two students.

Initially I was quite nervous about the experience because I was not sure how much of the material that I remembered since I took Calculus during my senior year of high school. After my first meeting with just one of the students, I was elated. They were currently studying a section that I remembered quite well and the student and I actually knew each other from choir. Subsequent meetings have been quite erratic. There are weeks where I can recall with great clarity exactly what they are studying, but there are others that I have no recollection of the particulars of that topic. The latter case has led to a great deal of frustration on my part and it certainly doesn't help the students either. I have worked to make sure that I know what they are studying before any given session, which has helped, though has certainly not eliminated all of my frustration.

Though I do not intend on teaching Calculus, I am a math and secondary education major, so this activity feels quite applicable to my major. Through tutoring I have begun to deal with a few of the issues that it seems that teachers often face. One of these has been trying to help students who seemingly do not want to be helped. I have also been forced to think about how to explain things in more than one way. Just because something makes sense to me, doesn't mean that it will make sense to them that way. I have also learned simply from hearing them talk about their frustrations with their professor and his teaching style. I anticipate upcoming meetings with the hope that I can constantly improve how I help them with Calculus, but also how I can help them find strategies that will help them to help themselves. That has been the hardest part - helping them work through a problem, but when we approach a similar one, they sometimes seem to be right back where they started. I'm always trying to build off of the skills that they already have with the hopes that they at least might have an idea of where to start. Though frustrations are rampant at times, if the opportunity presents itself, I would certainly like to tutor again.