Please contact me if you would like an expert teacher, coach, and tutor to help your family through classwork. I can support and enrich the curriculum for your family’s needs and make it work for you! Fear not! Fret not! I enjoy helping families achieve!
I have been so lucky to teach great kids and awesome families, and welcome your questions, wonderings, and ideas. Check out my teacher page here.
It is important to calmly handle complex situations, as well as complex and vast amounts information. Being able to do so demonstrates a certain level of intelligence and mental holding capacity. We become mentally stronger and gain templates for future complexities. We see how to store large quantities of information and apply it in the proper situation. Our brain makes rubber stamps and is malleable to alter its templates for novel situations.
Becoming more aware of the vastness of the world allows each of us to focus on a small part of the vastness while recognizing how that information fits into the larger system. In addition, the vastness of the world humbles us all, allows us to be compassionate, and forces us to ask deep questions that furthers the breadth of knowledge.
As my daughters grow (up!) I am reminded of how important it is to make mistakes, and be allowed this right of passage in order to improve. The girls at school are often called “well behaved”… and honestly it concerns me. I would feel better knowing that they are creative, curious, intelligent, confident, or compassionate. But, knowing that girls are “well behaved” concerns me for their future.
By high school, the level of confidence that girls feel about themselves is 1/3 of what it was in elementary school. I wonder, what if girls were not so well behaved and were making mistakes and learning how to problem solve from those mistakes? I wonder if girls who made mistakes and were not considered well behaved by high school feel more confident and able to thrive, no matter what. I wonder why we expect perfect classroom behavior from girls?
I do feel that STEM has a place in this, and it pleases me that our nation is taking an interest in all children and their abilities to problem solve, make errors, and be adaptive, flexible, and messy. Such is life. Go Miss Frizzle!
Recently I helped a student earn her first passing grade on a math test. Before working with me she had earned only D grades on math tests. She spent 6 months at Huntington Learning Center in Bothell working 6 hours every week, and still earned only a D. We worked together for only 1 month, 3 hours a week, and she passed her first test ever in math. She EARNED a B! You go girl!
What is the difference?
I do not offer Programs.
I offer my ability to closely observe an individual learner and improve upon weaknesses, support strengths, talk warmly about it all, and laugh. I offer people the opportunity to grow from where they are at, not where they are “supposed to be”. I accept students for who they are. With complete acceptance, students feel safe to move forward.
There can be no forward movement when there is fear. There is bravery in success. There is fearlessness in being willing to fail. And try again.
When working with students in math, I am always impressed by how emotionally involved students are with mathematics. Many feel that “numbers are numbers,” and are merely austere objects. When I observe students doing math, I see something different.
I feel that we engage with the numbers creatively and emotionally. Students feel anger and hatred from a vast set of past experiences with numbers. So it is that: as we chat, feel relaxed, and calm talking about numbers, we relax towards math and our emotions are more positive towards it. We become infinitely more creative with numbers when we are able to talk aloud about them!
As I work with students and families, I am reminded of how important it is for teachers to have a well constructed syllabus available on-line. Ideally a teacher should provide: all due dates, testing dates, outstanding work examples, additional assignments with answers/solutions, and resources to better understand concepts throughout the course. A parent should be able to view the syllabus at any time and feel pretty certain of what their kiddo is learning during any given week.
Remember the excitement of reading your college syllabus? Junior and high school students and their families ought to have that same feeling – knowledge of exactly what a person is getting into when enrolling in a teacher’s class. I shudder to think of the needless anxiety created in students because of lack of course clarity.
I was inspired by a couple of websites that teachers have made to improve education:
Malcolm Gladwell’s latest book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.
Smaller class sizes do not necessarily create an environment that’s more conducive to learning. While larger class sizes are obviously an issue, Gladwell points out that we have become “obsessed with what is good about small classrooms and oblivious of what can also be good about large classes.” A classroom with a medium size, 18–24 students, is ideal. Anything less and you lose the unique excitement that comes from a critical mass of engaged students, the vibe of discussions, the thrill of discovery.
Go Figure. More people choose the ACT over the SAT. The ACT isn’t a game.
The SAT is losing its penalty for guessing wrong, cutting obscure vocab, making the essay optional, and joining forces with Khan for free online practice problems. Mind you, don’t get too excited, the changes are set for 2016.
Until then, stay focused on practicing 20 minutes a day, repeating practice problems until they feel familiar, and choosing test prep books, tutors, or apps that serve you well.
I would like to suggest the use of apps in order to achieve 20 minutes of study time every day. The SAT apps that I like are:
SAT Vocab by MindSnacks
SAT UP
SAT Connect
There is nothing that ever can replace time. And time is so important to spend on yourself when in classes. Taking the time to make flashcards, review course materials, and find related materials to supplement classwork will result in increased performance and improved scores.