What does a typical tutoring session look like?
Most of my appointments last an hour, but the time is up to you. If you want an hour and a half (or more), that’s not a problem. I even worked with one student for four hours straight once to prepare for a final. I wouldn’t recommend that though. My experience is that most students’ eyes start to glaze over after about ninety minutes–unless you really love being tutored or this is an emergency crunch session, you won’t want to go longer than that.
I will show up right on time (I’m very punctual!) and we’ll get right to work. We will work on the things you need to work on. If this is our first session, I might ask you a few questions to gauge your needs and skills. If you have a good grasp of the material and only need me to fill in some holes, I’ll clarify the material. If you need help setting up and solving homework problems, we’ll work on your homework. If you feel like you get the material but still can’t seem to do the problems, we’ll work on problem solving strategies. If you’re totally lost, I’ll teach you the lessons you need to know.
No matter what we’re working on, I’ll help you dig deeper so that you can really understand what the subject is all about. I’ll help you make the connections to previous topics so you see how all the pieces fit together. I’ll ask the questions that will let you learn how to solve the problems on your own. And when appropriate, I’ll show you tricks that you can employ to make the problems easier to solve. I can’t promise you that you’ll begin to love math and science as much as I do, but you won’t find it as scary and mysterious.
We can work together once a week (or more), or we can meet whenever you have questions. It’s up to you!
