by Lacie Taylor
In our last edition, we looked at questions to ask when you’re shopping around for a tutor. Now, let’s say you’ve found a dream tutor and hired them. Is it possible to KNOW, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the money you’re spending on tutoring is worth it? This is tricky with services. With products, it’s often much easier to tell of the thing that you just spent money on works and is of quality. With services, you might pay for something for months before realizing you’re not really getting what you hoped for out of it. Is this just the way it is? Or is there a way to tell for sure if your learner is gaining useful and lasting skills?
There are two main things to look for:
1. that your learner’s program has built into it a system for regular review, so that your learner is maintaining and remembering the things that they’ve been taught.
2. that your learner’s program has a system for clearly reporting concrete progress so that you can see the results of your time and money investment.
These are both especially important with math, a subject that is famous for being forgettable. Many people think they’re bad at math, when really they just haven’t been taught the best way to practice math so that they REMEMBER it. The self-pace for which home-schooling allows goes a long way in alleviating this, but it’s still an issue. You can pass chapter tests and move on, and still not have the solid and lasting mastery of skills required to thrive at subsequent levels. While many tutors and home-school parents out there are very talented at explaining things in a way that their student understands, an exceptional teacher will be organized enough to quickly and regularly review skills at the most prime moments that will ease the skill along from short-term memory to long-term knowledge. And they will also be organized enough to be able to accurately report to you, the parent, where these skills are along their journey from Introduction to Mastery. Which ones are securely enough at Mastery that you can safely take them out of the practice loop without risking losing the skill? And which ones need to continue to be practiced so that your investment thus far gets parlayed into lasting functional knowledge (and not just short-term memorized tidbit)?
Lacie Taylor is Founder and Owner of Math For Keeps, a tutoring business in Austin, TX. She teaches her students how practice math (much like you’d practice piano or basketball). With this approach, her students develop a fluency in math as a language that changes the whole game for them, and that’s very empowering. Learn more about the Math For Keeps practice-to-mastery method here: www.mathforkeeps.com
In our last edition, we looked at questions to ask when you’re shopping around for a tutor. Now, let’s say you’ve found a dream tutor and hired them. Is it possible to KNOW, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the money you’re spending on tutoring is worth it? This is tricky with services. With products, it’s often much easier to tell of the thing that you just spent money on works and is of quality. With services, you might pay for something for months before realizing you’re not really getting what you hoped for out of it. Is this just the way it is? Or is there a way to tell for sure if your learner is gaining useful and lasting skills?
There are two main things to look for:
1. that your learner’s program has built into it a system for regular review, so that your learner is maintaining and remembering the things that they’ve been taught.
2. that your learner’s program has a system for clearly reporting concrete progress so that you can see the results of your time and money investment.
These are both especially important with math, a subject that is famous for being forgettable. Many people think they’re bad at math, when really they just haven’t been taught the best way to practice math so that they REMEMBER it. The self-pace for which home-schooling allows goes a long way in alleviating this, but it’s still an issue. You can pass chapter tests and move on, and still not have the solid and lasting mastery of skills required to thrive at subsequent levels. While many tutors and home-school parents out there are very talented at explaining things in a way that their student understands, an exceptional teacher will be organized enough to quickly and regularly review skills at the most prime moments that will ease the skill along from short-term memory to long-term knowledge. And they will also be organized enough to be able to accurately report to you, the parent, where these skills are along their journey from Introduction to Mastery. Which ones are securely enough at Mastery that you can safely take them out of the practice loop without risking losing the skill? And which ones need to continue to be practiced so that your investment thus far gets parlayed into lasting functional knowledge (and not just short-term memorized tidbit)?
Lacie Taylor is Founder and Owner of Math For Keeps, a tutoring business in Austin, TX. She teaches her students how practice math (much like you’d practice piano or basketball). With this approach, her students develop a fluency in math as a language that changes the whole game for them, and that’s very empowering. Learn more about the Math For Keeps practice-to-mastery method here: www.mathforkeeps.com
