🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <4e8ggo$eav@csnews.cs.colorado.edu>,
ALPERT ETHAN  <alpert@alumni.cs.colorado.edu> wrote:
>I spent 3 hours last night helping a student do his first calculus homework
>and was absolutely shocked that this student was allowed into the class. 

As you gain experience in the tutoring profession, you will realize that
the bright and qualified ones, do not require tutoring.  The dummies are
what you will get, and therein lies the teaching challenge.  As a successful
tutor you may be able to overcome this.  Blaming the student, the math
module, or the CU faculty is counter productive.  It is that missmatch
that created your job.  And it is your job to help the student within
that mileau.

Not everybody has to be a tutor:  About 40 years ago, I quit when the CU
Athletic Department hired me to tutor their football players.  It turned
out what the players really wanted was for me to do their homework for them.
They did not want to learn the subject at all.  I did not want to play that
game, so I quit.

In my years on the faculty of the University of Alaska, I spent many years
working with the culturally different Eskimo and Indians trying to stimulate
their math learning, to bring it up to where they could even get into
a University level calculus course.  It was a most interesting challenge.

>I don't know what's going on at CU but when a student passes an algebra class
>and doesn't know to distribute a %$#@%#@ negative, you've got a problem!

That may be your first challenge as a tutor, to get your pupil up to speed.
It sounds like the challenge is a bit greater than you expected.  If your
pupil knows what a negative is, that is a start.  Work from there.  Most
tutoring is repairing defects in prior learning, or in the pupils learning
process.

                            (Prof.)   Ed Gauss,  U/Alaska, retired