Still Tutoring

I started tutoring over eight years ago. Since then I have tutored students as young as sixth grade and as old as graduate students. I have tutored students in math, language arts, chess, philosophy, and theology. I have seen students raise their grade twenty-five points and two letter grades while I tutored them.

I am currently tutoring two female eighth graders who have been struggling with Algebra. I also first encountered Algebra in the eighth grade so I have empathy for these two teenagers, but my eighth grade Algebra course was forty-six years ago!

I excelled in high school math, acing the most difficult courses offered, as well as an optional course in slide rule back when we used those stone aged instruments instead of calculators. I did so well in my first year of college math that my professor had me tutoring students in the course the following fall. While I have not taken a math course in thirty-eight years, I still remember enough math, love math, and have maintained enough math proficiency to enable me to help both high school and college students with Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Algebra II.

I tutor each of my current students between one and two hours a session once a week, one Monday evenings and the other Tuesday evenings, both at a public library. I love helping them better understand and finally fully grasp often difficult algebraic concepts, from PEMDAS to linear equations, and quadratic equations to FOIL. I have come to realize that public school teachers often do not have the time or resources to devote to struggling students but that an hour or two of one-on-one tutoring can make a big difference.

I am offering my tutoring services to anyone within more-or-less a ten mile radius of Wellsburg, West Virginia. That includes Follansbee and Weirton, West Virginia and Steubenville, Ohio. If you or a person you know might benefit from tutoring, please visit this link to arrange for sessions.

https://www.wyzant.com/match/tutor/77187020

My 4th Calculator

My parents bought me my first calculator in 1974. I was in 10th grade and taking Algebra 2/Trigonometry. Some of my classmates were getting expensive Texas Instruments calculators to help them with their homework. Mom and Dad bought me an early version of the little square plastic case Commodore Minuteman for $40. It added, subtracted, divided, multiplied and might have had a percent key and a memory key.

Several months later I saw an advertisement for a more advanced Commodore Minuteman that had a square root key, for the same price as my original; $40.00. I convinced my parents that the square root key was worth it. That little rechargeable, LED screen, Commodore Minuteman served me well through the rest of High School, including Chemistry, Physics and Pre-Calculus. I even used it in a high school class on how to use the slide rule where all the students used their calculators to check slide rule calculations. Yea, slide rules were still in use back then and calculators were novel and expensive. I continued to use that second Commodore Minuteman all through college, including Calculus and Statistics and never used a slide rule after the slide rule class.

Well into 1980 or early 1981, my second Commodore Minuteman finally died. I replaced it with a Sharp, ELSI MATE EL-211, primarily to balance my checkbook, calculate my taxes, and keep track of the average miles per gallon our cars were getting. That Sharp is still working and I think I have replaced the batteries only once in thirty years. Along with cockroaches, my Sharp could probably survive a nuclear war.

Now that I am tutoring high school students in Algebra, Geometry, and Algebra 2/Trigonometry, however, my thirty-year-old Sharp does not offer me all the functions I would like at my disposal. I have occasionally been using the calculator application on my Verizon HTC Imagio smart phone, but after a heavy two Algebra 2/Trigonometry tutoring session in the evening, without having recharged since morning, the battery comes close to draining.

I have had my eye on the TI-83 Plus but cannot justify the cost, at least not until I start a long time tutoring relationship with an Algebra 2/Trigonometry student. Therefore, I recently bought a less expensive Casio fx-260 SOLAR, “the official calculator for use on the GED Series Mathematics Test”. Since I have lately been tutoring a couple GED students, one long term, this seemed to be the calculator to buy.

Short of the graphing capabilities of the TI-83 Plus, the Casio fx-260 SOLAR offers me all the computational power I will probably ever need, and more than I will ever use. With tax, it cost me $10.33 at Staples, a lot less than a TI-83 Plus, and nearly a fourth of the price of my first Commodore Minuteman that did nothing but add, subtract, multiply and divide.

Although I will carry and use the Casio fx-260 SOLAR when I tutor, I will keep that thirty-year old indestructible Sharp next to my checkbook for occasional balancing. Sometimes, though, I wish I still had that original Commodore Minuteman to use as a paperweight and to remind me of what used to be.

Ruminations from a WyzAnt Tutor

Me, wearing my Doctor's (D.Min) Academic Hood

I only recently learned about the WyzAnt Searchable Database of Tutors Nation Wide and my WyzAnt account went active less than a month and a half ago. Since then I have secured two students. I have tutored three times for a total of five and a quarter hours, earning a little extra income. More importantly, I have already made a positive contribution to the lives and academic success of my students. Although I am certified in twenty subjects, I am currently tutoring my students, a seventh grader and a ninth grader, in Math. Eventually, I will also tutor the seventh grader in English and Chess.

I am restricting myself to students within a mile or so walking distance of my home in Ridgewood, NY, a neighborhood of the New York City Borough of Queens, in order to avoid transportation costs. This limits the number of students I can tutor but allows me to keep more of the tutoring fees I earn. While I would like to add another student or two, for now, I am happy with just the two I am working with.

Both of my students are above average. They live in good, stable homes. They need a little more individualized attention than they receive in public school, however. I am tutoring each one between ninety minutes to two hours, once a week or every other week, depending on our schedules.

The families of these students and I would not have connected without WyzAnt, and so far I am very happy with the service and support WyzAnt provides. I appreciate that there were no upfront costs. Other than the optional background check, which I paid for, I was able to begin tutoring with no financial investment or commitment. Being assured that clients have their payment information of file before I show up to tutor means that I enjoy the peace of mind of knowing I will receive payment for the tutoring I provide. Handling all initial email contacts through the WyzAnt site guarantees a certain amount of protection and anonymity up until tutoring actually begins. The direct deposit option means I do not worry about my checks being lost in the mail.

While I found some of the certification tests a bit simple, especially so in my strong areas, I also realize that one does not have to be a rocket scientist to help a teenager with their math homework or preparing for the New York State Regents Exams. Anyone with a few years of college, and especially an advanced degree or two, will certainly think the certification tests are easy. On the other hand, the tests do serve to weed out any potential tutors who have no knowledge of the subjects they desire to tutor.

I have already recommended WyzAnt to some of my colleagues looking for part-time work and income. I have posted WyzAnt Posters with my personalized code, available from WyzAnt, around the neighborhood. I have also distributed WyzAnt business cards, also with my personalized code and available from WyzAnt, to my students so they can distribute them to their classmates.

I look forward to finding more students, tutoring more subjects, earning more extra income, and, most of all, making a positive contribution to the lives and academic success of more students, thanks to WyzAnt.

Any tutoring I do through WyzAnt is independent of tutoring opportunities I find through other means.  So, if you or your child would like some indivualized tutoring in the privacy and convienance of your home, you  may respond to this post or sendme an email rather than going through the WyzAnt site.  Although I currently limit my WyzAnt tutoring to Ridgewood, I am willing to travel any reasonable distance accessable by subway or bus.  My current fee is $45/hr for a minimum of a one hour session, additional time available in 15 minute increments, for up to a three hour tutoring session.  I give a $5/hr discount to clients within a thrity minute walk of my home.

3.14…

Three
Sacred number
Triune enumerator

Point
Placeholder
Decimal declinator

One
The loneliest number
But more to come

Four
Quarternity
Completeness, but not quite

Irrationality
Infinity
Calculating out of sight

y=mx+b

Perhaps you recognize the above slope-intercept form of a linear equation, where m is the slope of the line and b is the y-intercept, from high school Algebra. The math I learned in high school Algebra and other high school and college math, although those courses were over thirty years ago, is quickly returning to my dura mater as I tutor high school English Language Arts, Integrated Algebra, Geometry, and Algebra 2/Trigonometry.

To supplement my part-time income, I started tutoring part-time a few months ago. I tutor students in their home, two to three hours per session. I am currently tutoring two students. I am tutoring a ninth grader in English Language Arts and Algebra and an eleventh grader in English Language Arts, Geometry, and Algebra 2/Trigonometry.

I find tutoring personally rewarding. I confess that I experience a bit of a rush when I witness one of my students understand, for the first time, a difficult or complex idea. I feel satisfied when I observe one of them complete a writing assignment or math problem without my assistance. I am proud when they demonstrate proficiency.

Tutoring English Language Arts has been a no brainer. My education has been very language based, including the study of Biblical Hebrew and Biblical Greek, reading countless pages of Church History and Theology, and writing too many papers to remember, including a Doctor of Ministry Paper. My practice of ministry has included writing weekly sermons, monthly newsletter articles, and various types of correspondence.

Tutoring math, on the other hand, has taken a bit of review. For the past twenty-five years, I have not used much math in the practice of my ministry. There is the occasional budget, or calculating how much paint or carpet is needed to refurbish a room, but little call for linear equations. I confess that I have had to engage in a bit of review to stay a step ahead of my students. As I have reviewed, however, I have been amazed how much of what I learned over thirty years ago is quickly coming back.

Ever since I took Algebra in eighth grade, I have loved and excelled in math, and in high school also loved and excelled in Chemistry and Physics. I left math and the sciences behind, however, to pursue ministry. Sometimes I regret that decision.

Ministry is almost entirely a shade of gray, so nuanced that we may do well or poorly but never completely succeed or fail. Math, on the other hand, is primarily black and white. While there may be more than one way to solve a complex problem, almost every problem has an answer, and that answer is either right or wrong.

Even though math is somewhat an exact science, there is enough mystical beauty and symmetry in it to partially feed my desire for transcendence. From the distribution of twin primes, to the irrational value of pi and phi, to the Fibonacci sequence, I see enough of the awesome complexity and order of nature displayed in math to convince me that there is a higher and deeper dimension to our world that I experience as divinity.