09/11/09

So far this year I have only tutored one student. I remember tutoring a lot last year, but cannot remember when I started so I suspect that when the material gets more difficult I will have more. I had my first tutoring session at 3PM today after school. One of my sophomores, a new student to Sonlight, wanted to meet with me after school. Jonathan seems to understand the material in class, however he has been turning in nearly every assignment late. I have talked to him a few times and we had his parents stop by to discuss it. It turns out that he isn't quite used to our policies. He was explaining to me that the school he attended before didn't meet each day for every class. He said that he only met two or three times a week for Algebra in his old school. He explained that if he had an assignment on Thursday, that it wasn't due until the following Tuesday. Here, I give them an assignment every day and require that it is turned in each morning before the pledge. I deduct points for late homework and was concerned since they had all been late.

When I met with Jonathan today, I was happy to see that he only had a couple questions and what I went over he quickly picked up. As I had him try the examples I gave him, he didn't make a single mistake. Further, I also learned that he wasn't quite sure what I expected from him. Not only was he showing all his work, but he was explaining some of it in sentence form. Though impressive, it was taking him too much time and he couldn't finish his homework. He had turned in one assignment where he took the entire page to do one problem. It was organized neatly, had good handwriting, but just showed way too much work. I showed him what I expected....that I want to see the work, but that he didn't have to write out an explanation for everything. For example, if angles are supplementary, then he can just take 180 and subtract the known angle to find the unknown. He thought he needed to explain that they were supplementary and why before doing the math. I have a feeling he will do just fine when he gets to geometry and has to do proofs!!

I am hopeful that he will be able to keep up now that he knows what I expect and that he doesn't have to do quite as much work. He definitely seems bright enough to maintain the work load.