Tutoring For All Ages

Every year I work with science and math students who come to me thinking they just need help learning the material, without realizing that their main problem is that they don’t know how to study. They’re generally very good students who make the common mistake of assuming that the methods that work for them in history and literature classes will work for them in chemistry or geometry. In fact, these are such different classes that the same study habits rarely work for both.

So if you’re taking your first hard math class, or your first physical science class, here are some tips to help you study more efficiently:

• Know when to stop memorizing. Every subject in school involves some amount of memorizing. Sometimes you have to spend hours a night drilling dates and names into your head, and sometimes you just have to memorize the Central Limit Theorem. Memorization is a skill that will serve you all your life in some capacity or another, so don’t neglect it.
  
  However, another important skill you need to learn is when to put down the flash cards and pick up a pencil and some scratch paper. In math and the hard sciences especially, there is just no substitute for practice problems. Doing problems 1-33 (odd) as math homework may seem repetitive, but teachers assign lots of practice problems for homework in math and science because that’s what works. So do practice problems until you think you understand, then do more, until you know you understand, then do a few more (and harder) problems just to be sure.
  
  Depending on the material, that may mean you actually have to more than the assigned homework, but that’s just the way it works. As you get older and take more and more advanced classes, you will be expected to take more and more responsibility for your own academic career. When you get to college, your professors won’t necessarily spoon-feed you everything you need to do to get a good grade — you’ll be expected to figure that out for yourself. If you practice that now, you’ll have less of an adjustment period later.

• Be your own teacher. Did you know that math textbooks have portions of their chapters where they explain in great detail the concepts behind the relevant math, and lead you through fully worked-out sample problems? It sounds like a flippant question, but in fact, most middle- and high-school students have never (or only very rarely) used that part of their textbook. If they have a problem, they ask a parent, a teacher, a tutor, or a friend, but they don’t often turn to their math chapter and read what it says. And it’s too bad, because the answers are usually there. It does take some practice to be able to read a math chapter and translate it into normal-people English so that you can really understand the concepts, but if you can get the hang of it, you’ll begin to see that math textbooks are more that just a collection of problems: they can be your ticket to the top of the class.
  
  The same is true of science textbooks, though students are often more familiar with that material. Even so, the in-chapter practice problems are valuable resources that many students don’t take full advantage of. Each problem is an opportunity for an “ah-hah!” moment, and each is worth some time spent working through it. Read the problem, cover up the explanation, try it yourself, then read the answer and explanation. If you didn’t do the problem right, trace your steps and work through it until you have done it correctly.
  
  Doing the in-chapter practice problems generally provides you with the basics you need to know to at least pass a quiz or test. If you want to ace that test, you’ll probably need to go further and do the practice problems at the end of the chapter. Try to do the problems that have answers at the back of the book, so you can check them yourself. If you get stuck and can’t see why your answer is wrong, then ask your parent, teacher, tutor or friend. You’ll get a lot more out of a Q&A session with someone if you’ve already tried the problem and tried to find your mistake before you ask about it.
• The Teacher’s Edition is your friend. If you have connections, you may be able to acquire a teacher’s edition of your textbook for your own personal use. Teacher’s editions are goldmines of information. If you’re willing to put in the work, it’s well worth the extra cost and extra time to get a teacher’s edition to a textbook in a difficult subject. Note that if you don’t have teacher connections, you may be able to borrow your teacher’s copy from time to time, if you ask very nicely and always return it in a timely fashion. 
  
  One thing to be careful of, though, is using the teacher’s edition as a crutch. Don’t think of the teacher’s edition as your first resource; don’t just skim the methods without picking up a pencil and think, “okay, I’ve got it.” For most students, that’s a quick path to unfounded confidence and a not-so-great grade. You must be willing to take the time to do all the problems yourself and check your answers in the regular book, then try to understand and correct your mistakes, before you check the teacher’s edition. Think of it as a last resort rather than a guide for every single problem. If you’re not sure you can do that, stick to just asking your teacher about problems you have trouble with.

Science and Math classes may require a slightly different study approach than the humanities, but the results can be well worth it. There’s nothing quite like working through a tricky geometry proof or stoichiometry problem, writing down your work and understanding each step of the way, then checking your answer at the end and seeing your correct answer echoed in the textbook or worksheet typeface. It’s an incredibly satisfying complement to the kind of victory you can get from writing a great history essay.