Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Tutoring

Sometimes I think tutoring is all of the most enjoyable parts of teaching without any of the annoying bits (but that's probably because I'm not trying to make a living tutoring). When I tutor, whether it's my school students or private students, I get to focus on an individual's understanding. I can tailor my explanations and analogies to a single student's interests. One student finds math easy and responds to algebraic explanations, while another finds math difficult and responds best when my explanations revolve around the physical sensations of movement: when I'm tutoring, I can lead the first student to an understanding of the movement through algebra and the second to an understanding of the algebra through movement. When I'm teaching, I have to try to go both ways down that road at once, which can work, but isn't nearly as enjoyable.


For Mr. Burk: the app is Teacher Assistant Lite. The trial version is too limited (max 5 students and 3 actions/student) for me to get a good sense of how I'd use the full version.

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