Rebecca Zook - Math Tutoring Online

When I was growing up, I did something pretty crazy one summer. I knew if I took Functions (also known as Pre-Calculus or Trigonometry, depending on your school curriculum), it would be with the math teacher I had for algebra 1, who was so confusing to me that I cried myself to sleep over my math homework many, many times the year I took his class.

I was so determined not to repeat that experience of working with that teacher that I decided to teach myself functions over the summer so I could skip his class entirely. So basically everywhere I went that summer I took my functions textbook with me, and I taught myself from it. It was one of the most powerful math learning experiences I ever had.

Since doing this when I was 15, I’ve helped a lot of other students use the summer to courageously and effectively catch up and recover from serious end-of-year math confusion and disappointment, as well as to prepare to skip ahead into a higher level of math.

The summer offers such a juicy opportunity to work outside the pressure, goals, structure, and rhythms of the regular school year. But it’s important to create your own structure, goals, and rhythms that work for you, so you can actually meet your goal without burning out! Here are six simple tips (three in this article, and three more in the next) to help you do the exact same thing!

1. Examine and clarify your goals. Get super specific. Is your goal to catch up? To get ahead? Or both? Do you want to cover material from specific chapters? (Like chapters whose tests you didn’t do so well on?) Do you want to master an entire school year’s worth of math? Do you want to get familiar with a really weird new curriculum in advance, so you don’t have to dive into it sight unseen in the fall? Are you preparing for a placement test? Are you hoping to bump up into a higher level class, like an honors class? Get as clear as you can on this.

2. Get materials that really work for you. Once you know your goals, get materials that really feel good to you, that you genuinely enjoy using.

If you’re aiming to get ahead, get a copy of the math book from the upcoming year. If your school won’t lend you one for the summer, you can buy just about any textbook off of Amazon that you could possibly desire. It can be very psychologically reassuring to know you’ve already worked on the exact material that you need to know in September.

If you’re aiming to review or catch up, it can help to use a combination of the textbook from the previous year with a new textbook that feels like a better fit to give you extra practice and a different perspective. But if you had a terrible experience with a textbook or looking at your old textbook just about triggers post traumatic stress disorder or makes you feel like a failure, just get a textbook that you like more and don’t worry about using the old one. There are hundreds of math textbooks out there, so there’s no need to suffer or settle for what you’ve been given to use in school.

If you’re preparing for a placement test, be sure to get a copy of the study guide or practice test from your school. Keep in mind that those materials probably won’t be enough to really review anything that feels shaky or master anything new – they’ll probably only give you one or two problems max for each problem type you’re responsible to know. So be sure to also get a textbook that gives you lots of extra practice for each type of problem that’s on the study guide, so you can do enough of each problem type that it starts to feel really automatic.

3. Get feedback. Even if you’re working completely independently, be sure to get feedback on your work as you go so you know whether or not you’re practicing correctly. Otherwise it can be super easy to do a bunch of work and not even realize that you’re practicing things the wrong way!!

To start, be sure to check the answers as you go. If you’re working from a textbook, aim to do the odd problems, which almost always have answers given in the back of your book. If you’re using materials from your school, check the study guide answer key you got from your school.

If you want to get answers or worked-out solutions to the even problems in your book, some math books offer a solutions manual that you can find and buy on Amazon, too. That way you can get even more feedback from the textbook that you’re working with.

If you find you want more feedback than you can get from the answer key in the back of the book just telling you if you got the answer right or wrong, and you’re craving something more interactive, personalized, and emotionally supportive, I’d be happy to set up a time for us to have a complimentary confidential one-on-one conversation to explore whether or not it would be a good fit for us to work together! Just send me an email at rebecca@zooktutoring.com or call me at 617-888-0160 and we’ll get that all set up!

And stay tuned, because I’ll be sharing the next three tips in my next article!

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When a math problem just takes for-EV-ah (tips for parents)

Today’s tip is my first shot “in the wild” — on the streets of Times Square, NYC!! Super special thanks to my camerawoman and amazing friend, Missy Mazzoli, who made this episode possible.

A little while back, I was working with a student who got stuck on a math problem.

“Can I call my brain on the phone?” she asked.

“Sure,” I said. I didn’t know where this was going, but I wanted to see what my student meant.

She held her hand up to her ear in “fake phone” position. “Hello, brain?” she inquired. “I need some help with this problem. Okay, I need to do this… all right, and then I need to do that… Uh-huh….. Okay….All right the answer is….Thank you brain! I’ll talk to you later! Bye!”

It totally worked.

Why? It’s so silly. It’s a little crazy. Why does it work?

1. You’re talking out loud. Researchers in Spain found that students who talk through a problem out loud have a greater chance of solving the problem correctly. I’ve often wondered if part of the reason tutoring works so well is just because it forces students to talk through what they’re doing. Paradoxically, we are frequently conditioned in school to think that when we’re working on math by ourselves, it needs to be a silent solitary activity, but talking through a problem out loud can really get the math juices flowing.

2. It’s totally proactive. Instead of letting your eyes glaze over, moving on to the next problem, saying “I hate this and I’ll never get it,” or giving up completely, my student took an active approach.

3. You’re trusting yourself and relying on yourself. Even though my student was characterizing her brain as something “else,” she was really trusting herself, trusting that she had some untapped inner resources she could access if she came at the problem from a different angle.

4. You’re being yourself. When you’re really yourself when you’re doing math, you plug into all kinds of resources that you would cut yourself off from if you believe you have to behave a certain way or be a certain kind of person in order to succeed at math.

5. It’s a little bit silly. In my experience, being a little silly — doing something crazy like “calling your brain on the phone” or doing math in a silly voice — not only keeps things fun but also prevents students from shutting down or going into panic mode. And like talking things through out loud, it seems to open up more possibilities.

I’m proud to report that my student has used this same technique several times since she first introduced it to me, with great success.

So today’s tip is, when you’re stuck on a math problem, talk it out!!! Whether that means calling your brain on the phone, just talking it through out loud in a silly voice — or in a normal voice.

Have you ever called your brain on the phone? Is there a special (possibly silly) technique you like to use when you’re stuck? Leave a comment because I’d love to hear all about it!

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Is multi-sensory learning hardwired into our humanity?

While I’m on the topic of designing new schools, here’s a great article by Ewan McIntosh on applying the seven digital spaces to creating new school spaces.

The seven spaces are:

McIntosh points out that every school needs all of these physical spaces, even though most schools are primarily geared towards “watching spaces” and prevent people from collaborating or talking to each other.

The article asks, Can we design schools around the kind of teaching and learning you’d like to do, instead of the teaching and learning you already do?

Can we design schools that, instead of being “big things that do wonderful stuff for people” “allow people to create great things for themselves”?

This article is chock-a-block with great links and thoughtful ideas. Check it out!

I wonder what Ewan McIntosh and the creators of the Green School would think about each other. I feel like they’d have a lot to talk about!

Thanks to Vicki Davis for posting about this on her blog and bringing this post to my attention!

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Could every school be this enchanting (and sustainable)?

Is it a spaceship made out of bamboo and grass? Flood-proof housing in the shape of a cupcake? A love song to the double helix?

It’s a school! I am enchanted by this gorgeous wonderland of bamboo, gardens, and goats. It truly looks like nothing I have ever seen before. If I went to school here, would I ever want to go home?

The Green School is the brainchild of John Hardy, an undiagnosed dyslexic who, growing up, struggled academically and frequently cried all the way to school as a child. After creating an internationally recognized jewelry business and expecting to quietly retire, he saw the Al Gore documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, and decided with his wife, Cynthia Hardy, to do something to leave a better world for his children and future generations.

They created the incredible bamboo Green School in Bali, Indonesia.

The classrooms have no walls. The desks are not square. In addition to normal international school subjects, everyone also gets to plant, harvest, and cook organic rice. All students plant bamboo and have the opportunity to harvest it and build with it. There’s no concrete. The toilets are composting (and surprisingly cute). These kids are leaving and breathing sustainability.

There’s a buffalo, pigs, a school cow, and 20 acres of gardens that feed 400 people lunch every day (cooked with reclaimed bamboo sawdust, no less)! A unique water vortex generates hydropower. And even the blackboards are made out of bamboo. It’s all a way to communicate the idea, as Hardy puts it, that the world is not indestructible.

Hardy talks about how he went to a school that was built by the same people and with the same materials as the local jail and insane asylum. He points out that students spend 181 days each year inside of a box. Hardy decided to create a school that is NOT a box, that bears no resemblance whatsoever to a jail or an insane asylum. A school where kids do not have to be inside a box literally or metaphorically.

I have never seen a school design demonstrate this philosophy so dramatically and so beautifully. In my own work with students, my goal is always to mentor them as a whole person and help them learn in whatever way works best for them. When I look at photos of this school, I’m overcome by a feeling of openness. I’m uplifted and inspired by this school’s vision.

When sustainable living is approached as a pain in the butt or a deprivation, it will never be embraced on the scale it needs to be. But when it’s approached so imaginatively, who can fail to be intrigued? Who would choose to go to school in an air-conditioned box when they could be learning in this gorgeous, light-filled space?

I’m also totally thrilled for my friend Elora Hardy, director of Ibuku, the company that designs the gorgeous bamboo furniture used throughout the school. I love these designs! Way to go, Elora, creating all this gorgeousness!!

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While the decision to homeschool or unschool is highly personal, and reasons to do so are as diverse as each family, many homeschooling and unschooling parents are motivated because they want to be much more involved in their kid’s education. But what about when you want to add another person to your instruction team?

Whether you’re bringing someone on board to help your kid explore an academic or artistic interest at a deeper level, or calling in backup for a topic you don’t personally feel comfortable instructing, here are some tips on how to incorporate a tutor into your homeschooling or unschooling environment.

Define the tutor’s role in advance. The clearer you are at the outset about what you want the tutor’s role to be, the easier it will be for them to meet your needs. So before you contact potential tutors, ask yourself what you want a tutor to provide.

Some homeschoolers/unschoolers want the tutor to be the sole instructor for a core subject they do not feel comfortable teaching themselves. Others just want a tutor to give their kid some extra one-on-one attention and practice in a subject they’ll be receiving instruction for at home or elsewhere.

Homeschooling/unschooling parents might to want to hire a specialist to help their kid explore a specific interest, recover lost confidence in a once-favorite subject, or provide more challenge and enrichment.

Communicate this from the outset. Many tutors are used to working with non-homeschoolers/unschoolers whose priorities are determined by the deadlines and structures imposed by outside authorities. Without these exterior pressures, it’s even more important to be clear what your goals are so your tutor can structure sessions accordingly.

Choose someone you feel comfortable with. The more you feel you can trust a tutor, the easier it will be to incorporate them into your homeschooling/unschooling curriculum. So choose someone who can attune to how your kid learns and support their goals.

Maybe you got a great recommendation from another homeschooling/unschooling parent. Maybe you just feel really comfortable talking to the tutor on the phone the first time you call.

Whether you hire someone in your neighborhood or decide to connect with a specialist not available in your area by doing tutoring online, go with your instincts and choose a tutor you feel you can trust. And if, after a few sessions, the tutor isn’t helping or your kid doesn’t feel comfortable, it’s okay to switch.

Facing new challenges can get emotionally intense, so the more comfortable your kid is telling the tutor what they do and don’t understand, the more he or she will get out of the whole tutoring experience—and the more fun it will be.

Also, the more honest you can be with the tutor and the more candid they can be with you, the better you’ll be able to work together as a team.

Keep the lines of communication open. If there are any learning breakdowns or epiphanies between sessions, pass that information along. If your kid is really struggling with a certain type of problem or discovers a cool learning strategy, knowing that will only help the tutor do a better job.

If you feel comfortable sharing personal information, let your tutor know if there are any family crises or emotional issues that are affecting your kid’s focus. (If you need to tell your tutor something your kid is sensitive about, make a point to talk to the tutor where you can’t be overheard.)

Ask your tutor what’s the best way to keep each other informed. When and how you check in will vary depending on the situation—what really matters is just making a regular effort to communicate.

A good tutor will keep you up-to-date about what they’ve covered during sessions, as well as any stumbling blocks, behavior issues, or discoveries. Be receptive to your tutor’s observations—they may even help in other subjects.

Reevaluate curriculum as necessary. As a homeschooler, you probably have ideas about what curriculum you’d like your tutor to use. Maybe you’d like them to review materials you’ve used in the past, or you want to put some hand-me-down textbooks to good use. Or maybe you’re just excited about a curriculum you’ve researched.

A good tutor will be receptive to your ideas, but will also share their professional assessment of what will help your kid learn best. Your tutor may ask you to purchase a different curriculum than you’d planned, or recommend that you buy other materials to use in conjunction with the materials you’ve chosen yourself. Try to be supportive if this happens.

Reinforce outside of tutoring time. Kids will get the most bang for their buck if they practice what they’re learning outside of tutoring time.

The more time your kid puts into learning and practicing outside of tutoring, the more they’ll get out of the sessions themselves. That way you can use tutoring time to introduce new concepts, overcome roadblocks that have cropped up since their last tutoring session, or go over the most challenging material.

*I’m very glad to be included in today’s Carnival of Homeschooling, Princess Bride Edition. It’s the wittiest blog carnival theme I’ve seen yet, so check it out!

*If, on the other hand, you’re visiting from the aforementioned Carnival of Homeschooling, Princess Bride Edition, welcome! I’m so glad to see you here! If you’ve chosen to incorporate a tutor into your homeschooling/unschooling environment, I’d love to hear all about it, so feel free to leave a comment!

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I love this image, “New Worlds” by Javier Mariscal — all those different kinds of beautiful, intriguing minds!

To a year full of learning and growing — both finding new ways to get what you need to learn into your brain –

AND new ways of bringing your own unique vision and passion forth into the world!

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!

Growing up, I remember learning to remember the difference between the greater than and less than signs by imagining a hungry alligator with an open mouth getting ready to “eat” the bigger number.

I recently got to work on this concept in an online tutoring session with a student of mine who’s a fifth grader.

First we had a regular < sign and we talked about the "alligator" idea.

He drew in some pointy alligator teeth:

Then he spontaneously drew a whole alligator:

As we worked on different inequality problems, he took it further. He drew a picture of a bird and explained that the bird’s closed little beak is shaped like an inequality sign. The bird would go for the smaller meal, while the alligator would go for the bigger meal.

And he topped it off – with sound effects.

The smaller number, which the bird would eat, has a “peck peck” sound. The larger number, which the alligator would eat, has a “chomp chomp” sound. Oh my gosh, I love it!

I’d never seen the alligator metaphor pushed this far before, and I wanted to share my student’s creative ideas!

What’s your favorite way to remember (or teach) the difference between the two signs?

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After four years of Arena Scheduling at my high school, I had some serious experience designing my own schedule and customizing my education.

I’d taught myself French and trigonometric functions over the summer to skip ahead. I’d gotten high school credit for apprenticing with an orchestra and performing in a professional play. I’d created an independent study for Advanced Placement 12th grade English so I could get credit for being in the Folger Shakespeare seminar for high schoolers.

I was prepared to make my education my own.

So I was pretty disappointed my first semester of college when I ended up with an ineffective music theory teacher, an unhelpful French professor, and a modern dance instructor who didn’t seem to notice that no one could perform her combinations.

I was not going to let this happen again.

For the rest of my college career, I used my mad scheduling skills to spend the first two weeks of each semester (before the add/drop period closed) trying to ferret out hidden jewels and find people who could really help me learn. It was extremely instructive.

I’d thought it would be great to learn Hindi to help me with my Indian music studies, but the class I visited seemed completely ineffective. I thought Yoruba language skills would be useful for my project on Yoruba drumming, but the class did not seem to actually exist when I tried to track it down. I wanted to take a self-defense class for women, but the one offered consisted of running in laps around the gym, which was not going to give me the skills I was looking for.

Instead, I ended up working with an encouraging, helpful Francophone French teacher. I found good Spanish instructors who prepared me for my trip to Cuba. I got to work with an incredible professor of eastern religion who helped me contextualize my experiences with non-Western music.

My search for great classes even led me to shop at other schools in the Boston area for classes I wanted that weren’t offered at my own university. It’s true, I had an exceptionally flexible advisor!

The beginning of every semester was chaotic, but definitely better than wasting my precious college credit hours in situations that weren’t going to help me learn. Whenever I heard a fellow student complaining about a poorly designed curriculum, a disinterested instructor, or a negative classroom environment, I knew it had all been worth it.

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Does it sound crazy to expect a 12-year old to be able to determine their requirements, decide what electives they’re going to take, fit them all into a schedule, and formulate a back-up plan (or three) in case the classes they want are full?

Does it sound even crazier to release them into an entire gym full of t(w)eenage scheduling gladitors, dashing from table to table to sign up for the classes they want?

Maybe, but it worked: at the unusual public school I attended from 6th to 12th grade, starting at the end of 7th grade, we all designed our own class schedule in an annual ritual called Arena Scheduling.

To prepare to enter the Arena, each student would plan a schedule according to their own priorities, and also prepared a few back-up schedules in case they didn’t get their first choice of classes.

After our advisors looked our plans over, we’d stand in nervy anticipation outside of the school gym, waiting for our turn to be admitted. The sooner a student was graduating, the sooner they’d be admitted into the gym to run around and write their name down for the classes they wanted.

In the gym, there was a table for each subject, a piece of paper for each course offered in that subject, and a line on that paper for each spot available in that class. When it was our turn, we’d strategically dash from table to table, securing a seat in each class we wanted, or execute our back-up plan if our first-choice classes were full.

I think each of us scheduling gladiators had a moments of panic. And probably everyone, at least once, was disappointed or had to make a tough decision.

But even in the midst of all the dashing, no one split a lip. No one came to fisticuffs with their fellow students over the last seat in a coveted class. No one failed to graduate because they had to pick their own classes and they somehow didn’t fulfill their requirements.

Not only did nothing bad happen, but this seemingly chaotic process had numerous major benefits:
We learned how to go for what we really wanted.
We learned how to make a plan and execute it.
We learned how to activate a back-up plan if we didn’t get our first choice.
We learned to advocate for our own educational goals, instead of just doing what we were told.

Arena Scheduling also had the (probably unintended) effect of contributing to a culture of passion. Instead of groaning over being assigned to a challenging class, kids schemed about how they could get into one.

It might sound chaotic, but I honestly think it works better than the alternative, which is having students’ schedules created by administrators—a task which cannot be enjoyable for the administrators either, and presumably takes weeks of brain-numbing planning.

I’ve seen students with administrator-designed schedules have their math classes scheduled for the absolute last class period, which totally didn’t work for them. I’ve seen schools were students were only able to request a different math teacher if they had already failed a class with that teacher.

In my opinion, letting students choose their own schedules is way more practical and realistic. And it empowers students to make choices that work better for everyone.

Photo credit: these great pictures of playmobil gladiators are from bloggerCosmicBaby.

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No More Girls Versus Boys

“Men and women, shoulder-to-shoulder, will work together to make this a better world,” remarked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg recently at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “We will get there.”

While the festival addressed persistent gender disparity throughout our society, blogger Adriana Gardella reported that “speakers consistently rejected the notion … that women succeed at the expense of men.”

This hit home for me as an educator. Recently, as girls have closed the achievement gap in terms of math scores on standardized tests, some parents have asked, what about boys? If boys no longer outscore girls in math and science, and score behind girls in reading, will they be left behind in an educational system that seems to play to girls’ strengths? Or will men just become “obsolete” (as recently proposed by the Atlantic Monthly)?

I believe it’s not a zero sum game. When one group improves, it doesn’t have to be at the expense of anyone else. We can pull each other up.

Parents are concerned that boys—who generally need to move more and are usually more interested in math and science than reading—are being given the shaft in classrooms that, purposefully or not, promote values traditionally perceived as feminine, such as being obedient or sitting still and working quietly.

But a classroom that only encourages that kind of behavior isn’t good for girls either. Just because it’s easy for girls to sit still and work quietly doesn’t mean that they should all the time. Both boys and girls need to develop their own ideas and voices, learn to assert themselves, use their bodies, and make noise. And all kids, male or female, need to become both passionate readers and enthusiastic problem-solvers.

We all bring different strengths and weaknesses to the table—not just as gender groups, but as individuals. For example, my neighbor recently declared to me that “yoga is good for girls.” He felt that because he wasn’t flexible, yoga wasn’t for him.

I tried to explain that yoga is about developing both strength and flexibility. Many men are naturally more stable—strength comes easily to them, but they need to cultivate their flexibility. But for most women, flexibility comes easily, but they need to cultivate their strength.

To me, yoga is about the balance of opposites—the courage to develop what doesn’t come easily as well as the guts to use and celebrate what does.

I think it’s the same thing with education. It’s not about girls versus boys, or rewarding what comes more easily to one group over the other.

The best education will help each individual tap into the core of who they are and become the most radiant version of themselves possible. True education helps us both to trust what’s inside—to stand up for our own ideas and our own vision—and to learn to do things that don’t come easily.