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Students At Middle And High School Level

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A little over three years ago I began tutoring high school students in several types of mathematics, physics & chemistry. While I did this initially to earn money, I have continued to tutor (often pro bono) because I enjoy the material and the contact with the students. I have always enjoyed math tremendously. I can remember riding in a car for long distances as a child with my father and continuously calculating average speeds and percentages of distances covered as we traveled. In college I took upper division math classes though they were not required for my major. All this time spent playing with math has left me with a deep understanding of the way numbers work and the many ways in which problems can be solved. When I first started to teach students at middle and high school level, I was surprised to find that most of the kids I worked with, although very bright, not only lacked the ability to solve complex problems, they were very uncomfortable with some of the basic principles of math. This discomfort led to fear and avoidance, and the avoidance led to more discomfort. A strange cycle began. Instead of seeing math as a beautiful system in which arithmetic, algebra and geometry all worked together to allow one to solve problems, they saw it as a bunch of complex rules which made little sense that they were forced to memorize. As a teacher, I found that it was important when starting with a new student to find out where his/her discomfort with math began. Often, this

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