Tried & True Tutoring

As more and more students rely on math help tutors to get them through tricky math courses, many are starting to questions the efficacy of private tutoring. Is it really worth the cost? There are many factors that can affect the quality of tutoring like student's openness to math help tutoring, the openness of conversation between teacher, parent, student, and tutor, and of course the quality of the tutor himself. These are all factors that we as parents and educators can try to influence as much as possible. Indeed, here at Tried&True; Tutoring we put a lot of effort into controlling these factors.

However, science is now learning that there are factors outside of these that are much harder to control. Professor Vinod Menon from the Stanford University School of Medicine recently released a study that sheds light on why math help tutoring sometimes drastically improves student grades, while other times it does not.

In this CNN Health Article he explains that MRI brain scans have revealed physical differences in students' brains that help to explain this.  

The hippocampus, this is a structure of the brain that is crucial for "episodic memory," seems to be crucial. The larger the volume of this brain structure, the more benefit student will get from math help tutoring. This effect seems to be true across demographics from students with high IQ and high math abilities to students with low IQs and low math abilities.

Some of us might be wired better for learning math. The irony is that often it is those of us who might not be wired as well for learning math who need math tutoring. What is the solution?

This is where we look to the tutoring factors that can be controlled. At Tried & True Tutoring we consistently find that students who want tutoring get the most out of tutoring. While we can't make someone want tutoring, we can influence how they feel about tutoring. This is why good tutors are trained to make tutoring an exciting and memorable experience.

We all remember that teacher who infected us with a true passion for his or her subject. When the math help tutor is excited, the student becomes excited, and what was once a boring subject, becomes interesting.

This is one of the biggest factors that we as math help tutors can influence and this is why we emphasize this factor so much when hiring and training tutors. There might be physical differences in students' brains that effect their ability to learn math, but we can mitigate these differences by bringing true passion to the subjects we teach.