Finding better explanations

Another advantage for individual students taking math tutoring sessions

Recently, one of my students told me:

“I like your lecture style better than my professor’s. You have a much better way of explaining the subject. He just starts doing problems, and that’s it. Last time he was having a hard time explaining how he was using the absolute value to solve a problem. We were all confused about it, nobody was understanding what he was doing.”

Sometimes when you are studying math, and you see a topic for the first time, you struggle to understand it, and you work out examples until you find a way to get it. Then if you are a teacher, and you only have that one way of understanding the subject, you go out teaching it that way, and sometimes you confuse all of your students.

Some teachers care a lot about their students understanding their lectures but some other teachers do not care that much. Sometimes they think: “Well, if they don’t get it, though luck.” However, teachers who care about their students understanding the subject, they spend a lot of time thinking up alternative explanations, or better examples, or better ways to illustrate what’s happening.

I remember a few times (years back when I was a teacher) I felt kind of depressed, disappointed, or frustrated at the end of a lecture because I couldn’t find a way for my students to understand what I was trying to explain. Then, afterwards, I would spend hours, days, even weeks sometimes looking for better ways to explain a particular topic, and the next time I taught that course I was able to explain those topics much better.

I noticed when I started private tutoring, that really sped up the process for me, of finding better explanations, because sitting with students one-on-one, and taking the time to go in depth and in detail with them over their doubts and questions, many times I was able to discover exactly how my students in class were looking at specific problems.

That allowed me to discover faster the reasons why they were not understanding a subject, or why some of my explanations were not working. By tutoring individual students, I was able to find a lot faster a lot more alternative ways of explaining subjects when my students in a large class felt the need for those better explanations.

Tutoring individual students has helped me to focus on finding the best way for each student to understand a given subject, rather than focusing only on covering the whole subject fast in front of a big class.

Marathon GMAT Tutoring Session

Very few students go for a three-hour-long tutoring session

Recently I had a marathon (three hours in a row) GMAT tutoring session, with a student who had only a short time to prepare for the test. The coffee shop we were sitting in closed at 8:30 pm so we had to move to another coffee place nearby to finish the session.
We went over exponents, roots, ratios, percentages, percent increases, decimals, inequalities, data sufficiency questions, area and circumference of a circle, averages, powers of 2, prime numbers, factoring, the Pythagorean theorem, special triangles, Venn diagrams, area of a trapezoid, task completion team time, probability, counting unordered pairs, counting with the multiplication principle, rolling two dice, word problem key words, approaching word problems, setting up tables, picking numbers, and a few other topics.
This is only the second time in three years a student has requested a three-hour-long tutoring session. Maybe not by coincidence, the previous time it was also for the GMAT.
I have had plenty of two-hour sessions, and 90-minute sessions too but in the last three years only two of my students have gone for a solid three hours in a row.
I have no problem with a three-hour session; I can go for longer than that. It is usually my students who limit their sessions to one hour. More often than not, after one hour my students clearly indicate they can use a break from math.