Tutoring...

Yesterday I volunteered at the library to help tutor some young ones. I wanted to share my experience with you. Perhaps this will help motivate some of you to keep being involved. I know it did me!

A young boy comes to mind when I think about yesterday's tutoring. He was in seventh grade trying his hardest to understand algebra. He was working on the not so fun problems where you have to solve for x. At first I had to really think back on how to deal with these type of problems. I'm embarassed to say I had forgotten. There were also FRACTIONS in these problems that had completely scared me. However, I figured we would both suffer together because I truly wanted him to go home at the end of the day feeling confident about these problems. So, I started to read a little of his book and I looked at some practice problems and all of a sudden it came to me. I knew how to do these!!!

Now it was a matter of me being able to explain the steps and teach it in a way that would "connect" with him. By golly, this kid was as quick as a whip. He caught on so very fast to what I was saying. He made occasional mistakes and I would correct him. At the end of the tutoring he asked Amanda to give him any problem to solve. I was thinking, "Oh dear, Any?" I was hoping Amanda would be easy on him but she gave him a challenging question and he solved it with no problem. I was so proud of him and I could tell that she was also.

I was so encouraged by this. There are so many young children out there that are struggling with math and their parents aren't capable of helping because they might not have had much education. If we all give just a little bit of our time, it will touch many lives. I encourage my classmates to continue to reach out to others. The reward is priceless...