I failed.

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

<p>Now that you have clicked this thread, I shall tell you why this title is in effect.</p>

<p>I signed up to be a tutor at our school. We have this tutoring club. So okay, I go in today, there's few there, I expect it to be noneventful. I open up my APUSH book and work on that stuff. 40 minutes go by, and nothing happens. A couple of my friends and I converse, but that's it.</p>

<p>Then around 4, this guy has to leave. He asks if anybody knows Physics. Well, one of the guys I was talking to is taking AP along with me, but he has a cold and is working on calc. I volunteer.</p>

<p>What happens is a disaster. I blank out when I looked at the problems. I tried to explain the best I could, but I knew that I was letting down the girl. Somehow my mind was gone. She was clearly getting annoyed of my stupidity, and asked if the other guy was back. He was gone. Then when I came to, she called her parents and had to leave. That was around 4:30. During those 30 min, I tried explaining vector addition, separating vectors into x and y components, and in vain, tried to explain relative motion. She was completely confused. In a way, so was I. Perhaps I was also somewhat nervous. In reality, I should've just tried out the problems for myself and then taught her how to do them, rather than trying to teach and do the problems at the same time.</p>

<p>I come how, devastated at how my deplorable tutoring has probably hurt the reputation of the tutors at my school. (Many of them, excluding myself, are VERY smart.)</p>

<p>To add a twist to my little plot, I tried to make it up. I knew she'd have a quiz today. But I also knew her father, which is my church adviser. So I sent an email, telling her father to tell her to ask the AP teacher if she had any problems. (All the non-AP physics teachers suck at our school.)</p>

<p>Bad idea.</p>

<p>I just realized the AP physics teacher - my 2nd period teacher - will not be here tomorrow!!! Totally forgot about that. What the heck?</p>

<p>So yeah, bad experience. So much for community service being fun, enjoyable, and easy. (Never expecting easy, but I felt really bad today.)</p>

<p>I guess the purpose of this thread, aside from telling you my story, is... sparking a discussion... regarding... the number of ellipses in this sentence. No j/k. First of all, tutoring experiences. Second of all, tutoring tips.</p>

<p>Many thanks.</p>

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<p>You had problems with vector addition and putting vectors into components?</p>

<p>Yeah I wouldn't recommend volunteering to tutor in AP Physics anymore..</p>

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<p>^^lol thts mean! Vector addition in physics honors (if i remember correctly). Don't worry about it, but what you should've done was ask the other kid with a cold to help explain it.</p>

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<p>Don't worry about it, we all freeze up on material we're comfortable with from time to time.</p>

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<p>"So much for community service being fun, enjoyable, and easy"</p>

<p>Community service can be fun, enjoyable and easy just like sports, jobs, schools, clubs can be fun enjoyable and easy. As is the case with sports, jobs, school, clubs, CS also can be challenging and sometimes even painful.</p>

<p>Just because you're a volunteer doesn't mean you are going to know everything, remember everything or be perfect.</p>

<p>Your making a mistake your first day doesn't destroy the reputations of all of the tutors nor does it mean that you should't be a tutor. Everyone has off days.</p>

<p>Learn from this experience: You don't have to be 100% responsible for helping any individual person. If you blank out, aren't sure, etc., then ask another tutor or a teacher for assistance. There is absolutely nothing wrong with doing that. I even had to do things like that when I was a professor. Everyone has their off days and things they don't know even if they are a real expert in a field.</p>

<p>Also keep in mind that tutoring is a learning opportunity for you as well as the students whom you help. Teaching a subject is one of the best ways of finding out what you don't know about a subject.</p>

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<p>I want to second Northstarmom's comments. It is great that you volunteered to be a tutor ... and please do not be too hard on yourself because you weren't perfect. Remember this was the first time you tutored and you will be much more comfortable next time. I have two suggestions for next time. First, think about what didn't go so well and how yo ucan do it better next time ... did you stay focused? did you clearly understand the question? did you go slow enough? etc ... and then next time work on improving these. Second, don't be afraid to say "I don't know that answer but I know how to find out" ... and find another tutor, look it up, find a teacher, etc to find the answer.</p>

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<p>I know the feeling :)</p>

<p>Last time I tried tutoring someone in physics (for free), I sucked so badly she migrated to the guy sitting across from us in the library...whom she had to pay.</p>

<p>"Current. It's like water. WATER!" <em>gestures wildly</em>
<em>girl looks at me with a confused expression on her face, wondering what the hell I'm talking about</em></p>

<p>I guess physical concepts are just hard to impart to others.
That, or we're both just sucky teachers. :D</p>

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<p>ha, I feel your (incidentally, physics) pain. I was trying to explain significant figures to a friend, and totally blanked on all the rules. Luckily, I asked for a few minutes, did a few, and remember it. But yeah I felt retarded, especially after doing it on like 3040349039043 chem problems!</p>

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<p>

He's not that good at Physics either.</p>

<p>To Northstarmom et al.: thanks for the comforting words. I was really feeling down today.</p>

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<p>Yeah, I didn't mean my comment to sound mean...but just stick with what you know =]</p>

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<p>I've found with Physics that the concepts are really hard to explain. You either get it or you don't. XP</p>

<p>Aha, that's like me with my first day at my job. I made so many stupid mistakes. D:</p>

<p>Anyway, I'll stop being off-topic now.</p>

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<p>Nice.</p>

<p>Activity has picked up and so has the tutoring. I am feeling more comfortable with this stuff. Yesterday and day before I tutored a guy I know, and he felt better with some PreCalc stuff.</p>

<p>Today I tutored a girl who was doing AP Chem. Choked at first but when she asked me to do her homework for her, I did it fine. Now you see, I can't teach... so I feel that if I do homework for her and try to explain it mediocarly (SP?), it helps.</p>

<p>So anyway, life is good, I guess.</p>

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<p>Well you should focus on explaining, and not doing people's homework.</p>

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<p>wxmann. Do not be so hard on yourself. It was your first day. I envision you becoming one of the best tutors at your school as a result of lessons learned. You will do even better when you tutor your subject area where you are the (SME) Subject Matter Expert. The notion of knowing that you took this step to help others, speaks volume for you!.</p>

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<p>learninginprog,</p>

<p>Thanks for the extremely kind words and the encouragement. I am still learning indeed. Even though I am knowledgable in some subjects, I do not have a way with words. I do not invision becoming one of the best tutors at my school (my school has a LOT of smart people), but I hopefully will be a sufficiently able tutor to aid people who need help in their subjects. It's all a learning experience. :)</p>

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<p>Haha, that's happened to me a bunch of times too but when I was tutoring elementary school kids.
You wouldn't think it would be but it's pretty hard to teach someone something that's so ingrained into your brain. Or something that you once had to do by hand but have long since switched to getting a calculator to do for you (e.g. long division...).
Bad memories.</p>