I believe that motivation is the key to learning. I am here to help build, maintain, and apply motivation to find success in math classrooms.

My first session with a student would involve a discussion to learn what difficulties a student may be having and what challenges they would like help with facing. We would go over material and concepts being covered currently and in the coming chapters. We would solve some example problems together and talk about the importance or relevance of concepts.

Independence in learning is built with a good foundation of understanding concepts and how they relate to one another, if at all.

I have always found that motivation can come from a variety of places, depending on what direction you want your life to go in. Deciding what is important to one's self is the first step toward building motivation. The next step is finding reasonable means to support what a person finds important.

People do not all learn in the same way. Some people are visual learners, some are repetitious learners, some are active learners, or some people learn through listening just to name a few avenues of learning. If a student has trouble with a concept, it is helpful to apply a different learning strategy to find if the concept makes more sense when presented in a different format.

If there is a reading comprehension obstacle, it may help to discuss the question or theme of what is being read. Picking the statement causing confusion apart into more digestible pieces is another strategy. It could be that the obstacle is that the reader needs more background before the concept being presented can have enough context to make sense.

I think it is most helpful when we look at the material and address questions that a student has about a particular topic.

I have seen many people, myself included, get excited about subjects that they have breakthroughs in. A struggle is an opportunity to have a breakthrough.

I would ask probing questions about the logic of thinking that are embedded in questions, but may not be directly evident. A simple example is understanding order of operations when simplifying an expression. If a student does not know which terms of an expression they should work with first, how will they even know where to begin solving the problem?

When the student has breakthroughs, it is important to recognize those triumphs and use that success to fuel motivation to build a strong understanding of a topic.

Evaluation of a student’s needs can be done through listening to what the student has to say, as well as seeing and hearing how the student approaches problem solving.

I generally use a pen/pencil, paper, the textbook, a calculator, and, if needed, some graphs/ visual tools/etc.

I like to start a session off by asking students if they are aware of the way that they learn best. Additionally, to understand a student's learning style, I may use a mixture of visual, verbal, logical, physical, or social learning styles to convey an idea and then gauge the reaction.