Normal kids don't need math tutors

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

My kid, an incipient 7th-grader, has just flunked long division, IMO. What happened was he was figuring out the distance from 1st base to 3rd. I give him props because he knew the procedure. (I do not know the procedure. I’m sure I did once.)

But at some point during the procedure, he required division. And he used a calculator. And due to some malfunction on the part of the calculator, he got a result that even I knew was wrong–but he didn’t. So I sat him down to have him do the division on paper, and he blew it again.

It went something like this: I said, If the distance from 1st to 2nd is 90 feet, and the distance from 2nd to 3rd is 90 feet, then how can the distance from 1st to 3rd be 314 feet? Does that make sense?

Kid: No but that’s what the calculator said and I’m sure I did it right.

I then proceeded to give him a few other story problem type tests and my conclusion is: he doesn’t know how to do long division.

He says: Well but we do it differently than you did.

(That’s for sure! They do multiplication differently, too. They have this weird grid thing.)

So…I thought that maybe, over the summer, I could get him some tutoring, or into a summer-school thing to straighten this out. Because, boy, he’s in middle school, he’s gonna need the basics. So I googled. And here’s what I found out.

In my area there are summer programs for math geniuses. There are summer programs for troubled teens. And there are summer remedial math programs for minorities.

There are apparently no summer math programs for untroubled middle-class white kids who are not yet teenagers and who are not math geniuses.

And I sure can’t teach him. Not only do I not know how they’re doing it these days, I’ve forgotten what I learned in 5th grade back in the middle of the last century.

2

I don’t know if it’s within your budget, but you could try and find a local college student to tutor him. That’s what my mom did for me as a kid, and it was reasonably cheap.

3

It is not Chicago Math I hope.

4

Why do you need division to figure the distance between first and third base? You add 90 + 90 and get 180 feet. Anyone who has played baseball knows you can’t cut across the infield and bypass second base.

5

Call the school or county and see what they recommend. Not everything is posted on the internet, and a lot of distrticts offer some type of summer program that is open to everyone. You could always try one of those learning centers, but I think they are expensive.

6

Bollocks. I take it you’re American, and definitely don’t live ANYWHERE NEAR London, right?

Otherwise I’d pm you… I’ve just started maths tutoring. But the Atlantic’s one hell of a commute. :frowning:

7

Another route would be posting an ad asking for a math tutor. High school and college students looking to make a little extra scratch will welcome the opportunity to help your son and build their resumes.

8

I tutored math this past semester. How I got clients was by e-mailing local high schools. E-mail his math teacher and see if (s)he knows of any.

9

I second the college student idea, but I’m missing something on that 1st to 3rd distance thing. Where is division involved? Square roots, yes; division, no.

10

Check out this website.

16-year-old EtherealFreakOfPinkness has been homeschooled for a number of years now, and this website has helped her tremendously.

11

Thank you.

You either know the ratio between the legs and the hypoteneuse and multiply; or you square the two legs, add that together and take the square root of the result.

I wouldn’t want to figure the square root of 16,200 without a calculator.

12

I dunno; my first thought on this was, wait, he’s going into 7th grade and they’re already studying the Pythagorean Theorem? Whoa!

Then I realized you probably meant the distance around the sides… and, well, what FatBaldGuy and garygnu said. Where the heck does division come into this?

Anyway.

As far as the math thing goes… I don’t know if it’s possible, but how about the good old fashioned method – an adult who learned it the proper way simply teaches him. It could be a friendly neighbor, his grandmother, you, who knows. I don’t think math is something that NEEDS a tutor for. If you can do your household budget, I think you can teach math at his level – especially with the aid of a few good textbooks. I always like Houghton-Mifflin (spelling?), myself, they seemed to make the most sense. You can probably find them cheap just about anywhere. Just because they’re outdated doesn’t mean they’re wrong. :slight_smile:

13

It’s approximately 127’, BTW.

14

It’s easier if you think of it a 90’ times the square root of 2 (~1.414).

15

Well, yes, fortunately I did have a calculator on my desktop. And confirmed by this handy baseball diamond layout.

So, we were saying, long division?

16

If you want a tutor, I’ll gladly do it, since I probably won’t be able to get a job this summer. Email’s most likely the best bet, since I’m betting you live nowhere near me.

17

I think there was some kind of mis-translation of the story problem, as the baseball diamond math we’re doing is trigonometry, isn’t it?

I don’t think seventh graders are learning that yet. So there must be some other form to the question.

18

Or a local high school student. Call up the local high schools and see if they have a list of student tutors. I did this in high school, and there were a bunch of other students on the list.

The great part about it is that it can often be very generously priced, for a variety of reasons. Lots of book-smart high school students have no idea about how to market themselves, or how much to ask for. Odds are that you can find a few who will do it for free, just for the college-app resume building.

19

Right, but if you have just caught a grounder and tagged third, how far do you have to throw it to get the batter out at first?

(Okay, I don’t know a lot about baseball either.)

20

It sure sounded like it.

I myself was ruined by New Math. Or possibly I just never had any aptitude, anyway.