5 Reasons to get a math tutor (besides improving your marks!)
Whether your kids are currently stuck learning online due to global school closures, or back in the classroom, you can bet that most kids are struggling in some form when it comes to math. This year, our own Ontario math tutors have seen students with more math anxiety than ever before, whose confidence has been eroded by the events of the past two years. The good news? One hour a week with a tutor can go a long way in filling in learning gaps, healing math trauma, and getting kids excited and confident about learning math again!
When most people think of tutoring - they think of marks - but we’re here to tell you 5 reasons most of our students come to us for tutoring, because at the end of the day, it’s about more than just getting an A on your next math test!
1. Weekly tutoring helps kids build confidence
One of the biggest reasons kids come to us for tutoring is to build their confidence. In fact, we have SO many students who, despite high math marks, still do not feel confident when it comes to math! The truth is that math can be a super emotional subject regardless of what your grades look like. There are so many stereotypes attached to mathematics, for example, the stereotype that to be good at math, it has to come effortlessly. Stereotypes like that are so harmful, and in a one-on-one setting, tutors have the opportunity to work on limiting beliefs that students might have, and create opportunities to help them build their confidence!
2. Math tutors can help kids tackle their math anxiety
The rumours are true: math anxiety is now a medical condition under the anxiety family. What that tells us is that math anxiety is increasingly common among today’s youth, and in almost every one of our tutoring sessions, we are helping our students cope with, manage, and mitigate math anxiety. Math anxiety can show up whether someone understands mathematical concepts or not, and much like confidence, it is largely determined by stereotypes, expectations and pressure from family, school, and society. Our math tutors make it a point to help students feel comfortable expressing anxiety or phobia around math so that they can share strategies about how to tackle it!
3. Tutoring keeps learning consistent regardless of what’s happening in the classroom
One of the things that prevent students from feeling good about math is the lack of consistency that often happens at school. This might happen because of school closures, lack of efficacy with remote learning, or even pre-Covid, many students had already formed learning gaps or suffered learning loss at some point in their student life! One of the best things about a one on one math tutor is that a tutor can meet a student where they are and quickly identify what gaps need to be filled in order for them to feel confident in their actual math class!
4. One on one tutoring allows kids to find their math-voice
If you take a look at most students’ math tests, one of the sections where marks are often lost is the “communication” section. In the classroom, we miss out on a certain fluency when it comes to the language surrounding math, which means never of us find our math-voice! Each of us has a unique style when it comes to learning and understanding math, and math tutoring gives a student a chance to really explore that!
5. Math and science tutoring motivates kids to keep trying!
At the end of the day, it takes motivation to do well in math class. Math, like most other subjects, requires sustained effort and resilience in the face of challenge. Sometimes a tutor needs to act as a personal “brain” trainer, or a motivational speaker, or come up with pep talks on the fly, and that’s half the battle when it comes to learning math! A tutor can really figure out what it might take to get each individual student motivated enough to keep trying when things get tough, and that one-on-one attention is something you just can’t always get in a group setting!
Vanessa Vakharia is the author of 𝑀𝒶𝓉𝒽 𝐻𝒶𝒸𝓀𝓈 + 𝑀𝒶𝓉𝒽 𝐻𝒶𝒸𝓀𝓈 𝟚 , the host of the Math Therapy podcast, and the founder of The Math Guru tutoring studio.