More and more high school students are taking college courses online, and my Santa Barbara chemistry tutors are happy to help. Of course, my Santa Barbara math and physics tutors are also on hand for online classes. Many kids need a tutor to help with pacing and organization – as well as content – when they head to cyberspace for learning. Self-paced online classes can be a blessing or a curse. If a student procrastinates (never!) it can be quite a marathon to complete a course in order to meet a deadline for their school. Those five-hour tutoring sessions are a serious brain twister!
Archive for the ‘Chemistry Tutors’ Category
Chemistry Tutoring for Online Classes
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010Identity and Effort in Math and Science
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009One of my dazzling Santa Barbara calculus and chemistry tutors – a biochem major at UCSB - told me she always thought of herself as a future scientist. I have math tutors in San Luis Obispo who say the same thing. As girls they envisioned careers in labs. Research has found that when kids self-identify as violinists (or future scientists) or whatever, they perform astoundingly better than less-committed peers – even when both groups practice the same amount of time. That internal idea – “I am a future scientist” leads to deeper practicing and superior outcomes. Great teachers and tutors can inspire kids to imagine careers in their field of study. This may be the single most important factor in improving kids’ performance!
The Scientific Mind
Wednesday, November 18th, 2009I just finished Howard Gardners’ 5 Minds for the Future. He argues that too many teachers, students, citizens fail to appreciate the distinction between a subject and its way of thinking. My Santa Barbara chemistry tutors agree. A kid may memorize key concepts like acids and bases, learn compounds, elements, and so forth but fail to appreciate what it means to think scientifically. That is, to know that scientists make observations and pose theories, design experiments to test their theories, revise those theories based on findings, make new observations, conduct new tests. Scientific thinkers appreciate how hard it is to make definite causal arguments (A caused B, not merely that A and B are correleated). All kids should experience science as a living, moving discipline and appreciate the value of scientific thinking. That’s the excitement! Not 35 definitions to be memorized for a test.