Ashley PACT Third Visit

Ashley Zhang
01/26/2016, 3:15 pm
Taft Math Tutoring
Mr. McCullough
casey.mccullough@menloschool.org

Before tutoring the Taft kids, I thought that they would be struggling a lot with math, and that they would be unhappy or bored to be at Menlo doing math homework and problems. It was true that some of them did need a lot of help with things such as word problems and more complicated division problems, but some of them were very capable as well. I was completely wrong about them not wanting to be there. All the kids were excited to be at Menlo working with me and the other tutors, and some of them would even come skipping in. In the first week, I worked primarily with a 4th grader named Kaileen, and I've continued to work with her in sessions after. Every week we would write a multiplication or division word problem on the board, and in the first week I was with her, it took her a few tries to get the problem. She would keep guessing whether she was supposed to add, subtract, mutiply, or divide, and I had to explain to her which one to use and why. The third week, the word problem was, "If it rains 5 inches per hour for 6 hours, how many inches total does it rain?" and she knew right away to multiply, and produced the answer 30 almost instantly without any guesswork or questioning me. The third week, she also finished her homework significantly faster with significantly more confindence, even making comments like, "This is easy!" In fact, she finished early enough that she had some time to doodle on the whiteboard. It was very proud and happy to see her making such quick progress. I thought it might be difficult to work with 4th and 5th graders, because they're young enough that they still need supervision, but old enough to think that they don't, but I found them surprisingly easy to work with, and even easy to relate to. Kaileen and I bonded over our shared love of Ariana Grande and shared excitement about Kung Fu Panda 3 coming out! I can't wait to continue seeing her every week, and I hope to see her make progress in tackling harder problems such as multi-step word problems.