The end of another week. A lot of sad news in the mass media – crime, violence, recession etc. But one thing has kept me spirited and looking forward to the many weeks ahead – the progress of my students and my own children.
1. A tutee, from the N(A) stream, reported getting a very high mark for her recent class test on the Angle Properties of Circles.
2. Another girl, from an independent IP school, showed me her two common test papers on Math. She did fairly well in one and very well in the other. She regretted doing a lot of careless mistakes in the former, something I warned her about before. But overall, I was quite happy with her performance. When she first came at the beginning of this year, the Math questions she asked kind of frightened me; I mean, it was not the kind of standard that I expected from a student of a top school. But she continued asking lots of questions every week, and now she has outperformed most of her classmates.
3. My Economics tutee from SIM is now able to tutor his classmates, something he’s proud of and I’m proud of him too. He also did well in his Math module, which included Calculus, although he had not done A. Math before. But like all my performing students, he had asked me lots of Math questions and did lots of practice. There is no secret (except one, which I’ll post somewhere else) and no short-cut to doing well in Math.
4. My eldest daughter, who is in Sec 1 in a Band 3 school, obtained full marks (14/14) for her class test on Algebra and Number Patterns. She is also did very well (top 10 to 20% in class) in all her other subjects. My Pri 4 daughter also did exceedingly well in most of her class tests this year, even obtaining 97% in an English test! People may say that their academic results are due to having both parents as teachers and tutors, but I do know of many teachers and even principals whose children are not doing well in school. Raising kids is not easy, and the real challenge is to bring up well-rounded young people.
Of course, not all of my 50+ tutees are showing good progress in school. One of my Pri 5 tutees had just failed his Math class test, which I will have to analyse thoroughly once he gets back his paper. Every ‘failure’ is feedback that some re-strategising is needed. Students do badly in tests for all sorts of reasons, and we have to identify accurately the cause of the problem before applying any kind of remedy. One of the worst things to do as a parent, teacher or tutor is to respond wrongly to a real or perceived setback. Using the wrong medicine for a poorly-diagnosed ailment can lead to even more disastrous results.
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