It strikes me, however, that, whatever the reason they choose to see me, they do so out of an intense desire to do well, to meet expectations, to rise to the challenges placed before them. Their parents may be the catalyst for their attendance, but the students need to show up each session and push to engage with the complex and confounding material. This is strong evidence that students are innately driven by a desire to learn. 

If students want to do well, then I need only provide the opportunity. If they wish to meet expectations, then it is my duty to create an environment that supports that. Students want to do well. My goal is to help them reach their goal! 

As a classroom teacher, for whatever the reason, I didn’t fully appreciate the implications of the desire of students to learn. I fell short of my potential. Now, as a tutor, I devote myself to that work. I open doors for students to achieve in the way that they wish to. I help them, surely, but it is not my learning that is being assessed. *They* do the work, I just set the scene. 

Let’s work to change the lens through which we view education. Rather than asking “Why don’t they get it? Don’t they want to?” let’s reframe the question to “I know they want to get it. How can I help them?” Let’s change our structures and systems, to the extent possible, to facilitate student achievement. It’s their grade, let’s help them earn it themselves! Great students deserve great support. Let’s support our students’ goals.

Physics and Math are hard! Ask your teacher for help if you need it. Ask me if you need more.

Before midterms this year I took on several 8th graders who were prepping for their science exam. These were great students who’d learned too late what it took to succeed at their particular campus. They were behind, but were making great progress. More importantly, they understood the changes they’d have to make to find success in the future. One student, a particularly bright boy, told me he was simply exhausted. As it turned out, he saw 4 tutors per week on top of his regular school workload, extracurriculars, and other appointments. He was often studying until 9, then collapsing into sleep, with little time for leisure or reflection. Truly, he was burning out. 

Imagine the toll that grueling schedule would take on an adult, let alone a 13 year old! This student may be an exceptional example, but my experience shows he’s more and more becoming the norm. The formative teen years are important for more than for academic work. From my perspective we are doing our students a disservice by filling their days with school activities.

This may sound odd coming from an educator who is often called in after school to help but I think there’s a better way. Let’s step back from the relentless pursuit of grades and move into a more targeted approach. What classes need intense focus and long hours? Where can we accept less “achievement” and buy some time away from school? Trading an A for a B and some joy may well be worth it in the long run.

Physics and Math are hard! Ask your teacher for help if you need it. Ask me if you need more.

Grade pressures, social pressures, and the expectations of their teachers and parents can keep students feeling buried, lost, and worried they’ll never get it. 

I see teachers who make the anxiety worse. In some classrooms, wrong is never acceptable and intense pressure is the lever to wedge knowledge deep into student’s heads. I disagree with this approach. Want to teach a child something is bad and worth doing only under duress? Force them fail over and over again in a room full of peers in a toxic culture of perfection above all else! I sympathize with the teachers. I taught this way, too. Now that I’m on the outside and can see the effects, I never will again.

In tutoring I help my students understand that learning is a million failures and one success, that learning is a process in which they’ll get it wrong until they get it right, that learning by looking for the right answer is the wrong thing to do. I want them to have a safe space to fail and a helping hand to lift them up. Parents can help here, too. Tell your kids that their goal is progress, rather than a certain grade.  We should all work for process over product.

My motto is “Great students deserve great support.” Let’s all support our learners rather than focusing on their wrong answers. In learning, we’re all wrong until we get it right. Let’s treat students the same way.

Physics and Math are hard! Ask your teacher for help if you need it. Ask me if you need more.

This is by far the toughest law to master. Once I help my tutoring students get past the math hurdles from the 2nd Law, we spend a lot of time working through the math and concepts of the 3rd. Let’s start in a familiar frame and then we’ll start asking tougher questions. 

Consider a person standing in an elevator. They’ve got basically two forces acting on them: the force of gravity pulling down and the force exerted upwards on them by the floor of the elevator. When I stand in a stationary elevator, how hard do I push on the floor? How hard does it push on me? If I weighed 150 lbs, then it stands to reason that I’m pushing down on the floor with as much force as I weigh. How hard, then, does the floor push back? I can use my eyes to answer this one. If I’m not moving, then the net force on me must be zero. Since I’m pushing down on the floor with 150 lbs of force, then the ground must be pushing up just as hard, with 150 lbs of force. I love this example. It’s clean and intuitive. Let’s change the conditions, though, and see if Newton’s 3rd still describes what’s going on here.

Say that I’m in an elevator that is accelerating downward, just like it does once it starts moving downward. How hard do I push on the elevator then? As the elevator accelerates downward away from me, I’ll be pushing on it less than when it was stationary, so less than the 150 lbs of my weight. Does it push on me less, then? Sure! If I’m accelerating downward, I have to have more force pulling down than pushing up. As gravity’s pull doesn’t change then the push upwards from the floor must decrease. 

Let’s try another question: if an unbalanced force is required to cause acceleration, then why does anything move if it always pushes back as hard as it’s pushed? This can be hard to intuit. Remember, though, that if I'm to accelerate I have to be pushed by an *outside force*. Imagine I push on the dashboard of my car from the driver’s seat. Now imagine I apply the same force to the trunk from outside the car. Which causes the car to roll? The second, obviously! Although both inside and outside pushes from me are countered by and equal and opposite forces from the car, only one comes from outside the car and, thus, only one rolls the car! 

This can be tough to intuit! **The key things to remember here are that Newton’s 3rd describes the interactions between objects NO MATTER how they move. Also, push your car from the outside!**

Physics and Math are hard! Ask your teacher for help if you need it. Ask me if you need more.

Newton’s second law of motion describes how objects move when pushed. Newton’s insight was that a net force (that is, a force that isn’t matched by an opposing force) causes an object to change its motion but that not all objects change their motion by the same amount. If I push on a toy truck with the same force needed to move a real-life truck, their response will be very different indeed! The toy may well fly across the room while I may only just be able to budge the real truck. What’s the difference between the toy and the real truck that contributes to this difference? It’s their mass! 

Newton’s 2nd Law can be summarized like this:

There is evidence for this observation everywhere: Interstellar spacecraft like the Voyager probes haven’t had any engines on for decades, yet they still move through space at more than 35,000 mph. Air hockey pucks move seemingly forever, even with a very light starting tap. Finally, stationary rocks never spontaneously start moving. In these examples, motion is maintained without any force at all.

Tell me, who knows more: the student who calculates the correct answer every time or the student who is capable of an intelligent dialog about the subject? I’d argue the latter. Math can be taught by rote. In fact, in my experience, you don’t need all that much physics to solve many textbook problems! To have a conversation, though, without the crutch of algorithmic calculation is a true demonstration of a working knowledge of the subject. When calculation and the faux certainty of correct answers fade, students must become apprentices who ask probing questions and tangle with novel applications for the material ensuring a deeper understanding of physics. 

Math does have a role to play, though perhaps not in the commonly accepted view of it. Conceptual physics uses mathematical relationships to reinforce concepts and is masterful at developing a working knowledge of the world. Exactly how much force it takes to move, say, a heavy object against friction across a rough surface can be helpful but more useful and universally applicable would be a feel for the relationship between the weight of the box and the amount of force it takes. It is better to know that heavier boxes are harder to push against friction because they press harder into the floor than it is to know that it takes 900 newtons of force to do so. By removing the calculation of force and looking at the relationship between force and the weight of the box we’ve created a connection that can be readily abstracted and applied across any friction situation and perhaps leads to solutions: box too hard to push? Empty it a bit first! 

Would that I could wave a magic wand and convert all first-year physics classes into conceptual physics courses. How many more engineers, astronomers, and other scientists would we have? Let’s change the question from “How far does the ball fly?” to “Why does it fly? How can I get it to fly higher?”. Let math be a tool in the toolbox but not the first go-to. Let’s start with a deep understanding of physics. Once we know the why and how, students will move into the “how much” on their own.

Physics and Math are hard! Ask your teacher for help if you need it. Ask me if you need more.