By now, your child has gotten back into the flow of school, and you're running your various routines, probably at a frantic pace. It can be hard to keep track of everything, so, once again, let me be a helpful reminder: Talk to your child about their homework and classes!
I ask this for many reasons, first and foremost, because they probably want to tell you. Either they are frustrated with a class and a teacher and would like to vent, or they may have had an interesting question for homework in a class or learned some cool new fact. In any case, it doesn't hurt just to check in!
Let me share a story about one of our biology students, and one of our great tutors, Paul Minor. This student was falling a little behind in biology and having trouble paying attention in class. For some reason, science just wasn't that interesting being tossed at you from the front of a 25 person classroom. Enter Paul, one of our great tutors, and a PhD Candidate in Biology at Caltech. Paul spends every day in the lab on the cutting edge of biology and, after he and the student had been working for only a month, we got a followup call. It was from this child's father, who was raving because his son was now so interested in biology.
That's the H-bar difference that comes from using only the highest quality math and science tutors. Our tutors don't just know the high school math and science, they know the college math and science and they also generally know cutting edge math and science across many disciplines. It's this ability to connect ideas across various levels that can really capture the imagination of a child. Friction isn't that interesting as it's taught in physics classrooms... but just this year multiple influential papers have investigated friction laws at very small scales.
That is to say: even we scientists don't have everything figured out. Science has a dynamic cutting edge, and that's a fun way to teach the material. Quantum Mechanics classes at MIT begin by covering the period from the 1890s to the 1930s. It was a time of discovery after discovery. Being led through that path of discovery helped me experience, for the first time, the perpetual sequence of revelations at the cutting edge of knowledge. That course energized my passion for science and propelled me into PhD work.
Let us help your child today. Ask him or her if they like science class. If they seem disinterested with it, ask your tutor to share some stories from the cutting edge, or maybe a historical note or two about interesting scientists. Just because class can be boring doesn't mean science has to be.
Best Regards,
-Evans Boney
CEO H-bar Tutoring
