I am going through an online tutoring program in order to be ready for my job at the local community college, teaching remedial college math. (This means teaching high school math to college students.) It's a second job, and I will be working Tuesday through Thursday from 4pm until 7pm, and Saturdays from 9am to 1pm. Since I have done nothing but 7th grade math for the last 6 years, I need to bone up on my college algebra. So this tutoring program is kicking my ass right about now. The pure algebra is done, and now I am doing applications problems like this:
:
One monorail train travels around the amusement park at a speed of 10 miles per hour for part of the trip. It travels at a speed of 12 miles per hour for the remainder of the trip. If the entire trip is 18 miles, and it takes 1.6 hours, how long does it travel on the second part of the trip?
and this: A jar holds the same number of dimes and quarters. If the value of the quarters is $0.60 more than the value of the dimes, how many kind of each coin is in the jar?
This is the stuff of nightmares for most people. College professors tend to say things like, "This is the exact same problem! It's just that.... (blah blah whatever their reasoning is)." To the untrained eye, they look completely different. They actually are the same kind of problem, but it's not as easy as all that. For the first time in my math life, I am learning why this is true. I am thinking that college professors and other math teachers that make students feel dumb by saying the problems are the same but being unable to explain WHY means that they don't really understand the why of it. And if you don't understand exactly how and why something works, you can't teach it.
I'm slogging through it, bit by bit. I have moments where I think I'll never understand it. I don't have a tutor or teacher to help me. There is nobody in my life that would be able to explain this to me. I just have to get through it. I just have to figure it out on my own. And it's hard.
And this is how I'm spending my winter break.
:
One monorail train travels around the amusement park at a speed of 10 miles per hour for part of the trip. It travels at a speed of 12 miles per hour for the remainder of the trip. If the entire trip is 18 miles, and it takes 1.6 hours, how long does it travel on the second part of the trip?
and this: A jar holds the same number of dimes and quarters. If the value of the quarters is $0.60 more than the value of the dimes, how many kind of each coin is in the jar?
This is the stuff of nightmares for most people. College professors tend to say things like, "This is the exact same problem! It's just that.... (blah blah whatever their reasoning is)." To the untrained eye, they look completely different. They actually are the same kind of problem, but it's not as easy as all that. For the first time in my math life, I am learning why this is true. I am thinking that college professors and other math teachers that make students feel dumb by saying the problems are the same but being unable to explain WHY means that they don't really understand the why of it. And if you don't understand exactly how and why something works, you can't teach it.
I'm slogging through it, bit by bit. I have moments where I think I'll never understand it. I don't have a tutor or teacher to help me. There is nobody in my life that would be able to explain this to me. I just have to get through it. I just have to figure it out on my own. And it's hard.
And this is how I'm spending my winter break.
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