Recent Good Experiences

Thursday, yesterday, had a good ending: two hours of tutoring for the SAT in which a student learned some effective ways to attack some math, reading and sentence correction questions — but also learned a bit about logic and reasoning. He’ll find this only rarely. Unfortunately. I wish such things as I taught were all over the country. How much better the culture would be… Then one hour tutoring a student in geometry — specifically, in the Pythagorean Theorem and similar right triangles. And, wow, what I was able to relate these things to: reasoning, logic, science, law, history, and more. All in an effective, relevant way, using concretized abstractions. And all in a way that, too, will be found only rarely. Unfortunately. Next up: helping some people with a dead battery, after I did a 10 PM shopping stint at my local HEB. They just needed jumper cables; they already had a big truck to give them a jump. I liked the look in the husband’s eye and the strength of his handshake. It’s nice to help people who are good (well…who seem decent, as that is all I really know about them). And then, to my surprise, and pleasure, someone asked, while I was waiting at a stop light on the way home from HEB, if I tutored for the SAT. (She saw my “MGTutoring” graphics on the back of my truck.) I had a flier with me in my briefcase, so I got out of my truck and gave it to her husband. I liked seeing the gleam in his eye and the smile on his face when I handed the flier over. Priceless.