How busy parents can finally make sure their students thrive in math
Are you worried about your child keeping up in their high school math class? Are they constantly stressed out, spending hours and hours and hours on their school work just so that they blank on everything when test time comes around?
Do you constantly think about the days until they go to college ticking away, worried that their chances of getting into a good college are slipping by?
This is a very common problem, especially for busy parents with good, highly-motivated students. Good students that are taking the toughest classes like Honors Precalculus or AP Calculus AB or BC are often under heavy demands. Even though they are the best of the best, let’s be honest: the material is hard.
And many teachers aren’t good at teaching. They often don’t have the passion that is needed to teach these extremely complicated topics well. And they leave out a lot of important information that can suddenly make concepts like higher-order derivatives and convergence tests make complete sense.
My journey to math tutoring
My name is Brandon and I went through this path pretty recently myself. I went through all of the tough classes in high-school, earned my Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Engineering in 2019, spent a few years in the software engineering industry, but finally could not resist my passion for education. For the last year, I have been a math and engineering tutor on platforms like Preply and Wyzant with 400+ hours helping students finally make sense of their work. I’ve tutored many different subjects, but my main focus is math tutoring for the high-school level.
Caption: My math tutoring profiles on Preply and Wyzant
I know how complicated STEM material can be, but I also know that it has one advantage that most other fields do not: everything is logical. You don’t have to “rote memorize” everything and study for hours and hours like you do for other subjects like biology or history. Instead, math and engineering are more about “understanding” and using logic in similar ways over and over.
I used this understanding and my knack for explaining complex concepts in simple language to help my students finally understand these concepts as deeply as they wanted to. Here are some of the students that I’ve helped over the past year:
Caption: Some testimonials for some of my math tutoring students
The problem in my math tutoring business
I’m glad that I’ve been able to help so many students, but there has always been something that I’m secretly guilty about. I know that tutoring can’t solve everything. In fact, what students do outside of our lessons is far more important than what we do during our lessons.
In our lessons, I answer any questions they’ve had and explain the concepts as thoroughly as I can. This is critical, but it is not enough.
The single factor that will determine whether a student succeeds or fails is how they practice on their own. As a tutor, it is my job to know everything and answer all of their questions in as much detail as possible. But the greatest math tutoring in the world can’t help students practice on their own time.
Plus, the lesson itself is most beneficial when the student has already put in several hours of their own to work through the easier material so that we can focus only on the more difficult material during the lesson.
In the math tutoring business, students typically meet with their tutors for either one or two hours per week, but it often takes a lot more than that to succeed. And almost nobody knows how to study efficiently on their own.
I know that I didn’t for the first 20 or so years of my life. Whenever test time came around, I would just spend hours cramming through the latest material, working through the same material over and over, stressing about all of the information I had to cram in my head through sheer repetition.
This strategy worked all throughout high school and college because I was interested in the material and was always naturally good at math, but it did not work once I started my math tutoring business. All throughout school, I only had to learn certain parts of certain topics at a time. As a tutor, I had to know everything about multiple topics all the time.
This was significantly harder and I struggled to cram so many nuances for so many different subjects into my head. That is, until I stumbled onto spaced repetition.
In order to understand why spaced repetition is different than normal studying, you first have to understand how human memory works. Because after all, learning is just remembering.
Every day, you get bombarded with a massive amount of information, from everything you see, to everything you smell or hear, all the way up to what you think. It is simply not possible for your brain to remember all of that information. So our brain evolved to remember the important information and forget the unimportant information. But how did it tell the difference?
The answer is actually pretty simple: if you see something over and over again for a long period of time, it must be important. If you don’t, then it must not be. In other words, your brain is designed to forget most of the information you see. That is a feature, not a bug. Because the truth is, if you can get through your life without seeing certain information, then you don’t really need it and it is just taking up extra space in your head.
You also remember things much better if you actually do them rather than just listen to somebody tell you about them. If you are listening to somebody lecture, it’s possible to not pay attention. When you are doing that thing yourself, it isn’t.
If you consider this, I think you’ll agree that you’ve seen this about your own memory throughout your life. You probably don’t remember all of the little details about the subjects you learned in school because they never came up since then, but you remember almost everything about what you do day in and day out in your career.
The problem, however, is that almost nobody in education takes this seriously.
Teachers lecture students for hours and hours every day, with no real guarantee that students are engaged in the material.
They assign tests where most students cram the day before.
They give assignments without walking through why certain problems are the way they are and why they might be useful down the road.
And above all, they never teach students how to study efficiently!!
Combine all of these issues together, along with many teachers’ disinterest in their job, and you have a recipe for disaster!
That's why I'm rolling out my solution to the problem
Have a recurring lesson tutoring with me every week so that I can work 1-on-1 with your student
I am an expert in all of the following subjects from high school math:
- Pre-algebra (all grade school math)
- Algebra 1
- Algebra 2
- Geometry
- Trigonometry
- Pre-calculus
- AP Calculus AB / Calculus 1
- AP Calculus BC / Calculus 2
For each lesson, get everything that your student needs to learn most effectively for their unique situation
I will provide whatever your student needs during our lessons, as needed.
If they want to focus on their homework problems, we’ll do that
If they need worksheets to drill certain problems, I’ll bring worksheets
If they need the lesson planned, I’ll plan the lesson
If they need a curriculum designed, I’ll design the curriculum
Avoid having to send over your problems in advance like with so many other tutors
I guarantee that I will be able to answer all of your student’s questions in as much detail as they want. If I can’t answer every nook and cranny of their question, I will create a personalized video explanation just for them before I go to bed the day of the tutoring session. I understand 99.9% of the material inside and out, but this is for that 0.1% that I don’t (which sometimes comes up).
Get an email reminder 24 hours and 1 hour before each lesson so that you never forget about your math tutoring lesson.
Never worry about keeping track of annoying invoices
Your payment method on file will be automatically charged at the same time each week for as long as you decide to stay in the program.
Don’t worry about losing your spot if you go on vacation for a few weeks
Just let me know more than 24 hours in advance and I can save your spot for you once you come back!
Automatically save all of the lesson notes in your student’s workspace
If you want to see exactly what material we went over 5 months ago, you can click on the date and see. Never worry about reaching out after the lesson to get the notes. They are already available automatically!
Caption: Some example notes from a math tutoring lesson
Avoid having your student get stuck on any questions outside of our lessons
Send any quick questions over and I can work them out with full explanations so that you don’t have to wait until the next lesson.
Don’t overpay for a math tutoring lesson on topics that are too simple
Instead, when we go over more common topics, I can point student’s to my YouTube channel so they can study for free on their own time. Then we can only focus on certain topics, as needed. I upload at least one new video every week, based on where I’m seeing my students struggling, so I’m constantly building a library of material that will be helpful to students.
You get all this and more for only $88/wk. This is a steal compared to paying for the great tutors out there (who will actually get results) that charge more than $100 for a ONE HOUR lesson! And they are almost never willing to help outside of that hour (because they don’t get paid for it).
This is what I normally provide to all of my tutoring students. But as I mentioned before, I’ve come to realize that tutoring alone is not enough. I want to provide much more. So, here are a few of the bonuses that I’m throwing in to get results outside of our lessons in addition to during them.
Bonuses
Don’t deal with any annoying email threads to stay up-to-date on what is going on
I will set up a private Slack channel so that you, I, and your student can discuss any assignments, test prep, or other materials that we need to stay on top of. Let me and your student handle everything and just check in occasionally when you want to. All of our documents will be in one spot, instead of scattered all over the place. Any time you or your student needs something, just post in the chat and I will respond within 4 hours (or as soon as I wake up if it is in the middle of the night).
Access the one-click lesson scheduler from Slack
Don’t try to juggle all of the different links that you need to keep track of. Whenever you need an extra lesson, feel free to book any of my openings in the link pinned in the Slack channel.
Never worry about your student’s grades again
If your school allows it, give me login credentials to view your student’s grades so that I can see what material they are going over and what the big assignments are. This way, I can keep an eye on things and proactively address them if (and ideally before) grades start slipping. That way, we never miss an important quiz, test, or assignment falling through the cracks.
Get a short, weekly, need-to-know update on your student’s progress
This way, you don’t have to take time out of your busy schedule to dig through the pile of assignments and tests that your student has to worry about. And never again get the infamous “I don’t know” from your teenager when asking about what they are doing in class.
Stop pulling teeth trying to get answers from teachers
If you want, let me talk to your student’s teacher so that I can ask the right questions (math speak) and figure out what we really need to do.
Of course, I can’t guarantee that they’ll respond promptly, but I can ask the right questions and continue to follow up on whatever schedule you would like. Just let me know what you want and I’ll handle it from there.
And most importantly
Get access to the beta program for my new SRS study system
Let me show your student how to become great at solving problems through the only method that actually works: consistent practice over a long period of time.
Of course, the problem with this strategy is that it is very time-consuming, hard work, but that is where SRS (spaced repetition software) comes in. I will show your student how to use SRS to determine exactly which problems to practice and when to practice them (which is just as important for optimal memory).
If your student doesn’t practice the right problems at the right time, they could easily draw a blank on a test when they were “sure” they knew it a few days earlier (sound familiar?). Again, the brain is designed to forget things unless it sees them again. And SRS shows your student what they need to remember right before they are about to forget, so they don’t waste time studying what they already remember and also don’t forget any important concepts.
SRS is essentially a virtual deck of flashcards. Your student can practice looking through the virtual flashcards every day and as they work through problems, they can mark “easy,” “hard,” or “again” if they completely blanked on the answer. Then the algorithm will determine the optimal time to show them the card again just before they are about to forget it.
Loosely speaking, every time a student gets one of the cards right, the amount of time before they see it again doubles (and if they get it wrong once, they start back at the beginning). This saves a lot of time because they can avoid studying the problems they are already experts at and only focus on the ones that they struggle with. And they don’t have to keep track of a huge stack of real world flashcards either. They just have to log in every day and do the problems that automatically show up for them.
This technique has been used for decades in the language learning space, but I’ve discovered that this also works for learning math concepts and practicing math problems. I’ve tested this on myself for over a year since I’ve started my tutoring career, which is how I was able to master so many different math subjects at the same time.
To take advantage of this technique, I will work with your student to see what they need to know for tests and quizzes, as well as what they are struggling with during our lessons. Then I will create unique flashcards just for them as needed in their spaced repetition system. All they have to do is practice what the software tells them to every day. I will also check in on their statistics and test them periodically to see how they are doing.
This is the unfair advantage that none of the other students in your child’s class will have. By using software, we will be working with your child’s memory by preparing for tests in advance, rather than against it by cramming for tests at the last minute.
But this only works if your student puts in the work every day and I can promptly get the required information for tests and assignments. If they can do that, I’m sure that you will be very happy with the results.
Now full disclosure...
As mentioned before, I have hundreds of hours of experience tutoring. But I don’t have a lot of experience using spaced repetition or working with my students outside of our lessons. I have tested these techniques on myself, so I know that they work. But I don’t have a track record of successfully using spaced repetition software to help my students.
That is why I’m including the SRS Study System above as a beta program. I need to work with actual students to see the results on somebody besides myself so I can learn how to tweak the program for others.
If this works as well for my students as it has for me, then I plan to increase my prices quite a bit down the line since I will be able to deliver much better results than just “normal tutoring.”
But if you are willing to work with me so that I can make this program as great as it can be, I am more than happy to grandfather you in at today’s price of $88/week for as long as you decide to stay with me.
In order to reduce your risk further, I am willing to make the following guarantees:
If I don’t get you the results that you want, don’t pay me until I do
If your student doesn’t understand the material as well as you want them to or get the grades that you want them to and they have put in the work on their assignments, lessons with me, and daily spaced repetition practice on their own, then I will work for free to get them those results.
I will not charge you again until we get the results that you want.
Cancel at any time, no questions asked
And if I’ve done everything that I could do and nothing works, then you can cancel at any time no questions asked. If I can’t get you the results you want, then I don’t want to be paid.
Full refund within the first month if you want, no questions asked
If within a month of first signing up, you don’t think that the program is working for you, then I will refund the entire amount that you’ve already spent, no questions asked. I’m very sure this will work, but not certain yet because I haven’t been able to test it on anybody but myself.
I wish I could provide this service to everyone, but the reality is that I can only take on 15-20 students at a time, depending on how many lessons some students have. And I currently have 10 lessons per week now that the school year is coming to a close. So it is important to reach out now if you think that I can help.
Best case you get your student the results you want in their math class. Worst case, you tell me it’s not working, I write you a check, and you get a month of free study techniques and tutoring. Both options are risk free. But the only thing guaranteed not to help is clicking away from this page right now.
Don’t take a gamble. Schedule a free 30-min call so that I can understand your situation and see if I can help.
– Brandon at STEM Tutor Club