Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Parenting and Advocacy Math mentor

Has anyone used a math mentor for young kids? Our DS6, at the end of first grade, started working with someone a few weeks ago. It's a great match, and DS is eating it up. I am sort of shocked, to be honest, at how quickly he is taking it all in. It seems like an ideal situation educationally, but I wonder what is supposed to happen at school. Do schools typically work with someone like this? Any ideas about what to ask for?

We have done math learning centers for our boy but still trying to find a mentor for him. What we are looking for is not so much a tutor but someone who knows their math and explains what a mathematician does and how a mathematician thinks. How a arithmetician looks at the owrld and how they put what they see on paper.

IMHO the relationship should be like an apprenticeship

The book "Developing Math Talent", which I highly recommend, discusses the how math mentors can help gifted math students.
A relevant excerpt is at http://books.google.com/books?id=L5...ing%20math%20talent%20mentor&f=false .
The authors recommend that the mentor not be a parent, even if the parent is qualified. For reasons of cost and convenience I am mentoring my kids.

We discussed this with our DS7's principal and she is open to having someone come in and mentor him during his math class at school. She thinks that the teacher would not have any problem with it eitehr. We just have to find the right person. I would just ask the school whether you could have that person work with your DS at the appropriate time during the day.

BaseballDad! Long time, no see...glad to see you back!

That sounds like a good idea, Deonne, though in our case I don't think it will work. The main problem is that it's a bit of a hike for the mentor to get to the school. But there's also a problem because the language of instruction at the school is not English, and the mentor teaches in English. So for both of those reasons we're mostly running this as a one-hour per week, after-school, extracurricular event. But without trying to cover the entire elementary school curriculum in that period, they are going very quickly over the central topics, with the goal of doing Algebra I as soon as possible. (The mentor is a physicist, and would like to get to some simple physics applications right away.)

We are very happy with what DS is learning through the mentor, and it is a bit like an apprenticeship relation, as Cawdor suggests it should be. But the question is what he should be doing at school. DS is social enough, that he may well enjoy just staying in his regular math class with his friends. As long as he doesn't become disruptive, and doesn't die of boredom, I suppose that's ok. But I would like at least for the school to have some sense for what he is doing.

I think.

Thanks, Minniemarx - nice to be back! My year has been even more hectic than usual, but now that the summer is near I begin to remember what it's like to have a moment to think!

I saw your recommendation recently of the Bayard Jeunesse titles, which we love as well...

I can't imagine trying to find and schedule someone willing and able when my husband is right there. I suppose we're supposed to go and ask one of his grad students?

Do they explain why they see it as being a problem?

From my perspective I think it is impossible to generalize about this sort of thing. For some parents and kids it could easily become a pressured unhealthy thing, but for others it could be a real joy. It certainly works out well for many homeschooling families.

The one thing I'd suggest with a mentor is that parents don't expect the mentor will cover the standard curriculum and they don't get overly involved in trying to guide the direction it will go.

I agree with potatoes that there is no general rule here - what works for some families may not for others. And of course I don't know enough about Talullah's husband or her family to be able to judge what will work for them. But although I have plenty of background in math to be able to teach DS the stuff he is learning, having a mentor makes a big difference for us. There are several reasons.

The most important pedagogical reason is that my interaction with DS is much smoother when I am the person helping him master something he has already learned than it is when I am the person introducing it to him in the first place. This is partly my shortcoming. Although I am very patient when I am teaching others, my patience wears thin with DS. When he is learning something new with DM (dear mentor?) either he listens better, or DM is not as affected as I am by the appearance DS consistently gives of not listening, or both.

Another advantage is that I get to learn things about DS that I wouldn't be able to otherwise. This actually seems to improve our relationship elsewhere. I'll use the same example. One of DS's peculiarities is that he fidgets when he is learning something new. He almost never looks at the teacher, is often doodling or hanging upside down off his chair or staring off into space. He does not give the impression of someone who is ready or able to learn. Amazingly though, I am discovering, he is. I watched the mentor explain to him the rules for order of operations, and I was sure he wasn't listening. He was all over the place. Then, he did a huge, complicated problem with exponents and nested parentheses and the whole works without a hitch. From watching this kind of interaction, I am learning not to judge the appearance of inattention as strongly as I used to.

It is also true that knowledge of higher mathematics is no qualification at all for teaching elementary or middle school math. It is a special skill to be able to break things down into their component parts, and the basic math techniques are so automatic for me now, and it has been so long since I learned them, that I can't even remember what most of the component parts are. I could learn or remember how to teach them, of course, but experience counts here too. Someone who is used to working with kids just learning this stuff will be able to see where they are going wrong if they are.

In addition to the direct pedagogical benefits, though, I think it is a great thing for him to have a young role model from outside the family whom he likes and respects and who really values education.

Finally, a third party can be much more effective in lobbying the school than I can. DM has already volunteered to help with that, and I can tell already that the school is especially receptive.

So as far as I can tell, then, this is the best setup I have come across so far given all the peculiarities of our situation. Naturally, other situations may work better for other families.

I do still wonder what to do with the school. But more on that later.

They do, briefly. Quoting p123 of the 1st edition, http://books.google.com/books?id=L5...AEwAA#v=onepage&q=parent&f=false

"We do not recommend that parents mentor their children, even if they have the appropriate background in mathematics. Parents may demand too much of their own child or may be unable to get enough cooperation from their child. They may be too ego-involved in the mentoring situation, or they simply may not have credibility with the school."

I read this book a few years ago and remember thinking it was silly for the parent not to be the mentor. In retrospect, though, this passage turns out to have predicted many of my inadequacies. Small consolation, too, that I can outperform even what the experts predict!

Ah, well. We do our best...

Any suggestions where/how to find a mentor? We are thinking that this would be the best step for us next year with DS5-almost-6... They are having a hard time differentiating appropriately for him at school... We were thinking of trying to get the 5th grade math teacher (who we really like, although we haven't interacted with him academically) to tutor/mentor him after school once or twice a week.

In your minds, what's the difference between a mentor and a tutor?

In regards to a Math Mentor, we are expolring the idea of using a mentor for DS8. I am not a mathmatician and belive that a mentor may add more depth as well as a new perspective for DS. Because of distance issues, we are looking at using the computer to communicate with an online mentor. Something like Courtney James from Math Perfect, or some other math mentor.

I think of a tutor as someone who teaches the material and a mentor as someone who cultivates the child by teaching the material. I don't know if this is a standard way of making the distinction.