Update 5/10/2121
Dear parents,
I am sorry but I won't be able to help new students for the summer 2021. My schedule is already over my limit.
I pray for your understanding.
Sincerely,
Terry
Dear new parents,
I am really sorry to update this late, but I won't be able to help anymore new students at this time. If you'd like, I can recommend other tutors that I can trust. But since I only teach 1 on 1 and I am only by myself, I can only help limited number of students. :( The earliest I can help new students is this coming fall of 2019. I am really sorry for not being able to help your child at this time. I pray for your understanding. I hope I will still have the opportunity to help them in the future.
Sincerely,
Terry 6/3/2019
Summer schedule for 2019 is Tue-Sat 9am to 9pm: 9-10am, 10-11, 11-12, 1-2pm, 2-3, 3-4, 4-5, 6-7, 7-8, 8-9pm (Lunch break 12-1 and Dinner break 5-6) starting from 6/4/2019 (Tue) to 8/10/2019 (Sat). Summer schedule is very different from school year. It is very hectic for both parents and students and me! But that's the uniqueness of the summer. There are many different factors affecting how we schedule in the summer such as vacation or camps, or summer school or SAT camp so they aren't available for certain weeks or times. Also, it depends on each parents' budget.
For all students who are interested to come in the summer, please first consider the following 5 questions:
1) Between 6/4/2019 to 8/10/2019 (10 weeks), how many weeks are you available to come? Will you be out of town or country or will you be in summer school or camps, etc...?
2) How many sessions do you plan to have in those weeks that you can come? Although I usually suggest twice a week for summer, but I also completely respect every parents' budget (now that I am a parent, I know how costly it can be.).
3) What days and times are you available for class? My summer schedule is Tue - Sat, 9am to 9pm. (lunch and dinner break is 12-1 and 5-6).
4) What would you like me to help your child during the summer? What math did your child take this year, and what math is your child planning to take next year?
5) Lastly, what school did your child go to and what school are they going to in the fall?
So from the 5 things above, we can start to figure out how to structure our sessions. We can try to get a brief idea first, and if there's any changes in the future, we can discuss it. If you need to change to different days, I can try my best to ask other parents if they don't have schedule conflicts and they can change. If you need more or less sessions, we can also make changes.
So first thing to decide on is how many sessions the parents would like to have, and figuring out how many weeks the students are available for class, then we can try to figure out how to fit the classes. I recommend at least 8 sessions to have any effectiveness. I had students who were only available to have class for 2 weeks, so we had class everyday for those 2 weeks or students who come in the whole summer, and come once a week. The ideal situation is to have 2 classes per week (if you plan to come summer only and not continuing in the fall). In this way, students will less likely to forget what they have learned when they come back again next week and we can make sure to go over good amount of chapters before the school starts, giving the students the confident to take on next year. However, if you plan to continue to come during fall, I would suggest to have only 1 class per week (unless it's a known very difficult class like DBHS's MACH5, Troy's Algebra 2 Honors, Troy's Calc BC, etc...), since it's also not necessary to try to learn everything already AND have me throughout the school year. Yes, I will be able to make more money this way, but honestly it's not necessary AND it's not good for the students if they ALREADY know everything and feels bored in class. My session is to help them master any previous concepts and to help them preview some new materials so they can have an easier time next year. I once had a student who came about 30 sessions in the summer to finish learning the entire book for next year, because she also has many other difficult classes next year, and she won't be able to come for tutoring, so she chose to learn everything in the summer first. That's the extreme case, but it's really up to what each students need AND what parents want. I also once helped a student to get so advanced, we had to stop tutoring for 2 years, because I can't justify to teach him Trigonometry at 7th grade, because at public school, you can't skip that many levels usually.
Each session is 1 hour. I really don't recommend 2 hour sessions, because no one would like to spend that much time to learn math per day. And 2 hours session means there will be a lot of homework to practice the concepts that we have learned in the 2 hours.
Each child is different, so that's why I would only do 1 on 1 tutoring. This way, I can help each student to maximize the effectiveness for the time we spend in each session.
No matter how many sessions the student can have during the summer, my goal is to help each and every student to review any concepts they previously didn't understand to regain the confidence in math, and to help them to preview new concepts from the next year. I do assign homework during the summer, so the student can use the practice to better understand the concepts.