Easy But Not Favourite

Sudha came to me when there were barely a few days left for the final exams. A student of class seven; she struggled a lot with her studies, mainly with maths and science. She was not well versed with the tables, which made it more difficult for her to perform arithmetic operations like division and multiplication. The problem was: her basics were not very strong enough.

I cautioned her mother that it will be extremely difficult for Sudha to clear her maths paper as there was hardly any time left for the examination. I instructed her to come to the classes for two hours every day. That was the time when I had newly started my coaching classes and had a lot of time to give individual attention to each student, unlike now where I take classes for an entire group of students together.

I started giving Sudha short test to check where exactly she was getting stuck and encountered that the root problem lay far back around her third standard. Now the challenge was to train her from class three to class seven. It was a long way to go.

So I decided one hour will be dedicated to the seventh standard portion and one hour to the basics. Till then the exams approached and as anticipated Sudha failed to clear the maths paper and had to give a retest. But we pursued our practice throughout the summer holidays and proceeded from class 3 portion to class 4 making it all the way up to class7. Sudha toiled hard during the entire summer vacation and thereafter.

And finally, there was a lot of improvement in Sudha’s way of approaching a mathematical problem. She was now pretty confident with the subject. She continued with me till her tenth standard. I would ask her, “Sudha, Do you love maths?” And she would reply, “Math’s is easy teacher, but it is not my favorite”.

             Many students believe they are weak in math’s, but after so many years with my coaching classes, I believe, that there is nothing such as ‘weak in math’ ( until there is some medical condition) otherwise it is just a little bit of interest and a lot of practice. If you have even a tiny amount of interest and determination to learn it and if you are ready to put in at least 45 minutes of practice every day, the fear of math will never haunt you.

Further, the basics have to be brushed up repeatedly. See at which part with your basics you are getting stuck. And accordingly, work in that area.

Like earlier, now I don’t get time to give individual attention to all my students. As more students are getting admitted, and I really cannot say no to their admission; so providing individual attention to each one now becomes difficult. But with the experience I have gained, I can figure out where the student is having a problem with their basics, so accordingly I select some YouTube videos and forward it to their parents, and also ensure that they solve similar types of problems at home. But here parents support as well as motivating the student and the parents form an essential part of my classes. If I don’t motivate them they easily lose interest. (I will write about motivation later)

So next time when you feel that maths is tough, just remember, it is all about a little interest, a lot of practice and brushing up your basics.

For Coaching series Part 1 Click here and Part 3 click here

image credit: Max Fischer, Pexels