How to find a maths and physics tutor

The birth of a child is in many ways a return to childhood. To help them with their maths tuition, many parents have to learn maths or science again after so many years. Likewise, they have to return to a world they left long ago when they have to decide to hire a tutor.

We always think that maths is something distant, difficult, that only a few can master. But the truth is that more and more people are studying this subject and it is becoming more and more in demand in the world of work.

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People who understand maths perfectly and many who are called to teach it, to spread it and to make it understandable to all. These are the maths tutors we need to find who have a real passion for maths. Passion for teaching and for the subject they teach.

So we want to give you some tips to help you find the best tutor for your child, the teacher who has the best attitude towards teaching. Something that you could only see before if you have been teaching for a while, and that now, thanks to some online platforms, you can intuitively see before you even meet them.

Maths and physics tutors

A good maths and physics tutor

Until you have met a tutor and taken maths and physics tuition with them, you cannot be sure whether they are good or bad. But there are a number of things you can consider to get an idea in advance.

One of the things you should look for in a maths and physics tutor is their attitude and passion. Even before they know their area of specialisation, be it functions, statistics or algebra, a tutor's demeanour shows that they are passionate about what they do. We can get an idea beforehand and know how to recognise this attitude. 

• Education: You should look for someone who has a closely related career. He or she does not have to be a mathematician, but something to do with science is a guarantee.
• Passion for the subject: This is perhaps the most important thing. Experts say that one of the reasons why many students do poorly in the subject is because they don't understand it well. So you have to find someone who loves mathematics.

Passion for education: It is also very important to value the passion for education, the patience to repeat things as many times as necessary and as they need to be repeated.

It is important to know where to find a maths and physics tutor, but it is even more important to know how to find one. The key to learning maths and physics is the essence of the lesson, not just the content of the lesson.

That's why it doesn't matter whether we look for a private maths and physics tutor online or at home. More and more parents are opting for a tutor who teaches via video conferencing, saving time and effort, because if you know how to impart knowledge well, the medium is the least important thing.

Why do people fail maths and physics?

Maths is one of the subjects with the highest failure rate at all levels of education, prompting students to seek school support. This is why so many private maths and physics tutors advertise classes. Many of them have tried to find the reason for this phenomenon, and the truth is that it is very difficult to find a single reason.

But most of them talk about either they are not explained well or the students do not understand them properly. Something is wrong in maths education when it comes to explaining and understanding mathematics that would be so much easier if everything was changed.

They point out that the problem could be that it is understood as something isolated rather than something with a specific use. The simplest operations - addition, subtraction, multiplication and division - are usually explained to the youngest children. But the older they get, the more this intention disappears.

Most teenagers do not understand the usefulness of doing equations, integrals or derivatives. Nor do they see the relevance of learning practical concepts in physics. Explaining this requires more than just doing case studies. We have all had maths tutors who have given us maths problems that were practical but had no relation to our lives.

If your child has a problem with maths and physics, it is probably because they feel a great distance between them and the subjects. We need to find someone who will awaken their curiosity for the subjects and, above all, who has the means to teach maths and physics. Someone who knows how to teach them the amazing things that mathematics explains, things that catch their attention, beyond the typical problem about the speed of two moves.

In short, a good maths tutor must devote half of their efforts to arousing the students' interest in the subject. It is a subject that requires a high degree of abstraction and thus an extra effort that we cannot provide without motivation.

And we must be able to demand that as parents or students. We have to ask ourselves a hundred times what the purpose of what we are learning is. It's okay if we force the tutor to waffle on for a whole lesson or talk about things that don't necessarily seem mathematical.

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Studying and passing maths and physics

Even if you put your trust in a private maths and physics tutor, there are certain things you have to do as a student or as a parent so that your children can pass maths and physics. A few simple steps that you must follow scrupulously.

• They revise everything every day: In maths and physics classes they understand everything, but when they get home they forget and the calculations are no longer correct. That is completely normal. The difference between someone who is good at maths and someone who is not is that the good student does revision in one way or another. Some do it playfully, others mentally. If you don't have that option, try sitting down in front of your grades for a while each day and doing some practice.
• Create a schedule: It is important to set both revision and homework time. If you leave this to improvisation, you may end up studying very chaotically. Try to mark one or two hours, as many as necessary, but this way you can control whether you are progressing slower or faster and whether you are taking the right amount of time.
• Prepare for exams: If maths and physics are your Achilles heel, don't put everything off until the last minute. If you need to prepare for an exam, book a maths and physics course so you have time to practise and clear any doubts.
• Do the exercises several times: Sometimes it is not enough to do one exercise. You need to go through it and repeat it. Even if you already know the result, it is important to repeat each step to understand how you did it. The process is more important than the result.
• Materialise the problems: Mathematics is an abstract subject that works in a different language than we normally use, so it is important to be able to translate it. Try to make drawings or tell a story that helps you see things more clearly.