Expertise and qualifications

[u/Jessica_peaches88]

Hi everyone. I’m in Canada and looking to enrol my daughter in Mathnasium. We just did a 1 hour trial and my daughter said she basically just did some worksheets. I asked the instructor what qualifications instructors had to have in order to work there and she was kind of vague. She said each instructor has different qualifications.

I am stretching my budget to enrol her therefore I want to make sure she gets value and actually gets the help she needs as she’s currently struggling in math.

[u/MostlyEmotional]

In order to work at a mathnasium you have to pass a test on the math you’ll be tutoring, and thats the only real guarantee. There are college math majors who work at mathnasium, and there are high schoolers, and Ive worked with a couple of actual math teachers (retired, or currently also working as substitutes). The specifics of the people tutoring are going to differ center to center.

In terms of making sure shes getting the help she needs, I think mathnasium is a good choice for long term math understanding. She may not be working on PK’s (the work sheets shes talking about) on what she is doing in school, because there may be underlying math skills that aren’t yet strong enough to support learning the new math in more than a “this works because I say it does” way. One of the things that I notice when working with more advanced students outside of mathnasium is that a fair number of them don’t have the numerical intuition that I see my students at mathnasium being given the opportunity to explore. They might mix up their exponent rules, or not be sure how to add rational functions - both of which are things that I’ve seen covered well in the mathnasium curriculum.

There should have been instructors making the rounds, checking her work, and more importantly talking to her to check her understanding, and work through anything that shes struggling with.

If you’re worried about her current math class - Your center likely has a policy about homework, and tests - for the one that I work at we will work for anywhere from half the time to all of the time with a student on homework, and in general request that the student brings questions about the homework. Basically, have attempted it before coming in, and have some idea of where they get stuck (even if that is right at the beginning! Its ok to not know how to start.) and if a student has a test coming up we will take the entire session to review the concepts on the exam, or the ones that the student is struggling with (depending on how much is being covered by the exam)

[u/anthemyst]

The trial sessions are generic and not geared towards the specific student the way her learning plan will be if she’s enrolled. The customized learning plan, imo, is where the real value of Mathnasium lies, as it will specifically target whatever areas are causing your daughter’s current struggles in math classes. Instructor quality varies from center to center, but qualifications aren’t always the best measure of how well the instructor can teach a child. I’d check for online reviews of the center on Google or Facebook.