Rebecca Zook - Math Tutoring Online

Trying to find a good English-speaking math tutor…in Mogadishu? An algebra tutor…in Algeria? A geometry tutor…in Guinea-Bissau?

Help is on the way! Today I’m guest posting about how to find a good tutor while you’re living abroad over at my colleague Becky Grappo’s blog, Educating Global Nomads.

As families around the world prepare to go back to school, I’m so happy that Becky Grappo has given this guest post a new home in cyberspace.

So check it out and leave a comment!

Also, if you are looking for someone to help solve your what-school-do-my-kids-attend-while-we-relocate-abroad problems, Becky Grappo is a great educational consultant who has worked with thousands of expat families.

Related posts:
Tips for how to help your kid with their math homework
What a Balinese dancing queen taught me about praise and encouragement
How to incorporate a tutor into your homeschooling/unschooling environment
Doing Fractions “In Chinese”?!

This guest post, how to find a good tutor while you’re living abroad, has moved to Becky Grappo’s blog, Educating Global Nomads. Thank you, Becky, for giving this post a new home in cyberspace now that Robin Pascoe has retired and taken down her website! Check it out and leave a comment!

Today, I am guest posting over at the Expat Expert blog about how to find a good tutor while living abroad! Please feel free to check it out and leave a comment!

Many thanks to Expat Expert Robin Pascoe for this opportunity to write for an international audience. Robin’s website is a great source of information about living abroad as a family — plus, she has written five books about global living (including several for the Culture Shock! series, which I love).

Related posts:
Tips for how to help your kid with their math homework
What a Balinese Dancing Queen Taught Me About Praise and Encouragement
Five fun ways to help your kids learn math this summer
Doing fractions “In Chinese”?!

My interview with Danica McKellar about her latest math book for girls, Hot X: Algebra Exposed!, is now up over on the new GeekMom blog. Check it out!

McKellar, well-known for playing Winnie Cooper on “The Wonder Years,” went to college intending to study film, but signed up for math classes because her brain felt “mushy.” When solving equations felt like a “drug rush,” she became a math major and co-authored an original theorem.

Since then, McKellar has emerged as a unique math role model whose previous books, Math Doesn’t Suck and Kiss My Math, spread the message that brainy is beautiful, being good at math is just part of being fabulous, and math doesn’t have to be scary—all messages that are very close to my heart as a female math tutor.

Her latest book, Hot X: Algebra Exposed! is the first algebra book in the history of humankind to discuss both breakups and binomials. Step-by-step guidance on how to do algebra is interspersed with quizzes (“are you a perfectionist?”), stories from her own life about being an actress and a math major, and testimonials from women who use math in their careers, including a daredevil airshow pilot/astrophysics computing scientist.

When I was in middle school and crying myself to sleep over my math homework, I would have been thrilled to have an algebra book that was this friendly, encouraging, and helpful. I’ve never seen another algebra text explicitly addressing the emotional aspects of learning math, which I know from experience are so important to girls. (And it’s not just me—one of my sixth-grade tutoring students saw the book in my apartment, picked it up and exclaimed, “This is perfect for me!”)

So click on over to the GeekMom blog to read about McKellar’s own experiences being terrified of math as a 7th grader and growing up to give math a PR overhaul.

(Many people conspired to make this interview possible: Elizabeth Keenan, Ken Denmead, Liz Jones-Dilworth, Josh Jones-Dilworth, Missy Mazzoli, and Jina Moore. Thank you all!!!)

*Looking for a girl math tutor? Call 617-888-0160 for an appointment with Rebecca Zook!

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My Favorite Math Teacher is a Woman
Be Yourself, Do What You Love, Wear What You Want
No More Girls Versus Boys

I’m totally psyched! I have a new guest post up on mashable about five of my favorite fun technologies to help kids learn math over the summer — technologies which involve incorporate hip-hop, wailing rock guitar solos, talking calculators, brain science, and pirates.

So if you’ve ever dreamed of helping your kids learn their times tables by rapping, or just want to find some fun new ways to help your kids learn math this summer, click on over and check it out!

Related Posts:
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The best algebra book in the world?
How to find a good math tutor
Be yourself, do what you want, wear what you love (Ada Lovelace/Coder Barbie Follow-Up)

That’s me–wearing a solar system dress and boots with three-inch long blue fuzz while multiplying binomials

I am guest posting about being yourself while doing math over on Sam J Shah‘s blog, Continuous Everywhere but Differentiable Nowhere.

Sam is one of my favorite math bloggers, and I’m honored to be a guest poster on his site! In fact, my guest post today was inspired in part by a post of his about rethinking the “you have to dress up to have authority trope,” “Don’t Judge a Book By…”.

My post starts out focusing on the clothes I chose to wear in my role as a teacher and my different students’ styles. But in the process of writing it, I realized what I was trying to describe wasn’t really about fashion–it was about being comfortable with yourself and asserting your own choices. Moreover, this attitude can totally help us solve math problems!

I really appreciate Sam’s comments at the end of the guest post, especially, how it’s not just about clothing “if you look at it from a slightly different angle.” (Plus he uses the words “bricoleur” and “holla!” within a paragraph of each other!)

Related Posts:
Be Yourself, Do What You Love, Wear What You Want (Coder Barbie/Ada Lovelace/Mashable followup)
My Favorite Math Teacher Is a Woman
Encouraging Independent Problem Solving (Subliminally?)