Weeks 1, 2, & 3

(Post by Daniel Sokolowski, 01/31/2015)
               First off, I would like to apologize for not having posted sooner. From the last UTA meeting, I was under the impression that one of these reports was only needed at the end of every month, not every week. So, to catch up, I’m going to summarize weeks 1, 2, and 3 in this (lengthy) post.
                For background, my weekly schedule is Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 1:00-2:00 PM, located in room 127 (“The Irish Room”) on the first floor of the Cathedral of Learning.
                In week 1 (01/13/2015-01/15/2015), nobody showed up. I became acquainted with the room, I observed the class structure, and set up Salon to watch videos to review and catch up to the class. 
                In week 2 (01/20/2015-01/22/2015), nobody showed up on Tuesday. On Wednesday, I received my first student, Vivian Feng. She came asking for assistance on homework problems. I provided assistance on dealing with relative motion problems, explaining the concept, how to set up a problem, so on and so forth. Since nobody else came that day, I provided further assistance with other problems. For the rest of the problems, she understood the concepts, it was a matter of just needing a fresh set of eyes to double-check her work (sign confusion, forgot to push a number on her calculator, etc.) while she redid the problems in front of me. I advised that she practice additional relative motion problems.
                On Thursday, Vivian returned, this time asking for assistance with practice exam questions. One of them was a tricky motion problem, the kind that requires back-to-back equations to solve, based on qualitative information in the problem set-up. I explained this to her, and showed her how to solve it. (It was very unlikely that any explanation that I would have given would have helped her figure how to set up and solve the problem.) I explained how problems like these require creativity, and quite a bit of trial-and-error to figure out how to solve. The rest was more double-checking; she understood all the remaining concepts, but just wanted someone to check her work. I advised that she practice more system of equations motion problems for practice.
                In week 3 (01/27/2015-01/29/2015), nobody showed up on Tuesday or Wednesday. (I just used the scheduled hours to work on a lengthy chemistry lab.) Vivian came by again on Thursday. She needed some help on homework problems. This time, though, there was a considerable number of concepts that she struggled with, such as differentiating between mass and weight, defining and re-defining systems of interacting objects, and then combining both halves of Newton’s second law (F_net = m*a). I did my best to point out the areas where she was mistaken, and assist her in solving the remaining the problems. We were running out of time, so we went to the lecture together. Since she was my only student, and I was free for the rest of the day, I offered to stay with her after class and help her figure out the two remaining problems she had to do. She did them all correctly, after a little bit of extra guidance. Before she left, I reviewed all of her trouble areas with her. She then told me how she would show up next week, that I was “very helpful,” and that she “now underst[ood] the concepts a bit more.”