4 ms·

"The clients for my current occupation, teaching mathematics lessons through a local nonprofit organization, included first-generation immigrants from China, In

"The clients for my current occupation, teaching mathematics lessons through a local nonprofit organization, included first-generation immigrants from China, India, Russia, Romania, the Philippines, Korea, Ghana, Indonesia, Pakistan, Turkey, and other countries I may be forgetting at the moment" Just to be clear I'm understanding correctly: first-generation immigrant means born outside the USA and now living in the USA, right? So you teach math to first-gen immigrants from Russia? Are these adults or children? If children, I guess there must be a couple of kids who went thru the Russian education system that are bad at math. :)

tokenadult 14y ago
You asked a clarifying question. The clients are the parents, persons born abroad and usually educated abroad through their undergraduate degrees. They arrived to the United States after being born abroad, so they are first-generation immigrants (as is my wife). The students are elementary-age pupils, typically born in the United States, whose parents seek supplementary mathematics lessons for the children when they observe how weak the mathematics instruction is even in schools in the United States that are in desirable school districts in one of the states of the United States with the highest level of academic achievement. There is a lot of "ceiling" above the best curriculum provided to bright students in United States schools that can only be reached with supplemental programs such as the one I have helped organize here (which is based on a program that originated in Michigan, among the Indo-American community there). Native-born American parents who are alumni of MIT and a variety of foreign-born parents have all recommended my program to their friends from various countries. P.S. I used to use a book that was written in Russian (by Estonian authors before the break-up of the Soviet Union) and then translated into English as one of my course textbooks. http://www.perpendicularpress.com/math6.html http://www.perpendicularpress.com/math6.html The Russian mathematics textbooks are often very good indeed, and much more clear and more challenging than typical textbooks in the United States. You might find it interesting to read a link I learned about from another HN participant, "Word Problems in Russia and America," by Andrei Toom, http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pd... which is full of interesting information about the differences in approach between mathematics lessons in Russia and mathematics lessons in most United States schools. The contrast between schools in China and the United States http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf or between those in Singapore and the United States http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf are also food for thought.
- nandemo 14y ago
  I'm glad you liked it. I was lucky to take a statistics course with Prof. Toom at undergrad.

tokenadult 14y ago

You asked a clarifying question. The clients are the parents, persons born abroad and usually educated abroad through their undergraduate degrees. They arrived to the United States after being born abroad, so they are first-generation immigrants (as is my wife). The students are elementary-age pupils, typically born in the United States, whose parents seek supplementary mathematics lessons for the children when they observe how weak the mathematics instruction is even in schools in the United States that are in desirable school districts in one of the states of the United States with the highest level of academic achievement. There is a lot of "ceiling" above the best curriculum provided to bright students in United States schools that can only be reached with supplemental programs such as the one I have helped organize here (which is based on a program that originated in Michigan, among the Indo-American community there). Native-born American parents who are alumni of MIT and a variety of foreign-born parents have all recommended my program to their friends from various countries. P.S. I used to use a book that was written in Russian (by Estonian authors before the break-up of the Soviet Union) and then translated into English as one of my course textbooks. http://www.perpendicularpress.com/math6.html http://www.perpendicularpress.com/math6.html The Russian mathematics textbooks are often very good indeed, and much more clear and more challenging than typical textbooks in the United States. You might find it interesting to read a link I learned about from another HN participant, "Word Problems in Russia and America," by Andrei Toom, http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pdf http://www.de.ufpe.br/~toom/travel/sweden05/WP-SWEDEN-NEW.pd... which is full of interesting information about the differences in approach between mathematics lessons in Russia and mathematics lessons in most United States schools. The contrast between schools in China and the United States http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf http://www.ams.org/notices/199908/rev-howe.pdf http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf http://www.math.wisc.edu/~askey/ask-gian.pdf or between those in Singapore and the United States http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf http://www.merga.net.au/documents/RP182006.pdf are also food for thought.

nandemo 14y ago
I'm glad you liked it. I was lucky to take a statistics course with Prof. Toom at undergrad.