Tina Sindwani

Education champion, voracious reader, lover of knowledge
I tutor SAT/ACT, math, and physics.

[Justin Skycak @justinskycak]

The rule should not be, "Hey, you're in eighth grade, so you're gonna do eighth grade math."

No. The rule should be: what have you mastered? What new things do you have your prerequisites in place to learn?

If you've mastered the prerequisites, then move the student forward. If they haven't mastered the prerequisites, then fix it.

That's it. It's that simple.

The calendar should not be the thing controlling the learning. It's the mastery profile across all the skills for each individual student. That is what should be controlling their learning.

When students are ready and you make them wait, then you just waste their time.

And when students are not ready and you push them forward anyway, then you create knowledge gaps, holes that follow them for years, sabotaging their attempts at every new thing they try to learn and build on top, making them think they're just inherently not cut out for math.

Further reading: https://t.co/pibaZf5WRR

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

@DL_Pool Student apathy is also a big problem. It all starts with the parents and low accountability throughout their schooling.

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

Formatting is a big thing that's overlooked quite a bit, especially when it comes to handwritten work. Many students never learn how to format letters, emails, essays, etc. They've never done it themselves before, usually using a template online.

There are certain things that have to be explicitly taught. I remember having dedicated class sessions in both English and Computer Lab to learn formatting for essays, emails, and different types of letters and notes. We learned how to write a memo, a personal letter, a cover letter, a business/professional letter, etc.

Lately, it seems like a lot of education strategy is just leaving things up to osmosis and hoping something sticks. If they get it, they get it. If they don't, well....eh. They don't care.

[Dissident Teacher @educatedandfree]

High schoolers who…

—Write in the middle of the page like they’re trying to center all of their text...

—Write in the middle of the line instead of on it….

—Totally ignore margins and write from one edge of the page to the other edge…

—Can’t spell anything, sometimes not even their name…

—never learned to properly form letters…

…have likely never read a book.

Remember, I stipulated HIGH SCHOOL.

Ask yourself how that’s possible, that in 10+ years of school, they haven’t seen enough text to recognize that what they’re doing doesn’t make sense.

And no, I’m not blaming the kids.

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

Sometimes teaching at a fast pace can help students. It shows them that the concept is actually not that hard/complicated, that the problem can be solved quickly.

I always felt frustrated when teachers slowed down and honed in on a concept so much that it felt more complicated then it was.

Sometimes, you have to allow the student to make the connection themselves rather than spoon-feeding everything (or attempting to).

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

I'm pretty sure I had a textbook by Engelmann during school. Did not know he was the founder of direct instruction!

[Carl Hendrick @C_Hendrick]

The one thing I’d want everyone to know about Direct Instruction is that the methods, materials and routines are far less important than the underlying drive behind it: the unswerving belief that EVERY child can achieve, regardless of circumstance.

DI is based on a deeply held conviction that if a child didn’t learn, it was because the teacher (or curriculum) didn’t teach them properly. In that sense, it is a movement rooted in social justice but one which takes responsibility for outcomes.

In the 60s and 70s, there was a view in the education academic establishment that formal academic work was premature for 4-year-olds, and doubly so for poor ones; so what they needed was enrichment and play.

Worse still, in the early 70s, some academics described DI as a racist enterprise*. Engelmann's own memoir notes that he and Bereiter were called “Nazis” and “kid-haters.”

Despite this, Engelmann taught disadvantaged 4 year olds to factor and to solve simultaneous equations, and filmed it. Bereiter and Engelmann’s argument, set out in ‘Teaching Disadvantaged Children in the Preschool’, was that the disadvantaged child was not “behind” in some general developmental sense but behind in specific, teachable things, that all kids could learn with the right scope and sequence.

The preschool they opened in the mid 60s ran for two hours a day, with three twenty-minute lessons in language, arithmetic and reading, taught to small groups by a teacher following a specific DI sequence. Those kids made huge gains which faded when they went to normal public schools.

DI has its limitations like everything but the drive behind it is sincere. As #SoldAStory season 2 will show, it has been portrayed as something very different to what it actually is and the animating principles behind it.

*Baratz and Baratz, ‘Early childhood intervention: the social science base of institutional racism.’

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

This one is specifically because it's common for them to see fully lower case writing everywhere. It's a whole aesthetic on social media.

I've had students unaware that they're supposed to capitalize "I" or proper nouns because they've grown up with that kind of text online.

The pushback is because of declining moral education at home.

[Brian Tolentino M.Ed @TolentinoTeach]

I face more ideological resistance from students today than I did 10 years ago.

Here's what I mean.

Yesterday, I had a group of 14-year-olds argue with me about capitalization.

Many of them rarely use capital letters correctly in their writing, and they genuinely believe capitalization is unnecessary, or even "dumb."

When I told them that I take points off for ignoring capitalization, they insisted it was unfair.

Ten years ago, I almost never had conversations like this.

Students might have forgotten the rules. They might have been careless. But they rarely argued that the rules themselves didn't matter.

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

Totally agree! I learned cursive in third grade and it's truly one of my favorite skills. I've been writing in cursive ever since. Not only does it make a good impression, it gives you a sense of personal satisfaction to write beautifully.

[Gaetal @Elmn8TruthH8rs]

I guess bringing cursive into this conversation would be like suggesting they learn Mandarin 😔 We taught the cursive alphabet right along with the regular alphabet when they were babies. One of the first things we did was teach them to write their names in cursive. Over the years their handwriting has improved so much that it's actually beautiful. We also gave our kids long traditional names so each of them has about 10 characters in their first and middle name. We used to make them write it 10 times a day as one of their opening exercises. Being able to write in cursive is so underappreciated

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

@educatedandfree I've had people tell me I write really professional emails...and it'll just be a respectful letter with a greeting and a sign off... The standards are really six feet under.

[Justin Skycak @justinskycak]

Pretty much everyone overestimates how much they know, especially when they're not made to attempt to retrieve said knowledge.

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

The good news is that they don't need them.

[Marc Porter Magee 🎓 @marcportermagee]

The era of cheap Chromebooks is over

“The administrators I spoke with for this story told me that they have had to scramble to acquire all the electronics they now need.”

[Andrew @atllam]

@PhilipReichert It’s a culture where parents expect to be treated as customers to be satisfied, rather than as responsible adults who are socially accountable for raising their kids into responsible adults

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

A child who finds they can’t read or understand their school textbooks properly will, of course, prefer to receive audio or visual lessons. And not just as a supplement, but as their primary mode of learning.

Of course, this isn’t a preference or a learning style, but the result of a deficiency. This preference is then exalted to the level of a psychological need, and rather than giving the right interventions, we will seek to modify the classroom and standards themselves to suit our needs rather than the students' (the interventions take more time, need parental buy-in, and face student resistance).

The more we have students who cannot read or do math at grade level, the more we will see the debunked learning styles theory being pushed as cope.

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

@__douglasgreen Also a big issue.

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

This should be 100% illegal, even if it is outside school hours. Teachers should not be allowed to talk about their political opinions or their personal plans to protest in class. Students are not their political pawns to recruit.

[Daniel Buck, “Youngest Old Man in Ed Reform” @MrDanielBuck]

Milwaukee Public Schools has elementary children out protesting today with teachers

Teach kids math! Stop deputizing them into your political projects!

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

@grizzlybizzly Absolutely, it's just insane how a parent doesn't catch this.

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

I'm sure they were briefly taught how to do all of those things, but it was never properly drilled or tested, and calculators were handed to them before they were even familiar with the concepts. It gives schools plausible deniability to say "well, we did teach it!"

[Ric Edelman @ricedelman]

I made an unsettling discovery in my undergraduate class on financial planning last week. While explaining mortgages, I asked my 38 students this question: if you buy a $400,000 house and pay 20% in cash towards the purchase, what will be the amount that you finance?

Not a single student could tell me the answer. Despite the fact that they are all juniors and seniors majoring in business.

I added more questions: what is 30 percent of 80? 60 percent of 90? They didn’t know. The closest they got was when one student said, in response to my query of “40% of 70”, that “I know it’s 4 times 7 but I don’t remember what that is.” Another student helpfully added, “28.”

They explained to me why they couldn’t answer these math questions: they were never taught multiplication tables, percentages or fractions during their K-12 schooling. Instead, they were taught how to use a calculator. Without one, they are not able to do basic arithmetic.

I later asked the dean about this, and he lamented that this isn’t a thing just for our university’s students; it’s a thing for their entire generation, nationwide.

When I was in K-12, the fierce debate among parents and educators was whether to allow calculators in class. The calculators won.

Today, the debate is about AI. And like before, the tech will win. But will that truly be a victory?

Rowan University #college #math #loans #CFP #financialplanning

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

@Eharding_2000 This is just categorically false.

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

It's not acceptable that a 4th or 5th grader can't do basic multiplication. And not only that, you realize they can't do it because they don't really understand how to add. Some children also don't know how to write their own name or basic sentences in English. It is not cute.

[Dale Chu @Dale_Chu]

Unions love to raise the specter of “drill and kill.”

But if American classrooms were actually overflowing with rigid practice, more than 44% of 8th graders would be able to handle basic division.

[James A. Furey @JamesAFurey]

A special ed accommodation that gets a kid through graduation without learning to read has accommodated graduation rates more than it has the student.

[Tina Sindwani @kovatutoring]

I used to work at a grocery store and literally all the machines now display the exact change you're supposed to give on the machine.

So it's not even that they couldn't calculate the exact change or they don't know the values of the coins, it's that they cannot add.

[Wendy @teachthemx3]

Checkout took forever today because the person in front of me paid with cash and the teenage cashier couldn’t tell a nickel from a quarter. Normally I use self checkout to avoid this, but it was closed.

Reminded me of the time I had to teach sophomores how to read an analog clock during STAAR testing.

Basic skills are disappearing.