The Alabama Math Clinic

Greater Birmingham, in person · Anywhere, online

We make house calls.

Mathematics goes wrong in a specific place, at a specific time, for a specific reason. We find that place before we teach anything.

Book a consultation See how an engagement works

The engagement

Three visits before anyone talks about grades.

  1. 01 / Consultation

    Ninety minutes at your table

    We sit with the student and the last two years of work — homework, tests, the paper they would rather not show anyone. Parents are welcome to stay or to leave. Most students talk more freely when they leave.

  2. 02 / Assessment

    A written finding, not a hunch

    You receive a short document naming the earliest topic where the ground gives way. It is almost never the topic the student is currently failing. A calculus student is usually losing marks to algebra learned badly in year nine.

  3. 03 / The work

    Weekly, in the same chair

    One hour, one student, one tutor. In your home across greater Birmingham, or online with a shared whiteboard anywhere else. The assessment is revisited every six weeks and rewritten when it is wrong.

Why the house call

A tutoring centre is a room a child is taken to. A kitchen table is a room they already live in.

Mathematics anxiety is not a metaphor — it is a measurable response, and it is worse in unfamiliar rooms under fluorescent light. We teach where the homework actually gets done, using the actual textbook, at the actual table, with the actual distractions. What we fix there stays fixed, because nothing has to transfer anywhere.

Where distance makes that impractical, the same session runs online. The format changes. The method does not.

Coverage

From long division to a qualifying exam.

Not everyone who calls is behind. Roughly half are — an eleven-year-old who has stopped putting a hand up, an undergraduate who arrived underprepared and knows it. The other half are the opposite problem: a student who has run out of room in the classroom and needs somewhere harder to go. The diagnostic is the same either way. Only the depth of the buried topic changes.

Every written assessment comes from one mathematician — a PhD in applied mathematics from UAB, where he also taught undergraduate calculus — which is why both ends of that range are real. More on who teaches.

FOUND
Elementary foundationsNumber sense, place value, fractions. The arithmetic that quietly never set, and the confidence that went with it.
FOUND
Students well behind, or at riskWhere a year or more has been lost. We start from what is genuinely secure, not from the current chapter.
SEC
Pre-algebra & Algebra IWhere most of it goes wrong, and where most of it can be fixed.
SEC
Geometry & Algebra IIProof, coordinates, functions, the first real abstraction.
AP
Precalculus, Calculus AB & BCLimits, derivatives, integrals, series.
AP
StatisticsInference, distributions, and the reasoning behind both.
TEST
ACT & SAT mathematicsTimed technique, built on the content rather than instead of it.
COMP
Competition & tournament coachingMATHCOUNTS, AMC 8, 10 and 12, AIME, and state tournaments. Problem-solving as its own discipline, not accelerated homework.
UNI
Calculus I–III, linear algebra, differential equationsFor undergraduates who arrived underprepared and know it.
GRAD
Postgraduate & qualifying examsReal analysis, abstract algebra, and the statistics a thesis actually needs. Preparation for quals, and for the mathematics a research programme assumes you already have.

Photography

An open mathematics textbook, lined paper, pencil, mug and face-down phone on a worn kitchen table between two empty chairs.

Enquiries

Every engagement starts with the consultation.

There is no charge for it and no obligation after it. If we do not think we are the right help, we will say so and tell you what is.

Book a consultation Read what happens first