Prateek Mishra

A good mathematical friend should encourage and engage the students. As we are taking the example of solving linear equation. One can start by telling students the general rules for how to manipulate an equation, but I think students will take this a "SUBJECT", and won't understand why they are doing what they are doing. It becomes and exercise in memorization. Instead, one can start with problems that can be solved with such equation. One can first get students to solve them with other techniques (e.g. guessing and checking or using some sort of graph). After a while one realizes there should be an easier way, which turns out to be solving a linear equation. This way the students understand why the formal math was developed, understand how to apply it, and see how it is related with other ideas (like graphs). Instead of a teacher I treat the student as their classmate which encourage them to understand and may ask any type of question .