Having been a personal financial advisor for over 20 years, I've called a number of tax preparers to ask whether, when they've finished doing a client's return, whether there are many who ask how they may rearrange their affairs slightly next year in order to reduce their tax load. Almost all have said that very few ever ask such a question. I say that they've got to be kidding - that when I have someone prepare my tax return, when they've finished they know quite a bit about my financial affairs. Seems to me that if I don't ask for some suggestions as to how to reduce, defer, etc. my tax load, I'm being *very* *stupid*. At very least - letting a golden opportunity go by unused. I hope that those of you who read this and have professional tax preparers do your tax return will take advantage of that opportunity. I can't believe how many Canadians - even some bank employees - don't know that when a Canadian taxpayer who owns stocks in a Canadian corporation that pays dividends prepares his/her tax return, they pay a much lower rate of tax on those dividends than on employment income, the resulting pension (apart from a small deductible) or interest income. All of the latter (the kind of income that most people earn, by the way) are taxed at (guess what?) top rate! So much for our Federal would-be Prime Ministers in their debate last night vying with one another as to who wants to make the most tax cuts. Our neighbours to the south have been making large tax cuts - while running huge annual deficits. What kind of sense that makes I have yet to understand. Good wishes for a wonderful New Year. ole joyful

Different perspective here- I'm a 3rd year veterinary student. We do teacher evaluations as well and have also rated teachers very well on the standard questions yet given them a poor overall rating. However I do write WHY I didn't rate them well. I have no idea what subject you teach or what your teaching style is, and am only offering the reasons that I have rated a teacher poorly despite all the standard questions being good. One teacher read, word for word, her powerpoint presentations. Yes, she'd ask questions of the class (hence a good rating for engaging the students) but to any student who read the notes beforehand the answer was invariably in the next slide. I rated her well for subject knowledge, engaging the students, lecture notes, and presentation but failed her as a teacher. Why? I was one of the students who read the notes prior to lecture. I had a question about one of the slides that was not explained later in the notes. So I asked. The teacher said that she had to get through the slides- ie reading to us. This was in my 2nd year of vet school and I can assure you that every single person in my class was perfectly capable of reading the slides and notes for his/herself, myself included. I politely explained that I had already read the entire lecture and my question was not answered. She repeated that she had to "get through the material." At which point I packed up my books and left the class, never to attend any of her lectures again. If a teacher cannot satisfactorily answer a legitimate question, especially from a well-prepared student, not on the basis of not knowing the answer but in the interest of reading to the class, I cannot call her a good teacher. This was a veterinary immunology course, and the section I had a question about was in the molecular aspects of an immunologic response. I know she knew the answer- I later found it myself in the book she wrote! But the fact that she couldn't answer the question in class (it would have taken a minute or less) because she was too busy reading her presentation to the class just irked me to no end. I also rate any teacher who reads to us low, because again, we can all read quite well. A second teacher who I rated overall poorly despite high ratings for the standard questions taught a course in such a way that it was a complete waste of time. This was a veterinary nutrition course, and she spent several lectures on having us identify types of straw and grain. She also went over the definitions of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins and what types of foods were sources of these macronutrients. A prerequisite for vet school is domestic animal nutrition, and if we hadn't learned the macronutrients by college it was taught then. The veterinary nutrition course was supposed to help us choose appropriate diets for various clinical conditions, but we barely touched upon many of the most common clinical conditions (heart disease, liver disease, etc). So I had to fail the teacher for teaching things that were too basic for veterinary students. A European History teacher in my undergrad career spent most of his time analyzing our attack on Iraq (it was started at that time). Which was very enganging and informative, but I didn't learn much about European history. Failed the teacher for not sticking to the subject matter. I had to fail an honors English course teacher for not teaching to a higher level but instead assigning more "busy work." We learned the exact same things to the same level as my non-honors classmates, but had to write more essays and that type of thing. She only graded us on grammar and sentence construction, not our ability to write good essays. I am about to fail a very enthusiastic poultry TAU (a hands-on course) teacher for just overdoing the whole thing. He had our poultry medicine professor come in and give the exact same lecture that we had in our poultry medicine course (not a hands-on course). That was a total waste of 2 hours. He had us visit a pathology lab and they gave us a tour that included such useless things as how they enter submissions into their computer (as if we care) and showed us the PCR equipment. We had to take genetics as a prerequisite for vet school, and we had to RUN PCR ourselves, so looking at the equipment was a waste of time- we used it before! There were so many more incidents of repeating things we had already learned or otherwise wasting time that I won't go into. Again, he'll score well on the standard questions but rate poorly overall because if there's one thing I hate more than wasting time, I can't think of it right now. I'm not saying that you were guilty of any of these things. It's a shame that your students didn't give you any idea on why you didn't score well overall. It may be a simple matter of teaching a boring subject. It may be that because you are new you were not aware that the students already learned what you were teaching. It could be that they didn't do as well as they expected and took it out on your evaluation. I know people who do this and I do not agree with it at all. I don't know how to find out what went wrong. Perhaps now that the grades are done, you could try to contact some students and see if they can offer any suggestions. Learn the material from any perequisite courses and avoid repeating it if possible (I know many teachers do not control what is taught). Good luck.

A lot of what I was thinking has been said. I agree a pro tutor might be more effective than you tutoring him...not only are they experienced, but they also don't have all the family dynamics going on. I agree with blfenton on reading out loud. My old boss did a lot of writing for his job and I would help him edit it. While he balked at first, he soon realized the importance of reading the material out loud...it is amazing how it helps you spot mistakes, areas that are unclear, run on sentences, etc. When I was at work they paid big bucks for all of us to get trained by Edith Poor on presentation skills. But she used her book on Executive writing as the basis as, she believes presenting and writing are basically the same thing and both rely on the underlying logical thought patterns. So writing is actually an extension of logical thinking. It may be that he needs help with logical structure of his thoughts and then the words will follow the structure. I'd highly recommend her book, with or without a tutor. It was handed out to all the new execs at work. When I was in school, we spent a lot of time outlining before we did any writing at all. It forced you to really understand the content of what you wanted to say and how to logically state it and where logically the various points you wanted to make fell in order to have continuity and make sense to the reader. From that, things like topic sentences and conclusions arise naturally.

I'm sorry DD is struggling, this is hard for everyone! But rest assured that many solutions are available to help. Colleges are really good at helping out students like this, but only if you go ask. Lots of students start out on a rocky path in college but they can learn how to succeed. Setting aside the possibilities of ADD and the like, which we can't diagnose from afar, there are plenty of other strategies that DD can learn. The main point is that she doesn't just need to learn the subject matter, she needs to learn how to learn. Not all instructors point this out, but every college's counseling/advising/tutoring center will be able to help with this. If she's putting in the hours of studying and attending classes and still not getting decent grades, then it's definitely a strategy problem. And the good news is that this is highly fixable. Some common study methods, like reading, memorizing words, and highlighting the textbook, are not very valuable. Others, like drawing diagrams that show processes and relationships, or explaining topics in your own words to tutors, are hugely valuable. If you want to Google around, look up self-regulated learning (AKA, learning how to learn). Read the top section of this web page and see if it sounds familiar. http://serc.carleton.edu/sage2yc/studentsuccess/self_regulated/what.html (PS, I wrote these web pages, I work in science education). Another must-do strategy is to go to the office hours of the professors. This is ridiculously helpful, for all kinds of reasons. Yet few students use this option. Again, putting learning disabilities aside, it sounds like DD has yet to come across an approach to learning that works for her. In lower grades, she could pull it off, but in college it's much harder to squeak through. A 2 year college is an excellent approach because of the lower stress and greater emphasis on teaching and advising, rather than sink-or-swim scenarios that can happen at big universities. She is lucky to have your support. That is an enormous factor for her success. I work on issues related to what you're facing, so if you have specific questions, feel free to send me a note offline. Good luck to all of you!