the guilty tutor?

No, but I will sit down next to my kids and work the problems with them or read through books with them to help them find the answer themselves. Even if I know exactly where to find an answer, I will say, "OK, should we look up this in an index"? Or "do we need a dictionary"? I want them to learn to problem solve but I won't leave them hanging out there either.

nope, because I do not answer questions like that. Sometimes if I'm bored, I will go to the homework helps section and answer questions, but not the ones like this:

"someone write a three paragraph report about their best day"

"someone e-mail me the answers to the Penn Foster _______ exam"

or any of the ones where they cut and paste part of their text books in.

but the ones I do like are the ones where a student is really trying to get a grasp on a concept or can't figure something out.

You know the difference.

No, my kids tend to want to do their work by themselves. I have a hard enough time showing them a few explanation problems to make sure they understand what they will be doing.

If they come to me and ask for extra help, it is usually because the work may be at too difficult of a level for them, so then I may try to find a different way to explain it to them, or find a way to back it down to a slighly easier level for them. For example, if it is a lesson on multiplying 3 numbers, I might go back to multiplying 2 numbers & make sure he can do that & then go back to multiplying 3 numbers.

I've only started to do this, but the answer is already "yes." My response to to try to explain how I arrived at the answer, which I think is what people really should be learning. Learning isn't so much about knowing stuff as it is about learning how to learn and how to find things out.

no, I saw the danger in that early, and now I only give helpful hints to start the problem...esp in math, I will give the formula, but not do the work for them...

yes....i usually try to give them the formula, and have them write the answers. however, i was helping a special needs kid one time, and i ended up doing the work for him. i didn't mean to though.

Never, because I only give enough for them to jumpstart their brains. Just enough to be a good hint, but not saying, "Okay, just write this down."