Business & Tech
Calculated to Succeed: Joe Hobbs Operates Math Tutoring Service
For more than 20 years, The Math Doctor has helped students from Grossmont High and other schools grasp what they reach for.
Name: Joe Hobbs
Position: Owner/operator of
Overview: For more than 20 years, Hobbs has been a mathematics tutor, first while working for another business, the Math Magician, and for the past two years in his own business called The Math Doctor. Hobbs, 44, works out of his office below the Brigantine restaurant on Fuerte Drive, just off Interstate 8. He works with students from elementary school through college, and even a few adults, but the main body of his work is with middle school and high school students. The majority of high school students come to him from Grossmont and Valhalla, but he also gets kids from Helix, St. Augustine, Our Lady of Peace and all parts of the county.
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Background: Hobbs grew up in San Diego, attended Patrick Henry High and went to San Diego State, where he started as an astronomy major and then switched to math. He had a number of jobs, from doing a paper route as a kid to making deliveries for a pharmacy to working at Domino’s Pizza. But when looking for a summer job while going to SDSU, he saw an ad for a teaching assistant and got the job at a San Diego elementary school. He followed that up with a teaching assistant position at Patrick Henry and then started working for the Math Magician.
The test: He had to pass a math test to get his job with the Math Magician, and was just the second person to get a perfect score—which almost killed his chances. “The other guy didn’t work out,” Hobbs says his boss-to-be told him. “He was too smart to be able to communicate with the kids. So he almost didn’t call me back because of that.”
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What he does: Hobbs works with students having trouble with their math classes, or those who want to make certain they stay on top of their game. He works with them on small- and big-picture problems, from individual homework assignments to new concepts. He also helps high school students prepare for SAT and ACT exams for college. On average, he meets with six to eight students per day.
The challenge: What makes math different than other subjects is it’s cumulative. Every concept or operation is built on a previous concept. If a student doesn’t grasp one concept completely before moving on to the next, he’s lost. That’s where he comes in. “Because it’s cumulative, anything missing comes back to haunt you,” he says. “That’s what makes it harder.” Parents bring their children to Hobbs to improve their grades, and he knows that’s the bottom line. “They pay for a better grade. That grade is gold,” he says.
Teaching vs. tutoring: Though related, Hobbs says they’re very different. A teacher deals with a large group and has to be concerned about the majority making progress. A tutor has a one-on-one relationship with a student and, “If that student does poorly, it reflects poorly on me.” He tries to take what a student is learning in the classroom and give him or her formulas and the understanding to better conquer the problems. “If you see this, do this,” he says.
Falling for her: Joe met his wife, Fumie, who is from Japan, when they took a skydiving class together. She first caught his eye, he says, when he noticed she was cheating on the written portion of the test they were taking. He remembers telling her, “I’m not sure this is something you want to cheat on. It would be better to get it wrong in here instead of up there.”
Family: Joe and Fumie, who live in the Mount Helix area, have two children, a daughter named Seven and a son named Kublai Khan. “I like interesting names,” he says.
Click and save: Photography is his hobby, and the walls of his office are covered with photos of his family, landscapes and flowers. Also on display are beautiful rocks and geodes he’s collected, as well as a bookcase filled with math-instruction manuals. “I’ve only read a couple of them,” he jokes.
Quotable: “I wasn’t particularly good at it, but I made a strong effort,” he says of his ability as a young math student, which included some “traumatic” failures. “Eventually I excelled in it. … But mainly I liked it and I tried real hard in it and I got real good in it.”