TITLE: Good ways to help people learn math.
QUESTION [32 upvotes]: I have a student position at my university, which involves helping people who are struggling with basic calculus, precalculus, and discrete math. In general, the students that I help are hostile towards the subject, and are easily frustrated. For instance, many people have told me that "we don't need anyone that good in math"--in earnest--after I answered their question about what I'm going to do after I graduate (go to grad school). For anouther example, and I regretfully say that this is common, students frequently have trouble with online homework systems. They do no enter their, say equation of a line, in the format required by the system. One time, I helped someone who was using this software to pratice for a test they had in one hour. I solved the problem for them (it said not graded on the page), to show them how to go about solving the types of questions that were being asked. I told her the answer was $2y+3x=4$ , 4and the machine marked it wrong. What was going on was that it wanted the equation to look like $3x+2y=4$... She was angry at me, and asked me if I knew "even know wtf this even means."
All in all, I am asking a few questions:

How do you deal with students who treat you like garbage?
How do you help a student who is learning extremly basic math without frustrating them, or somehow making them feel stupid. 
How do you deal with people who think that your disipline is pointless, but want your help anyways?

Obviously, these 3 questions are subjective, and this post should be in as a community wiki, rather than on the Q and A part of the site. However, I do not know how to do this. If anyone knows how do that, feel free to make it a community wiki.

REPLY [5 votes]: In my opinion mathematics/science should be taught with some history. Showing the original work of the author of a mathematical concept, for example, will help the student see, hopefuly understand, the thought process behind it and a question like "Why was this concept was introduced?". Study the discovery step by step and then see how it evolved and how it assumed its current form.