I know I'm not the only tutor who has shown up to an appointment, only to find that my student has nothing of her own to work on. Many times I scrambled to make things up on the spot -- sometimes it worked out and sometimes it was a flop.
Teaching has taught me to expect the unexpected. Anytime I start to take something for granted - the kid will have an assignment to work on, he will have done his homework, he will have the book, he will have a willing attitude - I've often been wrong.
So I started taking my library of short stories, worksheets, and articles around with me so I would be prepared with something in an emergency. Even when I have prepared what I thought was a great lesson, I often find that the student has a) already read the story/article; b) isn't interested at all; or c) is feeling uncooperative.
What should I do when it seems like my preparation is as hit-and-miss as my improv lessons?
1. I started keeping track of my core short stories and articles and marking which each student has already read. It sounds elementary, but organization has been my weakness.
2. Matching short stories and articles or debate topics that could go together based on theme or topic.
3. Have at least 3 options handy in case two fell out.
4. Develop a 3-part lesson plan: Grammar/mechanics; critical reading; essay/topic.
5. Take notes on subjects my students are already interested in and researching to find debate topics or stories that relate (sports controversies, et.).
6. MORAL DILEMMAS - no matter what, I don't think a single student I have met has shown disinterest in moral dilemmas. These hypothetical scenarios are usually illustrating the conflict between two philosophies, like Deontology and Utilitarianism.
7. Go to every session assuming I am responsible for the entire content of that hour. If a student has something from school to work on, great - that material gets used the next lesson.
Flexibility and creativity have helped a lot, but now that I know my way around the curriculum I've put together, I find that my kids make more progress.
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Parental Presence: Nate the Non-Negotionist II
As an update, last night after I wrote my post about Nate, Nate's mother texted and asked if I was available to help Nate with a homework project due today. The hour of near silence we spent in each other's virtual company made me smile at my previous sentimental epiphanies. Not that we have not come a long way, but last night's class was enough to remind me that progress is often in the pattern of staggering steps forward and jumps backwards.
Just as has happened many times before, Nate's mother hovered over him for the first 10 minutes of our session. She admonished him for not answering my questions about his assignment. She pushed him to answer on details. It's well-meaning, but the dynamic never works well. Nate is good at silence, and it is his defense of choice. He plays dumb or acts like he hasn't heard. If that doesn't work, he resorts to mild outbursts of "Mom!" When she does leave, things are a little easier. I scan through the information about the subject I can find on my end (book summaries, etc.), and ask him the occasional question.
Sometimes it helps if I get something wrong. For the book assignment last night, I had never read the book and made it obvious. While looking up the summary, I asked a few questions about the plot and was ok with the mistakes I made. It was a long hour, though, and a lot of the time I was wondering whether I could really help at all. Nate is smart enough to figure out such a simple assignment.
Thankfully, my dog was having a truly amazing episode of sulphuric farting. She was curled up under the table at my feet, and every few minutes I heard the typical little raspberry sound. It was such a stinky episode that I was forced to cover my nose with my shirt. I apologized to Nate and I think it loosened the silent tension a little.
Tips:
* Parental presence is negatively correlated with productivity
* It's ok to show your ignorance on a subject that a student knows more about
* Use something as potentially stinky as a dog's gas-attack to break the tension
Just as has happened many times before, Nate's mother hovered over him for the first 10 minutes of our session. She admonished him for not answering my questions about his assignment. She pushed him to answer on details. It's well-meaning, but the dynamic never works well. Nate is good at silence, and it is his defense of choice. He plays dumb or acts like he hasn't heard. If that doesn't work, he resorts to mild outbursts of "Mom!" When she does leave, things are a little easier. I scan through the information about the subject I can find on my end (book summaries, etc.), and ask him the occasional question.
Sometimes it helps if I get something wrong. For the book assignment last night, I had never read the book and made it obvious. While looking up the summary, I asked a few questions about the plot and was ok with the mistakes I made. It was a long hour, though, and a lot of the time I was wondering whether I could really help at all. Nate is smart enough to figure out such a simple assignment.
Thankfully, my dog was having a truly amazing episode of sulphuric farting. She was curled up under the table at my feet, and every few minutes I heard the typical little raspberry sound. It was such a stinky episode that I was forced to cover my nose with my shirt. I apologized to Nate and I think it loosened the silent tension a little.
Tips:
* Parental presence is negatively correlated with productivity
* It's ok to show your ignorance on a subject that a student knows more about
* Use something as potentially stinky as a dog's gas-attack to break the tension
Monday, February 12, 2018
Nate the Non-Negotionist
My toughest kids have been my greatest teachers.
For the purpose of this post and all others that involve anecdotes about students, I have changed the names to protect my students' privacy.
I first met Nate in a summer speech and debate camp I was running my second year of teaching. The Chinese after-school had scheduled me with 25 4th and 5th graders, and I had no backup. 1 adult versus 25 squirrely kids in the summer - there I can definitely say I learned more than any of the kids did.
Nate was going to start 5th grade in the fall. He talked loudly - to the point of shrieking and yelling with his friends - and would not even look at me when I tried to talk to him. However, I could see that he had some natural talent for public speaking even at 10 years old.
I had no idea that Nate's mother would ask me to tutor both Nate and his older sister Candace during the school year. Candace was a 9th grader in Honors English, with the legendary fiend of an English teacher at one of the local high schools. Working with her is worth its own post, however.
Every other Saturday morning, Nate would meet me in my Saturday classroom at 9am for his private writing class. From the first he was a challenge. He did not want to work on writing or anything else. He made it perfectly clear that, given his way, he wouldn't be sitting there with me on a Saturday morning. That made two of us. He circumvented all my attempts to get us going in some curricular direction. The most notable tactic was his tendency to disregard my questions and talk about something completely different. Now that I think about it, at least I was lucky when he chose to answer.
Those classes did not last long. I thought I was safe. Then Nate's mother requested that I come to their house for his private classes. You might be wondering why I said yes. I was wondering, too. But I was clawing my way out of the slimy pit of monetary necessity, and wasn't about to turn down an opportunity to make five times the minimum wage for a long hour of frustration.
Nate's nuclear family, like many of my students', is made up of siblings, parents, and grandparents. Many grandparents spend 6 months in the States at a time, so their progeny buy large homes with plenty of extra space. In the off-months when maybe 3 or 4 people live in a house that can sleep 8 comfortably, it feels like walking into an eerie chasm of stillness.
What I noticed right away - besides the opportunity to take my shoes off at the door - was the tension in the family. The yelling, especially. Nate spent the beginning of a lot of our classes assembling a snack or taking his time over some concoction in the kitchen. His grandparents and mother didn't seem to have much control when it came to getting him to sit down and focus. They were forever telling him to be polite, I think - I quickly learned the word for "teacher" in Chinese because they said it so often while Nate was ignoring me.
Nate would often take a very long time to answer a simple question or would ignore the question altogether. He was brilliant, though. There was no question. The rare moments of communication where we shared some appreciation for a weird short story or article I had brought were priceless, albeit short.
Later on, we started meeting online for classes instead of in-person. In some ways it was an improvement, but there were some heavy drawbacks. For a long time, the session would start with me calling on FaceTime and finally getting through, only to witness a shouting match between Nate and his mom.
I spent a lot of time waiting in silence for him to answer some question I had asked. It didn't really matter whether we were working on something for his Language Arts class or something I thought might interest him. We clearly met on his terms, even if it wasn't his choice to meet.
Sometimes I wanted to reach through the internet and throttle him.
Then a therapist gave me something to think about that has changed the way I approach "difficult" kids. She said that, when a kid can't protest again his parents, he will push back against anyone else that he can.
It was exciting to realize that maybe I wasn't a horrible, smelly person after all -- that Nate's passive-aggressive attitude was really displaced anger at his parents. Then the realization that I had to try to make something productive out of a situation where Nate might be projecting negative perceptions onto me took over. Knowing the "why" didn't give me the "how".
To summarize 4 years in a blog post, Nate is going to high school next year. We do online sessions if he needs help with something for school. Last year, we started discussing debate topics and philosophical dilemmas. That was one of our breakthroughs where we actually had a good time.
Nate has taught me the value of silence and waiting, holding space for someone even if they are ignoring you or trying to be rude. He has taught me that my job is not really anything academic, sometimes. It can really just be about being that person who can accept someone whom everyone else labels "difficult" or "disruptive" or "problematic".
Nate has taught me a lot about unconditional love, but he also showed me my egotistical weaknesses. When I found myself getting frustrated, I asked myself why. Well, because if he didn't learn the material or get good grades, that would reflect badly on me. Then his parents would think - know - I was a waste of their money and find someone else. Maybe even tell their friends (everyone knows each other in that community). So really, it was about me. Once I wrapped my head around that, I practiced letting it go and replacing that fear with love.
Nate also taught me about patience. The biggest thing, though: how much it can mean when a student says thank you or goodbye at the end of a lesson. Every time I meet with Nate now, he seems so different I can't believe he is the same person. The other week we had a rational discussion about his homework assignment and choices that he thought were possibly better than my suggestions or ideas I'd proffered that he liked. It was very different, and it was wonderful.
For the purpose of this post and all others that involve anecdotes about students, I have changed the names to protect my students' privacy.
I first met Nate in a summer speech and debate camp I was running my second year of teaching. The Chinese after-school had scheduled me with 25 4th and 5th graders, and I had no backup. 1 adult versus 25 squirrely kids in the summer - there I can definitely say I learned more than any of the kids did.
Nate was going to start 5th grade in the fall. He talked loudly - to the point of shrieking and yelling with his friends - and would not even look at me when I tried to talk to him. However, I could see that he had some natural talent for public speaking even at 10 years old.
I had no idea that Nate's mother would ask me to tutor both Nate and his older sister Candace during the school year. Candace was a 9th grader in Honors English, with the legendary fiend of an English teacher at one of the local high schools. Working with her is worth its own post, however.
Every other Saturday morning, Nate would meet me in my Saturday classroom at 9am for his private writing class. From the first he was a challenge. He did not want to work on writing or anything else. He made it perfectly clear that, given his way, he wouldn't be sitting there with me on a Saturday morning. That made two of us. He circumvented all my attempts to get us going in some curricular direction. The most notable tactic was his tendency to disregard my questions and talk about something completely different. Now that I think about it, at least I was lucky when he chose to answer.
Those classes did not last long. I thought I was safe. Then Nate's mother requested that I come to their house for his private classes. You might be wondering why I said yes. I was wondering, too. But I was clawing my way out of the slimy pit of monetary necessity, and wasn't about to turn down an opportunity to make five times the minimum wage for a long hour of frustration.
Nate's nuclear family, like many of my students', is made up of siblings, parents, and grandparents. Many grandparents spend 6 months in the States at a time, so their progeny buy large homes with plenty of extra space. In the off-months when maybe 3 or 4 people live in a house that can sleep 8 comfortably, it feels like walking into an eerie chasm of stillness.
What I noticed right away - besides the opportunity to take my shoes off at the door - was the tension in the family. The yelling, especially. Nate spent the beginning of a lot of our classes assembling a snack or taking his time over some concoction in the kitchen. His grandparents and mother didn't seem to have much control when it came to getting him to sit down and focus. They were forever telling him to be polite, I think - I quickly learned the word for "teacher" in Chinese because they said it so often while Nate was ignoring me.
Nate would often take a very long time to answer a simple question or would ignore the question altogether. He was brilliant, though. There was no question. The rare moments of communication where we shared some appreciation for a weird short story or article I had brought were priceless, albeit short.
Later on, we started meeting online for classes instead of in-person. In some ways it was an improvement, but there were some heavy drawbacks. For a long time, the session would start with me calling on FaceTime and finally getting through, only to witness a shouting match between Nate and his mom.
I spent a lot of time waiting in silence for him to answer some question I had asked. It didn't really matter whether we were working on something for his Language Arts class or something I thought might interest him. We clearly met on his terms, even if it wasn't his choice to meet.
Sometimes I wanted to reach through the internet and throttle him.
Then a therapist gave me something to think about that has changed the way I approach "difficult" kids. She said that, when a kid can't protest again his parents, he will push back against anyone else that he can.
It was exciting to realize that maybe I wasn't a horrible, smelly person after all -- that Nate's passive-aggressive attitude was really displaced anger at his parents. Then the realization that I had to try to make something productive out of a situation where Nate might be projecting negative perceptions onto me took over. Knowing the "why" didn't give me the "how".
To summarize 4 years in a blog post, Nate is going to high school next year. We do online sessions if he needs help with something for school. Last year, we started discussing debate topics and philosophical dilemmas. That was one of our breakthroughs where we actually had a good time.
Nate has taught me the value of silence and waiting, holding space for someone even if they are ignoring you or trying to be rude. He has taught me that my job is not really anything academic, sometimes. It can really just be about being that person who can accept someone whom everyone else labels "difficult" or "disruptive" or "problematic".
Nate has taught me a lot about unconditional love, but he also showed me my egotistical weaknesses. When I found myself getting frustrated, I asked myself why. Well, because if he didn't learn the material or get good grades, that would reflect badly on me. Then his parents would think - know - I was a waste of their money and find someone else. Maybe even tell their friends (everyone knows each other in that community). So really, it was about me. Once I wrapped my head around that, I practiced letting it go and replacing that fear with love.
Nate also taught me about patience. The biggest thing, though: how much it can mean when a student says thank you or goodbye at the end of a lesson. Every time I meet with Nate now, he seems so different I can't believe he is the same person. The other week we had a rational discussion about his homework assignment and choices that he thought were possibly better than my suggestions or ideas I'd proffered that he liked. It was very different, and it was wonderful.
Tutor in Training: How I Got Started
I work in Southern California. My experience spans classrooms in the slums, where prostitutes peddle themselves after dark, to the million-dollar neighborhoods. 90% of my teaching experience has been with Latino and Asian students. My inner city kids told me stories that made me cry when I got home. There was the boy who had seen his best friend stabbed to death on the kid's own front porch when they were 11. There was the boy whose mother was a drug addict and had once held a gun to his head. The girl who had been molested repeatedly by her cousin while no one would believe her. Those were the kids my heart went out to.
It was harder to feel compassion for the hulking teenager who, rumor had it, had worked with the cartel in Mexico. Let's just say I let him play on his phone in class. There was the kid who played the dirtiest music I'd ever heard and had this soul-less look in his eyes. He was maybe 14 and the parole officer would come to the school to check on him. Let's just say I didn't go to great lengths to get him to get off the roof, and neither did the office admin people. I felt that, should he someday come to school with a gun, I didn't want to be one of his pre-selected targets.
Then, 25 miles north of El Cajon Blvd, there is an entirely different world. It's really almost an entirely different country, too. It is a suburb of primarily Chinese and Indian families whose children are first-generation. It is quite common for my students' parents to expect perfect SAT scores. We begin doing practice SAT tests as early as 5th grade.
These are the kids who won't look me in the eye when they tell me they got a B on a paper or in a class. It's always like I'm at this terribly shameful burial where the corpse is a broken dream. My first summer teaching SAT writing, an 8th grader repeatedly told me that getting bad grades would inevitably lead to homelessness. His parents had been telling him that for a while, and he thoroughly believed it. I'm sure he will never be homeless, however. That would be inconceivable.
My Asian students also introduced me to the real meaning of the A, B, C, D, F grading system:
A - Average
B - Below average
C - Can't eat dinner
D - Don't come home
F - Find a new family
Needless to say, with my caucasian background and liberal arts education, I was horrified and incredulous. The culture shock lasted at least a year. Now, almost 6 years later, it had become the norm. My students are all used to going to school after school. They all have other classes and tutoring sessions and piano lessons and dance performances on weekends and week nights. No one talks about getting a degree in History or Art or Education. It's the next generation of engineers, computer scientists, doctors, lawyers. One student told me privately that she wants to be a philosopher, but I don't think she has admitted this to her parents, yet. What parents want their daughter to be a philosopher instead of a lawyer?
So this has been my world, and I am convinced my students have taught me more than I could ever teach them. This blog is devoted to them and is meant to help other educators with anything useful I have learned.
It was harder to feel compassion for the hulking teenager who, rumor had it, had worked with the cartel in Mexico. Let's just say I let him play on his phone in class. There was the kid who played the dirtiest music I'd ever heard and had this soul-less look in his eyes. He was maybe 14 and the parole officer would come to the school to check on him. Let's just say I didn't go to great lengths to get him to get off the roof, and neither did the office admin people. I felt that, should he someday come to school with a gun, I didn't want to be one of his pre-selected targets.
Then, 25 miles north of El Cajon Blvd, there is an entirely different world. It's really almost an entirely different country, too. It is a suburb of primarily Chinese and Indian families whose children are first-generation. It is quite common for my students' parents to expect perfect SAT scores. We begin doing practice SAT tests as early as 5th grade.
These are the kids who won't look me in the eye when they tell me they got a B on a paper or in a class. It's always like I'm at this terribly shameful burial where the corpse is a broken dream. My first summer teaching SAT writing, an 8th grader repeatedly told me that getting bad grades would inevitably lead to homelessness. His parents had been telling him that for a while, and he thoroughly believed it. I'm sure he will never be homeless, however. That would be inconceivable.
My Asian students also introduced me to the real meaning of the A, B, C, D, F grading system:
A - Average
B - Below average
C - Can't eat dinner
D - Don't come home
F - Find a new family
Needless to say, with my caucasian background and liberal arts education, I was horrified and incredulous. The culture shock lasted at least a year. Now, almost 6 years later, it had become the norm. My students are all used to going to school after school. They all have other classes and tutoring sessions and piano lessons and dance performances on weekends and week nights. No one talks about getting a degree in History or Art or Education. It's the next generation of engineers, computer scientists, doctors, lawyers. One student told me privately that she wants to be a philosopher, but I don't think she has admitted this to her parents, yet. What parents want their daughter to be a philosopher instead of a lawyer?
So this has been my world, and I am convinced my students have taught me more than I could ever teach them. This blog is devoted to them and is meant to help other educators with anything useful I have learned.
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