Tutoring experience - Part 1

 

I am tutoring a kid part time. She is a 9 year old, fourth grade student. I am in between jobs and thought tutoring might better way to spend time usefully. I also thought I might enjoy getting to interact with a kid.

The experience has been a mix of several emotions. Rewarding when I could see the progress made, joyful and grateful that I have been blessed with a mind that can retain and recall knowledge and education I gained decades before, frustrating when I had to repeat the same concepts over and over and sad when the kid shows no interest in gaining knowledge even though she is blessed with a good brain and intelligence. 

What I mainly felt after I started to tutor was the thankfulness and gratefulness for my teachers who taught me all the subjects since I was a kid through my school, high school and post graduate degree. Curiously I am not grateful for my teachers in college. I marvel at their patience to repeat the same thing over and over for an entire 45- minute period until the subject gets drilled into my mind. I am amazed that they were able to stand the entire day with very little breaks or water. I admire their stamina and perseverance not to give up on this lovely, blessed profession. 

I was a teacher's pet at school. Education was easy to me. I learned my letters and numbers at home as my mom always points out proudly. She taught me my languages and arithmetic at home even before I was formally enrolled at school. My dad taught me math at home from sixth grade until I finished high school. I was always a few chapters ahead of the math topics that was being taught at school because my dad would have already taught it to me at home. I would follow along and gain a deeper understanding and love for solving the problems when my teacher taught it at school. While my mom was very strict, I now look back with wisdom over decades of life's experience at what a wonderful mother she has been and how she was wholly responsible for my interest in education and cultivating my thirst for knowledge. She is not without faults and at times, her strictness and pestering were complete torture. While her methods were not always pleasant, I can see how she never gave up on me and always ensured my education was her number one priority. 

My teachers and principal at school loved teaching me. I was one of the students in every grade who made their profession enjoyable. Many would call my name out or express their delight in teaching me. One of the teachers was almost like a sister to me and remembered my birthdays, she never gave up on my abilities, never doubted me and always encouraged me and prayed for me. For her, I would be eternally grateful. I remember misogynistic attitude of some boys at school who said girls in general and I, in particular would memorize the text and reproduced it in exams. My biology teacher schooled them in the best possible way, subtly highlighting their own jealousy while praising me and encouraging the boys and explaining how their thinking was flawed and what they could do to improve their knowledge and scores. 

The tutoring experience brought back my childhood memories when I discovered joy for reading, a thirst for knowledge, my intelligence and capabilities to remember and recall exact texts, my love for illustrations and drawing, my favorite subjects. I particularly enjoyed languages, math, chemical equations, biology and learning about human body and systems and geography. The overall feeling is bliss and eternal gratitude for the world is full of knowledge waiting to discover.