Tutoring Pleasures and Pitfalls

One of the parcel of activities I do to keep afloat is tutoring in the public school system.

While there is much to debate about the value of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) as a policy, and it’s impact on education, it is this policy that funds what I do, and I am convinced that my part of the puzzle has value. And the system that delivers this supplementary educational product is fraught with pitfalls. Like most of our national policy, it is couched in complexity, legislated in language that seems designed to be obscure, and the relevant data to address a particular concern is a challenge to procure.

I’d love to be able to point to studies that verify my “foot on the ground” findings. I’d love to be able to address my concerns to the proper persons. I’d love to find the right pressure points to push for a more effective results from this system I’m caught up in, but I don’t have the resources in time and energy to do so. Besides, I’d rather teach. And I can easily share the bottom line of my research, there’s just not enough opportunity for teaching in our public schools. We need to do everything we can to support the human element in the educational transaction.

Personally, there is no greater sense of achievement than witnessing student progress and interest. I am an odd duck: I have always loved learning. If I can instill just a teaspoon of my enthusiasm for this discovery process in my students, I give myself a virtual gold star!

A 4^th grade boy says, after finally getting focused attention on some simple math strategies, like, for instance keeping the numerical columns straight so that he doesn’t make mistakes when adding up the results of multi-column math, “Wow! I feel like I just got new batteries!” I don’t fault his classroom teacher for not being able to get this notion working for him, because Iknow how challenging it was, working one-on-one, to achieve this success. Progress is incremental, and often requires individualized attention.

Entering the library, where she waits for me for a half hour to begin our sessions, I discover a 7th grade girl of Pueblo heritage bent over the stacks, reading! She doesn’t want to stop for our regular instruction; she motions me to “Come look.” On her own she has found a book about Pueblo Culture in New Mexico, and she wants to show me some pictures from her ancestral Pueblo, her grandfather’s house.

What a breakthrough for this young girl who is struggling to maintain interest in school in the midst of myriad distractions, including younger siblings at home, puberty, and a history of not getting what she needs to be successful in the classroom. No blame here, just how things are.

Many of the students I encounter tutoring just need a tailored approach to revive their interest in learning. They also need success. Most frequently I find that the students I see suffer from compound failures – to the point where they have already learned that they are “stupid” by the time they are in 4th grade. Perhaps the most essential task for a tutor is to convince these students that success in school is possible – they need to experience this feeling before they can hope to become willingly engaged in the challenges of learning new skills.

With my Pueblo tutee, I hit on success by a fortunate “accident.” I had been visiting the Bandelier National Monument and rushed back to Albuquerque to tutor. I had collected a brochure from the Park, and out it popped when I was searching my bookbag to figure out what reading material to work on with my student. Thinking, well, it has graphics and lots of new vocabulary about culture, nature, and archeology, I spread it out on the library table. Bingo! My student was fascinated with this material and we read both sides of the brochure. She had heard of this ancient pueblo site, but had never been there. That’s when she began talking about her Pueblo, and I knew that we had unlocked a new pathway for her to find pleasure and value in reading.

My point here is that tutors have time and opportunity to be creative and experimental in working with students, and, as a tutor I can concentrate on what works for the individual in front of me rather than what might work for a whole class.

The pitfall is that tutors don’t have ENOUGH time. Each child is allotted a mere 23 hours. It takes 5 or 10 hours just to earn respect and trust from a child who has not had a positive experience in school. Sometimes it takes 5 hours just to get a child to sit still and begin to focus their attention. It’s important to establish a dialogue with each student, and this frequently means “time off” from a strictly educational focus. I haven’t found a way to do this “instantly,” observing a child’s learning style and the deficits I need to address takes time. It also takes time to discover what material sparks their interest. Each year, I get a bit more perceptive, develop better strategies.

Each year I am also disappointed when I find, just as I am finally getting some success, I only have five hours left with a student. It seems very wasteful that there is not enough time to cover more ground and reinforce the learning process once it’s begun.

I encourage my readers to forward this story to their public officials and to people who administer schools. Another 10-20 hours per year per student involved in tutoring could make a massive difference in school performance. It would make this tutor happier also.

Now about those "incentives' for graduates:)