During the summer,I took Japanese a Laney College. One day, when I was walking to the bus stop, a lady called at me from an apartment. I went over to her to see what she wanted. It turned out that she was looking for a tutor for her daughter who was going to be in fourth grade. I had nothing to do on the weekends so I took the job. I started tutoring her on the first week of August and I am currently still on Saturdays and Sundays. I do not get paid much but that's okay since they just immigrated from Malaysia and probably do not have much money. At first, I thought tutoring Nancy was fine, but now I have encountered a problem.. .
I think that she might have a learning disability and worry that she will not able to catch up at school. Doing worksheets and reading with her, I realized that her memory is really poor. When I ask her for an answer to a problem and she gives me the wrong answer, I tell her that it's wrong, but like less than a minute later, she says the same thing again. Normally, when kids know the alphabet sounds, they can sound out words, but when she tries, it sounds nothing like what it looks like; she adds a whole bunch of extra sounds that I have no idea wher she gets them from. Sometimes, she even has a hard time with basic math. Right now, her class is learning to round to the millions and she does not even know how to round to the tens.
Everytime I tutor her I end up yelling at her because I get so frustrated. I really don't know how to help her if she learns at such a slow pace and has such a bad memory. I go to her home for four hours each weekend and we barely get anything done. I kind of want to quit but at the same time I feel bad since it's only been a month and I'm sure that they won't find another person who is willing to get paid what I get. I'm not exactly sue what to do at this point. Can someone offer me some advice?
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I am glad I just came across this post of yours...it really moves me. I'm biased of course, being a teacher myself...but still. There's a lot here I can identify with, first of all. (Plus, your writing is clear and engaging.)
ReplyDeleteTeaching can certainly get frustrating. And teaching ONE student is, perhaps paradoxically, as difficult in some ways as teaching an entire class...for reasons you are discovering. Finding out how somebody's brain works is very exciting, and the way you are describing your work with this student makes me think that you have the natural instincts of a good teacher. The problem may not be either in you or your student, but in the expectations that this student learn at a certain (fast) pace.
If she needs to learn more slowly, then rushing her through her schoolwork (despite the fact that that may be what the mom wants you to do) probably won't help much in the long run. And rushing also isn't likely to get a whole lot more satisfying for YOU, either. So I would say: if you are discovering places where your student has weaknesses, and difficulties in surmounting them, then maybe work separately from the homework worksheets and see if there are other ways to teach those skills? (I would be happy to brainstorm with you about this...I'm imagining things you could try to help a person learn how to round off numbers, for example...)
The fact is this is a little kid who JUST IMMIGRATED. There could be any number of things going on, including culture shock, language-learning adjustments, possibly learning disabilities...or any combination of things. So a slow start is to be expected.
I applaud your work and I'm glad you've written about it. Future posts on the progress of your work with your student would be welcome, if you are looking for topics to write about sometime... :)