One of the 6th graders that I tutor has quite the inquisitive mind. A few weeks ago I was explaining elements and compounds to him out of his science text. He quickly got me off on a tangent explaining about the Bohr model of the atom. I was trying to explain what makes an element an element, namely that if you have an atom of helium it’s the smallest possible bit of helium that’s still helium. If you break it down further it’s just proton and electrons.
Student: “Oh! So what happens if you make an electron smaller?”
Me: “…time travel?”
After that I mentally dubbed him “Future Particle Physicist.”
Anyway, Future Particle Physicist really surprised me with his creativity yesterday. I really shouldn’t have been surprised, because, well…particle physics.
Originally Future Particle Physicist’s mom hired me just to make sure he got his homework done every day and kept his school binders organized. A few times lately he has had very little or even no homework, so I talked to her about it and she said she would like me to help him work on his writing skills. (Good call FPP’s mom, he IS a future scientist after all. Writing is his contractually obligated worst subject.) So I found a writing exercise online and brought it with me today to try out.
We sat down at the computer and all I wanted to do was get him to write a 5 sentence paragraph with varying sentence structure, and next thing I knew he was writing a short story about a mad scientist and his invention to split his consciousness between 3 clones of himself so he could literally be in 3 places at once.
I did my best to not stifle his creativity while (hopefully?) actually teaching him something about how to write well. I have little confidence that I succeeded in this endeavour.
As much as it was supposed to be just a way to earn money until I found a “real” job (ugh), tutoring is quickly becoming my longest-held occupation. I’m finally learning what it’s like to gain real experience in something. The longer I do this, the more situations I run up against. I’m only just now running into parents who want me to keep their kids ahead in their textbooks or work on supplemental subjects. (By the way, I have only been approached for supplemental work rather than plain old homework help by immigrant families. Way to be, Americans.)
I’ve written lesson plans before, but (as it turns out) Italy is pretty different than the U.S. (Yeah, I’ve been a teacher in Italy. I have led a weird life.) Also it was much, much more about classroom management than anything else (and that shit is HARD). Now I’m giving one-on-one lessons for the first time and I am slowly learning how. Tutoring has always been pretty challenging (I work with pretty much all grade levels so I am on call to answer any question about geometry, algebra, trigonometry, precalculus, or calculus) but in some ways keeping one student on track is harder than 35 of them. You have to be able to fine-tune your plans much more precisely to difficulty level and personality.
Tomorrow night I tutor Over-confident Future Engineer for the second time. I can’t wait to see how badly I missed the mark on the difficulty level of the homework I gave him. In the meantime I have to write a new homework assignment for this week without any feedback.
This stuff keeps me on my toes, that’s for sure.
