Dear teacher, I hope this is a beginning of a long, fruitful, bi-directional communication. We don’t know each other, we’ve never met. I have heard of you and you might have heard of me, our relationship is a little ambiguous, something I would like to correct. Though really it’s not going to be easy, first of all, I’m not writing this specifically to you, I’m writing this to you and to all of your peers – all highschool teachers, university profs, classroom TAs, who are involved in helping and educating our students. You are many, I am one. Yet this is not an attack, not an accusation, in fact, I don’t even see us as working on separate sides or with separate goals. We are part of the same team, you are the educator in the classroom setting, and I am the private tutor for our students after class is dismissed.
First let me clarify – I have a lot of respect for classroom teachers, I used to be one for a short time in my life. I know the challenges, I know the difficulty, I know that a part of you does (or at least should) care for all your students, wants them to succeed, struggles with students who are struggling, and gets excited when students ‘get it’. I also know that the hours you spend every day in front of a class, can be both exhilarating and wearing. I know the struggle to keep the class going, to keep the information flowing, to keep up with a curriculum that you might or might not agree with, even though you know that some students need a more one-on-one, slow pace attention, one that you can’t give at that point in time. I know you sometimes just have to move on ‘for the sake of the class’ knowing that some students won’t be able to follow you and be lost on the way.
I understand that, it’s not easy, and you do your best. This letter is not about that.
This letter is about the students, and their struggles. It’s about those 20 or more pairs of eyes that are facing you every morning, keen to learn, knowing that knowledge is their key in life, or at least for now. Knowing that they don’t know, and knowing that knowing and knowledge is what they need, and fearing that they might not know even how to learn, at least not what you are trying to get them to know. It’s about those students, who after hanging by every word of yours, want and struggle and try. And they all want and struggle and try, they all wish to succeed, even that kid in the back row who shows up to, what might appear to you to be, just stare and make noises, and interfere. They all want to learn, but not all get it. Not at this hour, not this material, not with this explanation. They don’t. So they come to me, those who realize they need more attention, and who are willing to make the necessary investment, they come seeking help, seeking the insight that was there in the air in the classroom, the insight that was hovering and winding, and occasionally touching their peers in an a-ha moment that seemed to elude them, they come to me.
And my job is to finish the work that started in your class. You might have done it yourself, if you had more time, more scheduling leniency, but you can’t, and so I do.
Only that I don’t have to follow your curriculum, I am not bounded by the textbook, or the methods it teaches, or by the specific order even that it teaches the material. I just need to be focus on our student’s success. I have the freedom that you might not have, or have forgotten that you have. And I have that one-on-one time that you don’t.
So I teach, and I change my curriculum and my method every time I sit with a student. I borrow ideas, illustrations, examples and parallels from wherever I can, and use whatever will work. With one student I’ll talk about apples, with another about sports, another about space, or people, or hiking, or computers, or even political theory. I will use whatever tool I can think of (and I can think of a lot) to illustrate a point, to generate that insight, to realize that a-ha moment. I will use ideas from different books, or different teachers, or will come up with a brand new way on the spot that I think might explain things better to a student. And I’ll keep at it, and keep at it, and keep at it, until they get it, until they understand enough to solve the textbook questions. And then I might go some more, to give them different options for different ways of solving the same problem. Just in case. And then I’ll also show them tricks and rules-of-hand of what to do when they have forgotten all those methods in the middle of an exam. And then I might give them some exam taking tips, and some questions to test their knowledge, and congratulate them for figuring it out, because I need to teach them not only the material but also how to believe in themselves and in their own ability, and how to trust themselves, and their brains, and their intelligence. Because they are all capable, even though they are often their own greatest critics and doubters.
Perhaps you would have done the same, perhaps you would have. I know that when you or your peers try to do after-hours tutoring for free or not, that you try. But when you are part of a system that teaches only one technique, one topic, one subject at a time, you will be challenged to be more than a classroom teacher.
You see, we are a team, you and I, and together we can introduce success to the minds and abilities of our students. Each in our own way, each with our own abilities, yet still being on the same side.
The student’s side.
Yours truly,
Amir Taller
Private Tutor
No comments:
Post a Comment