Things I Learned While Tutoring Children

Being a tutor was probably one of my favorite jobs. I worked with children from kindergarten through third grade. Most of the time, I came to work to be greeted by smiling faces ready to learn. It was hard to have a bad day at work with such great kids. While working as a tutor, I learned a lot about children, parents, and education. I learned about motivation, success, and failure. It was a wonderful job experience that I'd love to try again sometime.

Kids Really Do Want to Learn

Rarely, if ever, did I get a child who just didn't want to learn. The trick was to find out what they were interested in. Most of my students loved math. A few enjoyed reading the most. While you couldn't make every subject their favorite, you could tie subjects together to help them out. Just disguising one subject as another was often enough to do the trick. If a student liked math, but had difficulty reading, you could give them word problems in math. Their desire to keep doing math problems and not have to read a book, would usually win out. Most children understood things better if you could show them an example. Whether it was a definition of a word or a new concept in math, they wanted to know why it was useful and what exactly it was. I found it was much better to answer these questions, despite the time it took. I always hated that as I child, when I asked "why?" my parents and teachers often told me "just because." I was determined not to brush off these kids like that. If they asked why if one word meant the same thing as another, we couldn't just use one word, I would explain the subtle differences of the words to them. They may not have liked learning an extra word, but at least they somewhat understood the reasoning behind knowing that additional word. Many had been taught that division was just multiplication tables in reverse. They were just memorizing things, but didn't understand how it worked. By using food as an example, they saw what division really meant. They did not want to end up with the smallest piece of candy (I soon learned that candy was a horrible teaching tool, as it made kids bounce off the walls). Kids enjoyed being in my section, as they wanted more than just to finish their homework. They always knew that they could ask me about other things as well, not included in their assignments. Kids are curious and they really do want to learn.

Parents Want Their Children to Succeed

I never met a parent who didn't want their child to succeed. I think that parents, if given information on what they can do, will help their children at home. At the end of each tutoring session, I would fill out reports on each child in my section. The reports would include information about what the child is doing well at, what the child somewhat understands, and what the child really needs some extra help on. These notes were not only for my record so that I would know what to work on in the next session, but also for the parents. Some of the children I worked with were struggling with reading in English because they did not speak English in their home. Some parents would come up to me after the session and tell me that they knew their child struggled with reading, but that they themselves could hardly read in English, so they didn't know how to help. What these parents may not have realized is, that by taking their child to tutoring, they already were doing something to help. In addition to that however, I gave them information on various tools to help their child at home, such as a talking dictionary. They didn't want their child to struggle, but felt that they couldn't help. Other parents wanted to help their child too much. Some parents would come in during the tutoring session and make sure that I was working with their child. I only worked with three children at a time, but some parents really would have rather had one on one tutoring sessions for their child. One thing I would ask of parents, is to let the tutor do their job. There is no point in going to tutoring if you just want to stand there and correct your child the whole time. Some parents seemed to correct harshly, while others didn't even want me to point out mistakes to their child (nevermind that they were well balanced with compliments on the child's work). No matter what their parenting style however, parents did want to see their child succeed.

What I Learned About Education

While I've never been in favor of homeschooling, after tutoring I could see why many people view the school system as being inadequate. These students came from different schools in the area, yet they all seemed to lack similar important things in their education. They lacked teachers who would explain why things happened (maybe the teacher couldn't even explain why). They were told to memorize a lot of things, but weren't given any information on how to apply their knowledge. Obviously kindergarteners and third graders are a long way from joining the workforce, but these kids loved to find out what they could use their math skills in or why reading was important. If a child didn't see the point in phonics and pronouncing words correctly, I'd remind him that if he were ever to become the President, surely he would want to read his speeches correctly (or at least, one would hope so). I noticed that to some degree, many teachers also did not seem to be objective. While I certainly offered up my opinions from time to time, I did not have the students do projects involving political issues. If they ever had to do something for a homework assignment which should have had two sides involved, I made sure they learned the other side. The children wanted to learn these things, yet the school wasn't giving it to them. This didn't really change my viewpoint on homeschooling however. Rather, it made me realize that students need supplemental learning. While these children were learning a lot of wonderful things in school, they needed another source (or two) where they could ask more questions and learn more. For these students, they had tutoring sessions and their parents to give them additional information.

Motivation Made Easy

I'm not sure why motivation seems to get harder and harder to find as we get older. I can't seem to file for a tax return until April. I want to do my chemistry lab report, but I know I'll end up doing it the night before the next lab. Yet for these young children, they didn't want to procrastinate. Why was that? Motivation made easy: I had stickers. Children will do anything for stickers. Especially if you can make handing out stickers competitive. Making stickers seem scarce also works well. Truthfully, I had well over one hundred stickers. The children never knew that. They would see maybe 10 or 20 stickers on me at the most. They knew that they had to earn those stickers, and they wanted them. Stickers work much better than candy because there is no sugar high. Instead, sugars provide a different kind of high. Children felt a sense of accomplishment as they counted how many stickers they had earned since joining my session. At first, stickers seemed to work best when handed out to everyone at the same rate. One page of math problems would earn you a sticker, but so would one page of reading. Then this one kid joined my group. He was in 2nd grade, but had a 6th or 7th grade reading level. He would have wiped out my sticker stash in no time if I hadn't come up with a new system. Plus, it was really starting to discourage the other children when they saw that this child was getting 10 times more stickers than they were. So I came up with a new way to distribute the stickers. Since this child could read 10 pages faster than anyone else in the group could read a single page, he would only receive one sticker for every 10 pages. Some of my kindergarten students from non-English speaking homes were extremely slow readers, and therefore got 2 stickers per page. This kept everyone trying to improve, while not making others jealous of the high amount of stickers those ahead of them could receive. If only I could find the adult equivalent of stickers for myself, I'd be all set in life.

Success and Failure

While of course, for adults success and failure are big deals, the reactions just aren't the same. We get an A on an exam in college and are just happy to not fail. We go on an interview, don't get the job, and it may be a big deal and cause some tears, but we'll be okay. When kids get a happy face on their paper, they are ecstatic. They will show anyone they know and they want that paper up on their parent's fridge. Give that kid a sad face with tears on their paper and they'll make that same face as they cry about their failure on the assignment. Watching the children and their reactions reminded me of how when I was younger one failure would be the end of the world. Maybe these kids just cared more than most.

Overall, I found tutoring children to be a very rewarding job. One thing about tutoring young children is that you really notice a lot of progress happening quickly thoughout the year. Children seem to have this energy about them. I could go to work after a long day of school and then be totally energized when I got to work. I think I probably learned as much while tutoring as I taught the children. It was a wonderful experience that I think more people should try.