I’m Amanda. I’ve got wide eyes, a smart mouth, and a MetroCard. And I’m not afraid to use them.
It’s the start of our session. I’m eating a piece of cake Jing’s mom brought me, and Jing’s giving me a recap of the latest happenings at school.
Report cards come up. Jing mentions that she never sat out in gym all grading period, but she still got a lower grade. I ask if girls don’t swim when they have their periods. She nods.
Then she drops a bombshell.
You never get over being an teacher. I haven’t anyway.
I still think like a teacher, looking for analogies to bridge the everyday with the more erudite.
And yep, I know how I would teach the definition of “erudite.”
Jing and Borun, the eighth-graders I tutor, reap all the benefits. Well, sometimes they reap them. Some lessons are a bust.
Like that time we were reading this really intense article from Slate.com, and I was trying to explain “hegemony” as simply as possible.
“Umm, yeah. Basically, in this case it sucks. Hegemony is something that sucks. Let’s move on.”
I felt as articulate as Sarah Palin.
I’ve started tutoring Jing again. After a few months with no contact, we’re back in the groove.
I can’t believe how much she’s grown. She’s started saying some of the most brilliant things, and her braces are coming off next week. Like, OMG!
And she’s still the reigning Junior Miss Non Sequitur.
I just stumbled on the ad below during a random search for writing gigs on Craigslist. It can’t be real, but I’d love to play along in a series of more and more bizarre emails.
I am a 23 year old single male. I am attending Borough of Manhattan Community College. I am taking the English class. I have failed English class three times at my college. I am taking the English class very seriously. I prefer young sexy single blonde female to help me but I accept any female. I will be open up to a relationship with you later on. I need emotional support right now since I am attending a new school and I have not many friends yet. If you are interested, please email me or call me at 646-402-2740.
I started tutoring in my last two months as a teacher. It wasn’t because I thought I’d miss interacting with kids once I got a 9-5 job in marketing. I didn’t plan to make a lot of money helping middle schoolers refine their writing, either.
There was an ad on Craigslist. All I had to do was attach a resume and write an email. So I did.
Months later, I heard back from some guy saying he was going to grad school and wanted to help find a tutor for his co-worker’s fifth grade daughter. (He’d occasionally looked over the girl’s writing when he got the chance, though there was never any formal tutoring arrangement).
Sometimes Jing makes me feel old, very old with the cobwebs on top. It makes me want to have clueless kids of my own someday when I’m even older.
Jing: The only song I like from the old ages in called “Don’t Stop Believin’.” Have you heard it?
Me: Yes. At every bar, restaurant, and sports arena ever.
Jing, now 13, has been clashing with her mom for a while about the typical things. There’s also the cultural gap to excavate. I listen to her complaints, sympathetic yet fascinated by the situation.
Me: Your mom just wants you to work hard and be the best you can be.
Jing: She’s always talking about her past! And I think she lies about the grades she made in school.
I tutor four kids each week in reading and writing. Perhaps they blur together to people who don’t review their homework, so let me quickly summarize them in chronological order of how long I’ve tutored them.
Jing, the student I’ve had the longest, is an audacious chatterbox. She’s finishing her seventh-grade year and loves to confide in me. Recent conversations have included a recap of everything she learned (or mis-learned) during a whirwind sex education unit in science class, including “Guys have two balls - one for sperm, one for pee.”
If the kids I tutor decided to read at an open mic someday, I’d be the first dork hooting and clapping when they finished. Possibly even brandishing the Zippo lighter iPhone app, starting the wave, or getting kicked out of the place.
They’re such a pleasure to know. At some point I was worried it was my biological clock, but who gets gooey over kids starting puberty? Besides child molesters and other pubescent kids, I mean.
Over the weekend, Jing went to the commitment ceremony of her math teacher and his partner. The entire seventh grade was invited, and no one was unaccepting or hateful. The fact that the story didn’t make news ended up making news - the front page of The New York Times City section, I think. Today Jing was telling me her decidedly unromantic impression of the ceremony.
