I’ve had two interesting situations occur the past couple of weeks that have never happened to me before. First, since I live in the neighborhood of the local school I taught at and where many of our students come from, I had a parent come to my house in the middle of the day to ask about tutoring. I’m not sure if the teacher recommended this to her, or she knew who I was and where I live and took it upon herself to come to my house. She was so persistent, she came twice within a half an hour – I know this as I was not able to answer the door the first time she came (she left a note) and then came back a half hour later. Needless to say, she is persistent! This, however, was a first for me – I’ve had people stop me on the street as I walk, I’ve had people pull over in their cars, but never anyone come to my house. (I hope this will not become a regular occurrence either!)
The other situation occurred today when a parent came to ask for information. She was very specific and wanted to know how many sessions it would take me to catch her daughter up to where she needs to be. She asked the question in so many different ways, finally she asked what exactly I do here if I can’t catch a child up. I had to patiently explain to her again that teaching someone is not like giving them a pill that will cure them after so many doses, that it depends on how far behind the child is, how motivated they are as well as the parents and so many other things. She finally signed her daughter up for the waiting list. Again, it was another first!
Finally, at the beginning of the calendar year, we were able to move a couple students off of the waiting list and into our program. One student came for her first session a couple weeks ago and when she came she was hysterically crying. She was very scared to be left with us, and I’m not sure she understood what we would be doing. Anyway, by the end of the session, she was all smiles and has continued to come without a fuss – she went from tears and fears to cheers!
