Archive for the ‘Tutoring’ Category

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Contemplating Kitticide

Friday, November 13th, 2009

I’m studying Algebra with an SAT student in the dining Room.  Maia is doing her best to interrupt: yeowling in other parts of the house, coming to stand just out of arm’s reach and facing away from us in distaste, thundering around and sharpening her claws on my couch.  Finally, she resorts to chewing on the plant that’s about two feet from me.

“Maia LOWE!”  I say in shock.  I push her to the floor roughly. “What are you doing?  That’ll make you sick!”

Not five minutes later, from the hallway, we hear the unmistakable gurgling of a cat becoming ill.  My eyelids drift shut, attempting to will this event out of existence.

My student starts to giggle.  “It’s okay,” she says.  “I have a cat too.”

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The Dotted Line

Monday, September 7th, 2009

Over the years, I’ve had a lot of trouble with students and parents who don’t seem to understand that learning to play the piano takes work.  You have to drive to the teacher’s house.  (One of the worst mistakes I ever made was trying to transition from going to students’ houses: most of them quit right off the bat, a few hung around and complained about the driving time and then quit, and only two actually stuck with me, uncomplaining, to the present.)  You have to practice.  And in Suzuki, you have to listen to the recording regularly if you want to reap the benefits of an ear-training method.

Rob has owned his own business, a small architectural practice, for longer than I have owned mine.  So when he offers advice, I try to forget that he’s my husband (you know, the one who’s always wrong) and listen.  By far, the best advice he’s ever given me is that if I want to hold someone to a verbal agreement, I need to put it in writing.

My SAT students are all short-term, so I operate with a service agreement there, and no one has a problem with it; in fact, most are impressed that I took the time to write up a contract, and it’s cleared up many disputes about payment and appointment times.

My piano students, however, seemed to always have the same administrative problems.  They wanted to reschedule for illness or other plans; I don’t offer makeup lessons.  With enough advance notice, I can credit them for the following summer, but changing lesson times really messes me up, and I’ve found they cancel far less often with this policy.)  They forgot to pay me on time or paid the wrong amount;  after years of trying to remember everyone’s balance, I finally went to a simple system of paying for 4 weeks each month, regardless of the number of calendar weeks.  (Since there are 9 months and 36 weeks in the year, it evens out.)  They didn’t practice or listen enough, and they wondered why they weren’t improving faster.

Last year I had the idea to put together a contract for each parent to sign.  It consisted of seven or eight simple bullet-points of information, things people were always forgetting.  But something still wasn’t right.  Why should all the responsibility for the lessons rest on the parents?  God knows they have enough to do!

This year, my contract is three columns: one for the parent, one for the teacher, and one for the student.  This corresponds closely to the idea of the Suzuki Triangle, which is a fundamental tenet of the method.  Each point on the contract relates to all three parties: for example, the parent promises to take notes at the lessons, the teacher promises to check them and to give clear instructions, and the student promises to work together with the parent at home to see that practicing happens the way it’s supposed to.

We’ll be discussing and signing the contracts next week.  I don’t know whether it will make a difference, but then, I never do.  The thing is to try.

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Overheard in the Dining Room

Wednesday, August 19th, 2009

Me: Okay, so the way to tackle these Sentence Completion questions is to find a word that fits in the blank, and then look for a similar word in the list of answer choices.  Here’s the first one: “To be a writer, one needs a great deal of _______.”

Student: Pencils.

. . . so THAT’S what I’ve been doing wrong!

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Confrontations

Wednesday, August 12th, 2009

Confrontations are not fun.  It may come as a surprise to those of you who avoid them at all costs (as do most women I know) but no one really enjoys them.  When I know I must have one, I put it off.  I use the excuse that I want to make sure I have enough time for the conversation, that all my thoughts are together, etc., but the truth is, I just don’t want to do it.

The surprising thing, for me, is that confrontations are rarely as bad as we fear.  Recently I had to confront a mother whose son is coming to me for tutoring.  To put it bluntly, he was not learning.  His progress was extremely slow, almost imperceptible.  I’ve taught severely learning-disabled kids before, dyslexia, CPD, etc., but I’d never seen anything like this.  He was literally unable to express himself; I would ask him simple questions and he’d sit for several minutes, then say, “I dunno.”  He had difficulty putting even the simplest thoughts into words.  I began to wonder whether I could help him at all, whether I was wrong in taking the parents’ money.  At the least, I had to tell the mother that we were behind on the syllabus I had made up, and he needed to plan to come for more sessions.

I didn’t want to say the words, because I didn’t want to insult her or her son, who shows a great interest in learning and is generally a nice kid.  But finally I said very plainly that I had never encountered these specific learning difficulties before and I wasn’t sure what to do, but that his progress was very slow and I wasn’t sure whether I was helping him.

Nothing could have prepared me for her reaction.  She said her son had a severe hearing problem, so major that his doctor compared his comprehension to that of an English language learner.  He had always had severe difficulties in writing, and coupled with low self-esteem (probably because of said hearing problem) it was hard for him to accept help from others.  Teachers had always maintained that he wasn’t trying hard enough and was “doing fine,” so she was glad to see that I understood the problem and relieved that I was willing to help him with it.

Of course, it would have been nice to know about this before I had started with the student; it would have saved me a lot of frustration!  But I think I needed to learn this lesson.  Honesty, first.

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What I Did On My Summer Vacation

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

I know that title is grammatically incorrect, but that was always the way they phrased it.  As kids, it was perfectly acceptable to hit a few highlights — vacation, camp, a broken leg — and allow the rest of the days to slip into oblivion, unaccounted-for.  As a teacher, though, I feel pressure to make the most of every single day without a deadline, a commitment, a parent to call or paper to grade.  Progress!  I must make progress!  And truthfully, for the first month of summer, I haven’t done much of anything at all.  So here’s hoping this list will inspire me:

Read Reading is one of my favorite vices.  This summer I’ve finally finished the Harry Potter series (more later on that) and am starting on a few education-related books: Gardner’s multiple intelligences, Montessori’s theory of education, and Horace’s Compromise about the state of modern American high schools.  I also have some fluff: The Boelyn Inheritance (which, like its predecessor, I bought because I was stuck in an airport with nothing to read) and a book about wallpaper design I picked up in Paris.  (Hey, I said it was fluff.)  And I am partway through Shop Class as Soulcraft, an incredible book about the value of manual labor by a guy who got a doctorate in philosophy and then decided to open a motorcycle repair shop.

Play For a music teacher, I don’t play often enough.  Joplin is good summer music, so I’m working on a couple of pieces — some I’ve played before, and one is relatively new.  For feel-good music, it’s pretty tough!  I was also selected to be part of an Orthodox chamber choir, so I have some tough parts to learn.  I’m hoping my voice-teacher friend will help me with my breathing, which Rachmanianoff apparently thought was unnecessary for second sopranos.

Draw As an architecture student, I was forced into two semesters of drawing; after complaining loudly for several weeks, I discovered I actually liked it, and I wasn’t half bad.  Recently I discovered a sheaf of them in my basement.  Vine charcoal and newsprint weren’t exactly archival materials, so they’re crumbling into nothingness, but they made me want to try again.  (I have a willing model in my gorgeous husband, whose Blue Steel is almost as hot as his Le Tigre.)

Cook When we travel, I get out of the routine of cooking for myself, and it takes some time to remember how much I love it.  What kicked me back into gear this time was a wedding gift I designed for a dear friend: a cookbook comprised of recipes I’ve made many times over the years, basic crowd-pleasers that it’s hard to screw up.  One of my bridesmaids gave me a similar wedding gift, and it was so meaningful because it felt like a real piece of her own home.  Cooking is the first thing to go when I’m stressed, which is ironic, because the simplest act — chopping vegetables and arranging them in a salad bowl — is so calming.  Rod Dreher has a great piece up at Front Porch Republic about the theosis of seafood gumbo (inspired by the aforementioned Shop Class, which is the subject of a current e-symposium there.)

Work I have to do a little of this to keep me accountable; I don’t do well with a total lack of structure.  Most of my piano students cut back to biweekly lessons during the summer, and I cram them all into one day so that I can put away my materials and have a “normal” living room for the rest of the week.  I also do a lot more SAT tutoring during the summer.  This year I have my first two male students, references from the community of the girls’ school where I teach, and I have to say it is SUCH a treat to teach boys.  Less drama, more gravity.  And the really fun part: I’m assisting at a Music Mind Games course in order to get enough experience to teach at workshops myself!  Very exciting.  I’m also involved with the Teachers’ Committee, where I keep track of who’s taken training where and occasionally blog about my experiences with MMG.

Learn What can I say?  Maybe I became a teacher because I love school so much.  This summer I’m taking an elective as part of my MAT program: it’s called The Dynamic of the City.  Our first class was last night, and it sounds like it’ll be a fun course: two thick textbooks, 16 films, and studies of Vienna, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles and Baltimore (where our final project will be a guided tour of a selected area of the city.)  It’s cross-disciplinary, covering everything from sociology and psychology to urban planning and art history.  The professor expects it will require about 15 hours of work each week, in addition to the 7 hours of class time.  I got really excited when I heard that.  Nerd.  Yes.  That’s me.

Write Believe it or not, I have a huge list of post ideas that I’ve been kicking around for the last month.  I’ve just been too uninspired (read: lazy) to actually sit down and write them.  No longer!  And thanks again to those of you who bug me when I don’t write.  It’s good to be missed.

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