Seven years have passed since I last tutored actively, and it isn’t a field I’d really considered before in my long-term analysis of how to work part-time while still giving my all to motherhood.
Then one day this week it occurred to me that private tutoring offers the perfect synergy of flexibility and fulfillment.
When you work one-on-one with a young student who is struggling and needing your help or guidance, not only do you form a meaningful connection and have the potential to actually improve the quality of that child’s life and self-esteem... but you can do it on an as-needed basis that works for everyone.
Since I came to that realization I've worked swiftly, throwing together a few hundred fliers and a website. Yesterday I sent off my first batch of one hundred and wondered aloud whether anyone of the families I mailed to will ever even open the envelopes.
My children and I then pretended to be eager, happy families opening the envelopes as I folded each flier... “Wow! A wonderful advertisement for reasonably priced tutoring! Just what our family needed! We can’t wait to call her RIGHT NOW to schedule an appointment!” we sang.
My children found this visualization (pretending) process to be hilarious and were laughing like crazy the entire time. I found their laughter to be heart warming and full of optimism - which I embraced. “Why the heck not?” I thought. “There’s nothing wrong with positivity. I am a dedicated teacher. I will do a good job for any families who do open their letter and decide to contact me.”
We enjoyed a nice evening thinking about our family's future success and happiness.
Today I worked on mailing a new batch of fliers, this time directed toward families who had previously hired me as a tutor in years gone by. Their children are all grown up now, but I felt that it couldn’t hurt to check in and thank them for their past help... and to find out how their sons and daughters are doing these days!
As I tried to remember exactly how old their children would be now and where in college they might be at this time, I googled a few of the old student names. “This is the age of Facebook,” I thought to myself. “My old students have got to be somewhere online.”
Sure enough, most of them popped up instantly in my search results - and I was staggered to realize how much time has actually passed. It became obvious to me when I saw a few of their Facebook profile pictures.
I would have had a lot of trouble believing it if I hadn't seen their grown-up faces with my own eyes. "Oh wow. That's totally Jack* except he's all stretched out on that big man's lanky frame!" I was both amazed and amused to see my former students hugging their significant others, sipping on beers, dressed up for parties, attending rock music festivals, playing professional sports and voyaging throughout the world.
Those small, adorable children who I once taught about brainstorming and positive peer critique? Yeah, they’re 23, 24, 25 years old now. By and large they’ve graduated from college. They’re off living and working in various locales around the world... right in the thick of life.
To my great joy, many of them seem to have become writers.
I take no credit for this but am thrilled to see that somewhere along the way many of them did find something beautiful in the act of writing that seared their souls in such a way as to create a permanent mark. Once a writer, always a writer - eh?
And I’m not just referring to the little girls who once excelled in writing lengthy stories and poems about landscapes... the boys have grown into writers too - for magazines, international columns, etc.
It feels good to know that my students and I still have something important in common, fourteen years later.
I wonder what they would think of me now, were they to run into me somewhere in the world. Would they think, "Wow, she's really gotten old" or "Wow, I remembered her as being taller than that"?
Would they notice all of the grey hair and lines that have sprung up in the last few years?
Worse, I wonder if they would silently realize that they've outgrown me... that in the end, I was just another fallible human being and not the person that they'd looked up to when they were young.
Teaching is a field in which you give of yourself fully in order to empower younger generations to match or surpass you. If you do your job well as a teacher, your students WILL exceed their wildest expectations, and rise to meet yours. That's part of the design... Just like parenting, you hope that your students will have a life even better than your own.
So it comes as no surprise to me that many of my students are now thriving in major league jobs and pulling in salaries that make my own teaching pay look paltry. They've traveled to places I've only dreamed of, and are living vivid lives in a way that I always meant to do. I am so proud of those kids. I always knew they could do it!
I'm genuinely excited to begin this new chapter in my life with a brand new crop of private students. One-to-one ratio instruction is one of the few jobs in life where you can make an immediate and visibly positive difference in another person's life. I feel hopeful for the future and grateful for this opportunity.
*Names changed to protect the privacy of the person in question
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