I quit one of my big teaching jobs today and it felt like most productive thing I have done in a long while. When I was working as an actor private tuition was a useful subsidiary income but when you've been out of theatre work for six months, it becomes clear quite quickly, that private tuition can never really provide a satisfying career. Apart from meeting new clients, the work remains pretty much the same. There is also the issue of age. When you are a fresh graduate in his early twenties, A Levels are part of your recent life. You are still able to emotionally connect with the students over the problems, challenges and anxieties of preparing for an exam. As a thirty-year-old, my attitude has changed. I am frustrated by the laziness and lack of initiative amongst many of the students. I am like a band-aid rather than a teacher; there to patch up a gaping wound of inertia inflicted by too much privilege.
I hope to finish tutoring completely by the end of this year, or take it down to a bare minimum of three or fours a week. There. I've said it. I've written it down on a blog on the internet, so now I have to stick to it. I have two students I like and will see through to their final exams. One of them is from a working class background. I would like to throw my energies into helping him more. He is polite and hard working but doesn't read enough. His parents' first language is Spanish and so they have not been able to help him with much of the reading.
Home school kids today were being difficult for the last half an hour. Their energy levels dropped and mine did too if I'm being honest. Not sure that teaching for three hours with a ten minute break isn't asking a bit much of a ten-year-old. Part of the issue is that the girl is much further ahead than the boy and while I set her extra work and more advanced she has a habit of misbehaving to entertain him. I may split them up a bit more. They kept asking if I had a girlfriend. Oh dear, if only they knew. Perhaps they do.
