tutoring

I started tutoring this week. I think I'm going to really enjoy it. The pay is great, and the kids are all very different.

On Mondays, I tutor the principal's nephew. He's a lazy kid and doesn't enjoy sitting at the table with me practicing writing comparative sentences for an hour. Imagine that! I'm working on finding short games to play between practice sentences. Last week, we played hangman. He enjoyed it, but it's a rather violent concept for a children's game.

On Tuesdays, I have two girls - Anya and Pim. They're both very smart. Pim is better at reading and writing English. She's shy when it comes to speaking. Anya is the talker. We practiced making up stories going around the circle and adding one sentence. It's hard for kids to be creative in a second language, especially when their educational system doesn't encourage creativity in the first place, but more on that later.

Thursdays are my favorite. I have three brothers - a kindergartner, a fourth grader, and a seventh grader.

The youngest, Jerry, loves trains. But I can't talk to him much about trains, because he needs to learn to read. I brought phonics cards to work with. When he got five cards right, he could add a car to the picture of a train he was drawing.

Joey is in my P4/1 class. He's a very precocious child, and speaks really good English with an American accent. He doesn't need much grammar practice, so I'm going to focus on new vocabulary and conversation.

On Thursday I asked him what his dream job is. I had to explain what "dream job" means. He thought for a minute and said, "Well, I know this isn't a real thing, but I would like to be a chef for animals."

He's in luck, because that is a real job. I told him about how I had heard of bakeries selling specialty dog snacks. Then we worked on vocabulary he might need for being a chef. I think I'll print out information on dog bakeries to give him next week.

I asked him what his second-best dream job would be. He described the hotel he'd like to own, complete with a restaurant, a pool, and a zoo. But his zoo would only have safe animals, like dogs, cats, rabbits, and turtles. It was very important that his patrons weren't attacked. He said the sea turtles' tank would be in the wall of the pool, so you could dive down and look at them.

Jame, the oldest, also has great English. He needed to practice using contractions and apostrophes, and listening to a paragraph and recalling details. I gave him sentences to write out and made corrections when he made mistakes. Then, instead of reading him a story, I decided to tell one.

I spun a fine yarn about two brothers named Dane and Shane. Dane was bored and decided to play a trick on Shane. He told Shane that the family kept him in a clear plastic bubble as a baby, so that he wouldn't fall down and get hurt, or drown when they went to the pool. Dane told him they only took him out to feed and bathe him.
"What happened to my bubble?" Shane asked.
"It popped, because you grew too big."
"Let's buy a bigger one! I want to live in a bubble again."
The story ended with Dane's mother coming over and punishing him for lying to his little brother.

I asked Jame a few questions on the details. He answered them all correctly. Then I confessed:

"That wasn't actually a made up story. Dane and Shane are my brothers, and I helped to trick Shane."

He was amused by this.