Delusion-Elle

Before I launch into the real point of this blog post, I just want to take the time to congratulate the LA Kings on their 2012 Stanley Cup championship! I managed to catch the second half of the game, and it looked like the Kings were in the process of dominating the entire game. It looks like they did. What a fantastic story, knocking out the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd seeds in the West, all to bring the Cup home in a Game 6 win! The Devils put up a good fight in Games 4 and 5, but they weren't able to carry that momentum into Game 6. And apparently Darryl Sutter can smile, after all.

Right, so the school year is winding down for all the high school kiddies and classes are officially over now! For J2, the little eighth grader, she is done with her final exams as well. However, for J1, the exams are just beginning. As a tenth grader in BC, he will be writing provincial exams for English, Math, and Science this month. For me, this means that my tutoring him has become a daily activity, though the time spent with him each day is only an hour.

Daily tutoring is a good thing for J1, I think. It guarantees at least one hour of being exposed to English -- granted, it is my English, though I do like to think that my English is pretty darn alright -- and it allows me to get a better idea of how he is doing. Back when I was just seeing him for 2 hours a week for Math and English, he insisted constantly that he did not need my help. Math hour would be spent with me offering to help him if need be, and he would, more often than not, not ask for my help. I thought this fair given that the majority of his Math homework looked to be right (more ticks than x's), and when I assigned extra questions for him to do in anticipation of his provincial, he did them and, though he seemed to dawdle and yap to me at the same time, he would do the questions and they would be mostly right. It seemed to me that the only problem he had was with getting his answers boiled down to the simplest form (i.e. 4/4 = 1). English hour would be spent working on a particular assignment J1 had gotten or with J1 reading a novel for school. Granted, a lot of J1's English time with me was monopolized by J2's constant need for my help in various courses, and before I began to see J1 every day, I had been assured by J1 that (despite his shoddy writing) he was doing well in his English course. Yes, I did question this, but I did not go beyond raising a furtive eyebrow; it is not all that uncommon that I disagree with an English teacher's marking style. And yes, I admit that I'm not all that confident in my own English abilities, especially when it comes to editing and discerning the quality of someone else's work.

All of this aside, now that I see J1 every day, I get a much more accurate view of how he's doing in school. What I've realized isn't really surprising, I suppose, but it is still jarring. J1 knows that his English skills are not good, and he is embarrassed because of it. This embarrassment, I'm guessing, is what pushes him to lie to me about how well -- or rather how poorly -- he is doing in his courses. The signs were there: the vague letter grades, the laziness when it came to finishing math problems, his inability to explain why he liked a book beyond "it was good and funny", the fact that he doesn't keep any of his school assignments, the friend he says who will mark his practice English exams. But the root of the issue is not that his English skills are not up to snuff. Nah, I knew in my heart of hearts about that months ago. What I am taking issue with is the fact that he has been lying to me.

Again, I know that I shouldn't be surprised. He is, after all, male, and goodness knows that men are afraid of women laughing at them and failure. I suppose that I have to make him see that I am his tutor. I am merely a tool in his toolbox full of implements for academic success. I am not here to undermine him, nor do I want to. I derive little to no pleasure from seeing him flounder in English. And to bring it to a more personal level, I don't want to feel like I'm robbing his parents blind. When I was helping his sister, sure, I could watch over him and make sure that he was doing his homework, and that was okay, I thought, as J2 really needed my help (anyone who fails 3 grade 8 course desperately needs help, I feel). But I digress. Lying to me is not helping himself in any way, and he needs to understand that. Yes, I'm sure that there is an issue of pride here. But does he not want to get better marks? Does he not want to improve his English? Herein lies the problem: no, he doesn't.

The thing is that this goes beyond just English. I noticed part of a practice Science provincial that J1's teacher had asked the class to work on and the mark he had gotten was 15/30. When I picked this up and asked him what this was, he tried to justify the mark by saying that when he was working on it, he had just guessed the answers, and that he hadn't been trying. Why wouldn't he try? Doing more practice problems could only benefit him. Did he not know that? Did he think that the teacher just gave the questions to him for no reason?

Alright, so my experience with tutors is itself very limited. I only ever had a tutor (beyond all the RCM stuff) for Math 200, and that was because I was failing. I so desperately needed a tutor because I didn't understand what was going on in the course and I was scared, so very very scared. There was no pride left in me, at least in regards to Calculus. I was okay with the fact that people from my high school who I had never thought to be very good at math were doing noticeably better than me. I didn't care that my tutor was probably confused as to why I was so confused. All I knew was that I had to get help, and the only way for me to get any honest help was to be honest myself.

The crux of it all is the lack of drive for self-betterment. I think that he knows that his skills are lacking, but is he actively trying to improve them? No. So how do you inspire someone to want to do better -- not just for marks, oh no, some teachers hand those out pell-mell, but rather for themselves?