It's called "Reaching Rommel" by Tyler Currie. She describes how she used the power of individual attention to teach Rommel, an illiterate kid, how to read. It will take you around 10 minutes to read it, but it's a nice story for people who are interested in teaching and communicating with people.
I deviously employed this method (headfake!) in tuition today to my new student (replace "student" with "guinea pig").
The lesson started ominously. I felt irritation when my new tuition kid described the blase way that her teacher went through a block test question. He simply said that the question was similar to the one in the notes, and that the class could refer to it in order to understand how to solve it. Well, my tuition kid did not know how to do the question, along with the similarly stumped majority of the class (gnashing of teeth..).
Oh well, we selected a different topic and started. I tried to explain the basics (definitions and formulae) slowly and clearly using the simplest words I could find. I drew some graphs and used some analogies from everyday life. I explained some techniques for solving problems.
We then went through a previously unsolvable block test question for 40 mins. Next, we chose a difficult "three smiley face" question from the notes (I kind of like how the school chooses 3 smiley faces to represent difficult questions..) (Obviously, I'm influenced by a certain prof =) ).
5 minutes passed.
I see her scribbling, making mistakes and correcting them, solving the unknowns. In fact, I was a bit lost following her working (students nowadays use graphic calculators.. ).
"Ey.. is it like this?"
The "ah-ha" moment is doubly "shiok" when you make someone go "ah-ha".
I have not given much tuition over the years, but I am slowly observing some common behavioral trends among supposedly weak students.
They place their handphones beside them during tuition and sometimes check their sms-es (but they don't reply my sms-es within a day when I ask them to tell me how's their studying progress.. ). Immediately after tuition, they inadvertently plonk themselves next to their computer. In case you get your hopes high, they are not doing research on Wikipedia... (I know Wikipedia is only good as a convenient reference.)
They also do not have much basics. They don't remember the definitions, formulae and examples in the notes. I'm not certain whether this is due to the teacher not covering it enough, or whether this is an aftereffect of having goldfish memory from the current technology trends. I term this the "flush after test" syndrome (I'm guilty too!).
They also don't practise enough, or at least, until they are able to solve them without referring too much to the notes.
They are also rather smart (in fact, probably much smarter than me, regardless of the school they are in). Often, they can solve questions in the second hour of the session, without much help, by themselves. I'm probably one of the most horrible people at explaining stuff. I don't think I did anything special. All I did was to to explain the curriculum again.
The funny thing is, they will probably be smarter without their television, computers and handphones.
Hmm.. Suddenly, I find tuition quite fun (besides the additional $$) =) They are experiment subjects! (Sorry, kids!)
