失業了！！

Yesterday Kwan told me that her aunts wanted to be in charges of the English Classes I have been teaching, it means that they are letting me go for good. I believe Kwan has to face a dilemma, on the one hand, he knows that I have paid my very best for the classes, on the other hand, he has to face her aunts' pressure about me keep absenting for classes. To say I have missed a lot of classes deserves some clarifications. Half a year ago, while we were going to watch Toy Story 3, Kwan asked me if I was interested in helping him on a Saturday English class. At that time, I was also looking for a job and as a result we have decided we could see if things can work out. Since I was going there on Sat, I wonder if I could gain more experiences by participating in their daily classes on Tuesday and Thursday. I believed I have missed many classes on Tuesday and Thursday because of different emergencies; nevertheless, in these 6 months I have only missed 2 Saturday classes due to sickness.

To me, my promise to Kwan is on the Saturday classes and going to the tutorial on Tuesday and Thursday is just a win win situation. It is modest to say, considering the time and effort I have paid, I am seriously under paid but it is ok to me because I am willing to learn and I am grateful that they have provided me with rooms to learn from my mistakes. However, it is uncall for to say I am irresponsible and keep missing classes. As I have said you can say I miss classes that I am working as a helper but I have not missed a lot of classes that I am in charge of. Of course, one can say that as a whole you miss a lot of classes, but I do not think it is a right way to evaluate the situation. I sympathy them for the reasosn that Parents might give pressure to the center, even they are wrong, just for instance a student missed 3 classes and they think that the tutorial center is liable to that. At this point, I have asked Kwan to issue a notice to the parents so that they have no excuse for that; Kwan replied me that it was the students' obligation to remember when to go to class. So I think it is unfair to say I make things worst, I am just a part of it.

Undoubtedly, I am not a good daily tutor since the very beginning, I have thought too much while dealing with simple and plain exercises; furthermore, I am quite careless and might not have been behaving like a professional. Despite these setbacks at daily classes, I do not think I have not fulfilled my duties at the Saturday classes, I have been responsible to the students, trying my best to prepare exercises that fit their standard and willing to help the students to grow. Maybe to experiences teachers like Kwan's aunt, three students coming from different schools who have a huge gap of English level is not such a big of a deal; however, as a tutor who have experience only in private tutoring, teaching these students is definitely not easy. It is because, basically all three of them are quite poor in English and it is not exaggerate to say that one of them's English standard is worst than a P1 student in good schools. While the other two are typical students who always want to look for short cuts and unwilling to learn. 

I have been advised a few times that what I have prepared are far too difficult for the students. Saying far too difficult to students is not right, it is better to say, it is  far too difficult for one student and quite ok to the rest. (The other 2 can get 60-70% right answers.) For sure, Kwan has expressed that the weakest one is the biggest client and as a result we have to try to motivate her to learn. The question is: HOW? Putting the weakest girl in the group is like putting a rabbit in the cage of a lion. No matter how, either I have prepared things fitting the weakest link's standard or something that she find it difficult, the result is: the other two finish far quicker than her and she still feels frustrated. I would like to know in the coming future how Kwan's aunt handle the situation, I would love to learn from the experience.

It might be true that I have expected too much form them, I have assumed idealistically that they can benefit from my method, which in fact they cannot. But in these 6 months, whenever I received feedbacks from them, I tried my best to find a better way. Just like for the time being, when we are working on tenses, I ask them to first locate the key word, then find out whether the objective noun is singular or plural and finally base on these information to write the answer. I think it is quite a decent way to learn tenses, because, as far as I can see, most students, even they can accurately locate the common words,  might have written a wrong answer because in chinese we seldom distinguish singular from plural. 

To the end, am I complaining? As a matter of facts, partly, since I am looking for jobs now, I have to be grateful that Kwan and his aunts have taught me a lot; however, I do not think everything they said, especially his aunts' comment is justified. (I know Kwan has been behaving patiently and understandable to me and I deeply appreciate that.) In these few months, since I have to work more carefully on grammar it further polish my English, this is an unexpected result. Anyways, God never closes the door without opening a window for you, living in uncertainty with firm mindset, as I have said before might be the homework God has given me.