Writes of Passage

Anyone who knows me at all well knows that I am allergic to mornings. However, since I have been informed that probably no one reads this blog except for some former students I feel it is important to note that point. (I won’t mention the son who said that by name, but you probably can guess.) I’ve even become such a complete night owl since I retired that I have never even bothered to learn how to set the new alarm clocks we got for Christmas at least three years ago.

Obviously, it is a hurdle to get up, dressed appropriately and to the school where I tutor by 7:45 a.m. Add to that misery that I face math groups for the first hour and one-half, those mornings display a true testament to my built-in teaching gene that kicks into gear once I get a whiff of a school.

Nevertheless, it has been a thrill to find out that third and fourth-grade math wasn’t beyond my ability level after all, although the vernacular has changed dramatically. For example, one problem we had to solve was:

5     3    1    4   7   6   2   9   — Find the compatible numbers and get the total of this series.

Now I ask you, don’t those numbers all look compatible to you? I find them not only that but also quite friendly.*

Plowing through the questions has gotten progressively easier once I learned the terminology, which is a good thing for those kids since the person who is supposed to make the answer keys for me has never remembered to do it even once. To think I was afraid of this? Ha! I am breaking my arm patting myself on the back for my brilliance as a math tutor, albeit one with eyes half open.

Oh, the kids have been precious. With my whiteboard marker, I explained a problem on the wall tiles when a little light bulb went off in one of the slower learners in my group of slow learners. From not understanding the problem at all, I suddenly heard little Pablo “see” what the answer would be.

“OCHO!” he shouted.

I was so proud, and I’m not sure it was only of Pablo. For that one moment, that child wasn’t left behind.

If you are one of the faithful readers of this life story, you will remember that I had to pay $47.95 to have my fingerprints done. There was a little issue of needing school supplies — pencils, erasers, and highlighters the first week — and some professional looking attire since I live in jeans and tee’s, but what the heck. I was getting paid for this after all.

Today I got an email telling me that the teachers have decided they want to keep their kids in class for the next two weeks to prepare for the STAAR test themselves. Thank you for your service, and hopefully, you will want to tutor again next year! I had to grab my calendar to double check what my brain was already clicking like an antique adding machine.

Yes, I have actually tutored SEVEN whole times. Using my newly discovered mental math skills, I figured that this experience has been a net loss financially. However, I can feel satisfaction that all I lost is money. What I gained has value beyond measure:

Multiplication tables no longer scare me.

* Compatible numbers are all those that will add up to ten. You do this problem in your head to find a solution without pencil and paper. What’s left after you get all the groups of tens is added to the total making this answer _______.

The first thing I noticed entering the elementary school with my brain engaged in a teacher mentality mode was not the size of the students. As a grandmother of two, that is already a part of my visual repertoire. What was the real shocker is the size of the table and chairs they expect me to use, followed closely by the darling bulletin boards that cover parts of every classrooms’ walls.

Since this is spring, there seems to be an overload of really smart bunnies making all sorts of points. I assume that other animals are equally as intelligent pointing out parts of speech or math tips in other seasons, but in April it is bunnies.

Full disclosure: I went years without ever adorning the cork area in my journalism classroom until one day my teacher evaluation had written at the bottom, “Do something about that bulletin board.” So I did.

“Journalism Brings the World to Your Doorstep,” complete with punch out lettering and a big cardboard globe bought from a teacher supply store, added to the educational experience in my classroom. I thought it was brilliant. The blessing was that I only had one, small little space to fill, so my brainstorm didn’t really have to cover much area and was so generic it worked for every class I taught-for the next 20 years.

Clearly this is why I was attracted to high school education, not elementary. After only two weeks as a tutor, I’m on overload from bunnies and cute bulletin boards.

Luckily I get a break from them for the 1.5 hours of the day when my little math groups meet at a tiny table with little child-sized chairs placed in an exit area of the hall. I carefully explain the problems using whiteboard markers on the wall’s subway tiles, wiping as I go with paper towels from the nearby restroom.

It is amazing what you can do on subway tiles. I need to send this decorating tip to HGTV.

With my knees bent up hitting the table edge, we “borrow one” and “carry the two” along with other basic math concepts right there on the wall. I continue to amaze myself at how brilliant they make me look. And to think, I was worried about doing math!

Of course, I’ve carefully worked every problem on that day’s worksheet the night before, using a calculator, but I always take pie while it’s passing. This pie just happens to up my math cred.

My next hop is over to the other side of the building for science and reading. I swear those bulletin board bunnies are alive since they seemingly are multiplying every week.

In science, we are exploring the vores — omni, herbi and carni types. Sadly this little group is all giggly girls who find the food chain of life only as interesting as it applies to today’s school lunch menu. They love to play “try to distract the teacher,” a game that I know all too well. In fact, I think I was a pro player in when I was a student, especially in math classes.

Just in case you are interested, a bunny is a herbivore. But despite the rumor that carrots improve your eyesight, I assure you that the ones eating carrots don’t look any cuter to me.

If I had to take the math courses that are required to graduate from high school now, I would have been a drop-out. We won’t even mention college. Instead, I was raised in a kinder, gentler time that accepted I was a right-brained wonder and had graduation plans at both levels of education that allowed me to by-pass all those nasty sines and quotients and still give my parents the thrill of seeing me in a mortar board and gown. Three times!

In case you are wondering how I managed that, it was simple: four years of high school Spanish and three years in college (plus advanced placement credit) was an accepted substitute for advanced math and science. And by advanced, I mean anything past Algebra 1 and Geometry.

Obviously, this wasn’t a great educational plan since I can’t speak Spanish today, but at the time, I was hablo-ing like a native. At least, that is what I convinced my parents.

I tell you  all this so you will understand why I told the little elementary school where I am now a Title 1 Tutor that I was not prepared to do math at all on any level. Just glancing at the grandson’s homework over the years was almost enough to cause me to mail back my diplomas.Without stuttering, I told them this in plain and simple English when they were hiring me. Everyone, especially me, understood that I was going to tutor reading and vocabulary.

After all I went through to get approved to tutor, the first week I was ready the school was having some sort of testing and the little sweeties wouldn’t have been able to come let me enlighten them on how to take the next round of testing. Finally, after almost six weeks of rigamarole to get there, I was asked to come in this last Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.

Except there was no school Friday. Oh, and then something else was happening Wednesday, so how about just Thursday?

New badge proudly around my neck, I arrived at 8 a.m. to learn they had assigned me to, (you saw this coming didn’t you?) three grades of math -third, fourth, and fifth – plus a science class.

Oh, and  next week there is more testing so I can’t go back to tutor until April. They agreed to get the answer keys ready to all the math questions that I am supposed to use to help the kids prepare by then.  Like having the answer key is going to help. In my old math books, the answers were in the back and I still couldn’t work the problems.

The only saving grace to this situation is that the school has mostly a Hispanic population. Maybe before this is all over I can brush up on my rusty Spanish.

Comprende?