bringing out the tutor in me.

(Almost a year has passed since INTARMED 2011 was offered the opportunity to tutor graders from a nearby public school. Little did we know then that what we took to be tedious pedagogy actually teemed with something much more than what it seemed, like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon.)

At first, it was nothing else but a whim. We have readily accepted a deal from our PI 100 professor that the final exams would be scrapped, provided we spend the rest of our five-week academic summer tutoring elementary public school kids. Which is not bad, I initially thought, doing the ABCs and 123s sans the teacher’s uniform. For three hours each week, you get to Aurora A. Quezon Elementary School, meet your tutee, engage yourself in an hour or so of droning (and sometimes even playing), leave promptly and afterwards feel free to strut your own stuff, period. What’s more is that you aren’t facing any genuine pressures: You are told to teach on specific learning areas, literacy in particular, and according to a specified manner, but that’s just about it. It’s really all up to you to play the game and you even get to do it at your own convenience. Plus, you skip the finals!

No sweat.

Inasmuch as everyone would have liked the entire duration of their tutorials to be like that – almost perfect and ultimately effortless – I must admit that the whole thing would have already turned mechanical in nature by then. Our tutees would have been like programmed machines, not normal children, whom we expect to absorb quickly and completely anything we teach them. But since this didn’t happen (it never happened!) and because teaching is never a smooth and hurdle-free process especially if one’s wards proved to be a challenge, tutoring time eventually brought out the teacher, nay, tutor, in each one of us.

When I first met 10-year old Renand LeAngelo “Gello” Manuel, I found myself wondering how I would fare in this meager test of mentorship. Fortunately I needn’t worry further for his positive attitude was all I needed to push myself off the diving board. Comparing him with the rest, he would have scarcely been a red mark if others were a pain in the neck, judging from the horrendous accounts of some of my classmates who seemed on the verge of giving up. We began our journey together through session after session of spelling quizzes, vocabulary enrichments, grammar lessons, letter-writing and storytelling; and before I knew it, I was connecting with him, establishing rapport and thoroughly enjoying myself as well.

Enjoyment perhaps stemmed from the fact that you get to become an enlightened person. You do not merely teach; you observe, you feel and you learn as well. For me, keenly observing my tutee while working on an assigned task allowed me to closely monitor his progress and spot any potential difficulties. What greater joy is there than seeing him fix his own errors, sometimes without any help at all? It is in cases like this that I’d applaud his feat and encourage him to do more.

I was also able to detect any possible areas of difficulty via observing his attitudes and reactions towards a certain topic, feeling his elation while beaming after a “Very Good” mark or his frustration while silently groaning over an extraordinarily mind-wrenching lesson. I once read that children do better when praises are heaped upon them, and I readily made sure I was generous in doing so. As for waterloos, I reckoned spending more time on the topic would suffice, coupled with the right teaching strategies, constant practice via exercises, and utmost determination.

But the road to comprehension also had its own share of bugbears. Many sacrifices had to be made on my part, like taking time out for one hour and a half appointments or so of tutorials when I could be comfortably ensconced at home reviewing my lessons. It also meant following strict priorities and studying at a pace twice faster so as to be able to tutor freely without dreading the premonition of failing a major exam hours later. More importantly, it required a really long patience. This translated to maintaining a great degree of self-control, keeping one’s cool and trying hard to calm down whenever you feel that enough explanations and examples have been given yet your tutee still seemed confused. Most of all, I was taught a thing or two about punctuality. My tutee definitely didn’t encounter this problem for he just lived blocks away from school. But me who had to come all the way from Binondo (okay, it’s not that far) had to try beating the usual morning jam, even getting red-faced one time when upon arriving, my tutee approached me and said that he thought “I wouldn’t be able to come” because he had already been waiting for almost half an hour! That, I guess, is another hard-earned lesson for good old tardy me.

Yet these are just some of the trivialities. On a much wider scale, tutoring opened my eyes to the more startling reality that is the educational system in public schools. Whereas we tutors naturally have free access to the place, we were sometimes forced to do our tutoring under the shade of some tree, or worse yet, under the scorching heat of the sun due to lack of available classrooms. Other facilities are just as deplorable: The absence of a canteen is decidedly obvious, poor ventilation marked the onslaught of furious fanning and odorous restrooms kept us from properly responding to nature’s call. But the worst situation would have to be education in itself. One classmate of mine was shocked out of her wits upon learning that her tutee, an incoming sixth grader, could hardly master the alphabet! This awakened me to the alarming truth that if we were to be tutors, then we really have to do some SERIOUS tutoring, albeit to the best of our capabilities, and make the most of our stint for the kids’ sake.

With this thought at hand, I believe the experience made me see life from a perspective that is totally brand new. It put into a different light my being fortunate for having had a stable educational background, going to good schools and sufficiently armed with knowledge for later life. Even more than that, it redefined the meaning of “carpe diem” – seizing the day – by making us realize that the best way to spend one’s day, or summer in this case, is through reaching out to others in need. I guess that instead of taking the PI finals, it was all tutoring could do to be a much worthy alternative because sure enough, and I say it once more, it brought out the teacher in me.

Hmm…I think I’ll have to make that “tutor”.

Postscript: Being one of the tutors of these children cannot make me any prouder than I am now. Two months after our encounter with these kids, we learned that freshly honed, they aced an aptitude exam given by the city government as a standard check on the quality of education in public schools. Ah, the wonders of teaching. I mean, tutoring.