Saturday, June 19, 2010

2010.06.19 — People are Surprising

It has been a while since I've posted anything, anywhere. I have been busy, having begun a second job in late April, as a teacher/tutor to various grades of grade school children in a private school.

This has proven to be very challenging!

And very rewarding, too! I am thoroughly enjoying being around young people. They are mostly keen to learn, and approach life with fresh eyes and minds. This is in completely the opposite of official work, which has become in the last several years increasingly sad as a place to work as the current corporate fad of outsourcing, downsizing, and disorganizing work and work flows is paying off with workers becoming increasingly stressed at their exponentially increasing ineffectuality.

As to my teaching role, my instruction was to teach 'science' grades 7 to 10, and some Arithmetic/Math grades 3 to 12. Given that I last saw grade school in 1979, and elementary school since 1973, this is turning out to take huge amount of work on my part! If only I had been hired as the math teacher, then things would be easy, because math doesn't change whereas school curricula do.

Anyway, I was very surprised, yesterday, when one of the students at the school gave me a thank-you card complete with a $25 Starbucks' gift certificate and very nice comment. Later she told me that she would see me in September, as she was going to Korea for the summer. What blew me away by this, and prompted the blog, was that I considered this student to be one my most difficult. So much so that I fully expected her to tell my employers, whose income depends on keeping kids and their parents happy with the instructors, that she wanted another teacher.

So, I just wanted to say, with joy and deep gratitude, and true surprise, 'Thank you, H. Thank you indeed.' And for far more than the great gift card, but for surprising me.

Have a great summer, and see you in September.