The gift of the tutee

I'm not sure, is that how you spell the word that means the person you are tutoring?  Perhaps, perhaps not, but they are a gift, the people I tutor.

Some of them can be exceptionally frustrating.  I have one student who demands that I do her homework for her (to this I say absolutely not).  I have one student who has told herself so many times that she cannot possibly understand math that she has actually quit trying.  I have one student who started the semester so arrogant about his abilities that he didn't even show up, first test...that arrogance got wiped away in a hurry.

Some of them are real pleasures to work with.  One of them comes prepared with questions, we go through examples and she takes notes.  One of them taught me how to apply the math problem we were working on to biology.  One of them started rough, but seems to be finding her rhythm in Chemistry as well as in working with me.

They all teach me lessons.

I am good at math, physics and chemistry.  I can do almost anything asked of me, but there are those moments.  Those times where "knowing" the material isn't the same as understanding it, isn't the same as teaching it.

I hear the horror stories of the graduate students teaching the lower level math classes.  I hear the panic from the students as they find they don't understand a thing that the instructor is saying.  I try to explain and sometimes, I just can't.  I realize that I don't understand.  I can follow the process, I can address the situation, but I don't understand and it is for the gift of developing understanding that I most want to thank my tutees.

When they ask questions I am forced to look at the process, how is something done, why are we doing it.  Each question brings me closer to understanding what it is that I am trying to teach.

As an example, I prepared to do trig substitutions for my Calculus 2 group because they are hard.  And I went through the process, using the given formulas, but not really understanding why the formulas worked.  The book doesn't explain it very well.  As I was tutoring a girl in trig, I was walking her through the triangle and talking about why the sin and cos and tan can be found when you know only two sides of your right triangle, and as I was talking through it, BAM!!! I saw it.  Why trig substitutions work.  And in that moment  I also understood a little of why it is so hard for the students to get.

The tutee helps me remember the joy of math, the joy of the aha moment and gives me the gift of really having to understand, not just do by rote.  And for all of those things I am truly grateful.

On a side note, it is for this very reason, that I find I most like to explore my spirituality with others.  I want people to push me, to question me, to make me have to explain so that I can grow, so that I can understand what I am talking/thinking about.  I need help motivating myself to do something beyond just doing.  I need community.