Whenever I meet a new student, I will always ask for their most recent exam papers. There’s several reasons why I would want to see their past exam papers and I will attempt to list them out here.

1. To make small talk and build rapport

I find that to make a student care about his results, you have to somehow make them like you as a tutor. It will make things a lot easier with this basic relationship issue settled. If ‘like’ is too strong a word, at least they mustn’t dislike you. I’ve seen a lot of students who complained that this teacher and that teacher slighted them, and always picks on them, hence they refuse to do well in the subject that is taught by the same teacher. It’s silly to think like that since the one who is really suffering is the student, but you can’t deny that powerful logic to ‘take revenge’ on the hated teacher. I had a student that had this kind of warped thinking and I had to re-wire his thinking to this: ‘Take revenge’ on the teacher on doing exceedingly well, so well that the teacher had to eat back his words. It’s not for the best intention but it does produce the correct outcome. I guess I would have to content myself with that.

While browsing through the exam papers, I will make small talk. I’ll ask what sort of cca (co-curriculum activities) did they participate in school. The point here is to find out similarities and definitely not to judge. I’ll play the role of the listener and ask several open ended questions and hear them talk about themselves. It’ll ease the discomfort of meeting a stranger for the first time (this is more for me than for them, haha) and a good mentor-student relationship just makes the whole journey easier in the future.

2. To find out if the student is weak because he has poor time management

By looking at the marks allocated for each question, usually listed in front of the exam paper, I can see if the student has poor time management. If that’s the case, you’ll see that the first few questions are near full marks but as we go down the questions, the marks can lesser and lesser and you see a few zero at the back. Then as you flipped to the answer scripts itself, you’ll see that the zeroes are left blank. Sometimes it could be the whole question that is left undone.

There’s another reason for this, and that’s a lack of stamina. Usually I’ll see IP (integrated programme) students having this issue. They can more and more tired and eventually crash out. The correct prescription for this is to teach them efficient ways of doing the same problem, and also lots of drilling with time trial to improve the speed, and lastly some exam skills like doing the easy questions first, cutting losses etc. Usually such cases of students having poor time management is very rare, at least not for the first time of meeting me.

3. To find out if the student has content gaps that I will have to fill in

Here you’ll see that the student has plenty of time, so much that he might be falling asleep during the exams. You’ll notice that the marks are usually low, and here and there you’ll find zeroes. As you flip to the answer scripts, you’ll see that there’s a lot of blanks with no attempt to do any because the student don’t know how. This type of problem forms the majority of the students that I tutor.
​
It’s also easiest to solve. I just need to write down the topics that the students have problems with, go through the content one topic at a time until completion. Usually there’ll be a massive improvement in the exam results, usually from like a F to a B kind of jump. By then, I will usually have another problem at hand, which is time management and I covered that in point 2. Hence, a student having time management as a problem is a better student than having a one who has content gaps. It’s much harder to solve time management issues, from my experience.

4. To assess the school’s level of difficulty

Not all schools have the same level of difficulty. Generally all girls school set crazily difficult papers and branded schools usually set the easier papers (and follow syllabus closely) as compared to neighbourhood schools. It’s important to find out the level of difficulty of the school so as to tailor the correct level of teaching to the students. For students that comes from school that set more difficult papers, I have to teach the content from Level 1 all the way to level 3. Generally level 1 is basic formulaic questions, level 2 requires some application and is harder, while level 3 requires cross topic integration (like a question that involves both trigonometry and vectors). The minimum level is level 2, and usually because of time constraints, that is all that is needed. We can worry about level 3 type of problems when we settled all topics up to level 2.
 

It looks like a lot of work, but most of it is done subconsciously and it wouldn’t take more than 5 minutes to form a quick general assessment. I think like a doctor, tutors need to do this physical examination to assess the problems so that the correct medication and prescription can be given. With 2 hours a week for tuition lessons, not a lot of time can be wasted.

I was reading this graduation speech by DJ Patil, U.S chief data scientist, for the graduation batch in the University of Maryland. It was very inspirational so I had to share this together with my thoughts. You can read it fully here. 

One particular paragraph strikes a chord with me. This is it:

"As I looked around at everyone else nodding along with the instructor (including my girlfriend), it dawned on me, I hadn’t failed because of the teachers or the material. No, I failed because I didn’t try. I didn’t even put my self in a position to fail."

I observed this happening to a lot of very weak students. How weak is considered very weak? Basically there are two types of students who are weak. One type are the ones who wanted to do well but somehow the knowledge acquisition is problematic. It's either the school or the home environment is too non-conducive to studying, or just studying skills, or lack of understanding of content. This is easy to solve for me, because at least the motivation to do well is there. I can work on this type of weak students.

Then there is the other type - the ones who are very weak because they simply do not care how they do. It's very very difficult for me as a tutor to work on such students because our goals are simply not aligned. You might ask why a student would have such behaviour and lack of motivation to do well. I believe it's a defense mechanism to isolate their ego from suffering further heart aches from failure. It takes several years of failing consistently to have such hardened students. The thinking is that since I'm going to fail anyway, what's the point of trying to study? And for some reason they want to try to study, and the results is still the same dismaying F, then the action and rewards simply favour not doing anything. Over time, this behaviour is reinforced until we have this type of students who do not care about their results at all.


The symptoms are describedbelow:
1. Empty blanks in the exam. A lot of them will leave maybe 50% or more of the paper blank.

2. Half hearted attempt. The default action is to skip the question, so any perceived difficulty in a question will result in the question being skipped. A long question (with many sentences and description) will be skipped. A question with difficult words will be skipped. A question without diagram will be skipped. A complex looking equation in the question will be skipped.

3. Sleeping during exams. Or going to the toilet frequently (if that is allowed). 


There could be more, but you get the idea. The point is that it's very hard to help such students. Usually they are forced by their parents to attend tuition, which is always a bad sign for me. And frequently it's too late also. Such cases take the most effort and energy from me, and it's not about the teaching part that sucks up energy, it's actually the motivation part. 

As much as I expect all students to come in all motivated and ready to learn, I know that kind of scenario is too idealistic. Maybe that happens 2 out of 10 times only. If I'm lucky.  Most likely, I will have to provide that motivation too, besides the teaching. Thus my job to teach is multifaceted - I have to be the cheer leader, a psychiatrist, a slave driver, a disciplinarian, a teacher, a friend, a mentor... I think almost like a second parent. Is grades so important that we have to focus so much energy  (and money) to get it? No, grades are not important, but a person's resilience against failure and want of success is. It's so important that it will affect their self esteem and how they navigate the failures that they will definitely face in their lives.

It's very easy to blame them and say that the students are not motivated, so how can I teach them when they are not interested? But I think it's important to own the problem. Even the problem with them being unmotivated IS my problem. How can I engage them further? How can I make them care? How can I introduce small success to make them want more? How can I make them like me so much that they won't want to disappoint me by failing? These kind of things made up the bulk of the mental work I'm doing as a tutor. Teaching is the easy part, while this motivational business is not. A lot of it is based on trial and error - if it fails to work, I'll try another way. After 12 yrs doing this, I'm still relatively clueless on whether I can motivate a student successfully. The chances are definitely far from 100%.

This particular year, I have 3 such students, which is quite a lot for a year. Usually I have only 1 such case per year! 1 is already passing, after failing for 4 years in secondary school. 2 of them is still in limbo land, and the national exams are coming in 2 to 4 weeks time.

​
I'm going to try harder to make them try harder.

Recently, I made acquaintance with a long time student of mine that I taught way back in 2006. He had since become a private tutor like me. Back then he was a chubby kid who is bright and always very inquisitive. I met him up this year for lunch and we kept in contact ever since. He’ll sometimes text me to ask for my feedback and advice on stuff related to students and work in general. All in all, a nice feeling to this because I see that I did help him in some meaningful ways or another.

Just yesterday, he texted me and told me an incident with a student that left him very distraught. The student killed an ant and he told me that he was so upset with the whole incident that he didn’t talk for 5 mins. I guess it’s his way of mourning over the passing of a life so carelessly and needlessly taken away. 

And then he told me it was me who taught him to value the life of an ant back way when I taught him as a student.

Frankly, I couldn’t remember that incident. I have a habit of asking students not to kill ants when I see them crawling over their textbooks or notebooks. For my student, he reminded me that he was going to kill it with liquid paper but I told him not to do it. I vaguely recalled that he was toying with the life of a sentient being and I was disgusted with that attitude, so I had this huge  argument with him over it.  However, he told me recently that it took him nearly 10 years to learn the lesson.

I’m both proud and humbled by this incident. As teachers or tutors, we have to be careful of what we say and how we treat others. Eventually the integration and trigonometry that we teach the students will be long forgotten, but the values and the life lessons will remain. Well, at least some of it,  and to some people. Ultimately, we need to show more love at the end of the day.

I’ll continue doing what I do – changing the world one student at a time.

It's exam season now.

Generally I love this time of the year. Why? You see students, especially graduating students, who are a lot more serious than usual because of the impending exams. That bout of seriousness mixed with desperation can work wonders for their results, enabling them to do things outside their normal range of studying. During this time of the year, I will have more quality questions asked, which is way more challenging (and fun) for me instead of the usual level 1 type of recall and remember questions.

Another reason why I like this time of the year is because I generally have an easier time when tutoring. Easier is a relative term here. I remember when I was younger tutor, this is an especially stressful time. Students start to do their  past year exam papers and the typically harder prelim papers. What if I didn't know how to do them? What if I taught them the wrong things? All these tend to make me prepare a lot more in advance, in case I let my students down. But I think all these 'over-preparation' stands in good stead now, because after doing so many prelim questions in the past, I generally know what's the trick to doing them, so it became progressively less stressful to handle them should they arise during the tuition session. 

It's funny how things that were once stressful for me turns out to be easy now. I guess that works for life in general. Practice (the right things) and it'll tend to get better with time.

The last reason, albeit a more selfish one, is that I finally get to 'smell' the end of my work season. Being a tutor is feast-famine kind of job, I feel. When I work, I really work 7 days a week. When I slack, I'll have months of (relatively) free time in my hands to do the stuff that I want.  I guess months and months of stretching myself work-wise does take a toll on me. I generally get more tired towards the end of the year and couldn't wait for my graduating students to take their exams so that I can relax a lot more. Then I'll have, hopefully, a few more weeks of rest before I tackle the new work year again.

For all the students taking their exams, study hard and savour the experience. You probably won't believe me, but it's quite a luxury being able to study. It's one of the more enjoyable time in your life, save the occasionally exam stress, where you don't have to deal with those 'adult' problems. All in due time, so enjoy while you can. You won't get another chance like that again.

I recently came to know of a practice by certain tutors who claimed to have a guaranteed policy in their students' results. I highly disapprove of it; I'm not the one sitting for the exams, so how can I guarantee something that I cannot control entirely? 

My student came from a 'neighborhood' jc. When she tried to contact that tutor, she was asked which jc she came from. After she replied, that's it - no more replies from that tutor even after repeatedly attempts. From what I experienced, if someone slowed down their pace of reply, that means that they are not interested. You don't even have to say "Nope, I'm not interested, sorry!", even though that would certainly be more civil and polite. My poor student ended up wondering if it's because of her 'neighborhood' status that made that tutor reply in this shoddy and rude manner.

If that's the way tutors guaranteed good results, by pre-selecting students, then I would rather not guarantee anything. Since there's no records to show others, there'll be no need to give a pre-intake test or a pre-questionaire to find out which school you're from, and all the other 'pre-s' to select the good students from the 'bad' ones. 

I thought the point here is to make bad students better, not just to make good students the best? Maybe it's me who is delusional here.

I'm not idealistic. I realised that a 'bad' student can be emotionally very draining. I can't have 100% of my students like that, because I'll burn out! But the chances of having this is so slim, that if you're to take a normal work year, chances are that you'll have a majority being 'okay' students, and very few 'very good' and 'very bad' students under your care. Nature has a way of normalising your cohort of students. Good students are easier to teach, but 'bad' ones are the ones that will truly fine tune your teaching skills, your communication skills, your patience, your way of looking at things and your assumptions. Best of all, if you pull it off, they are the ones that will be the most memorable to you and the most rewarding. 

Still not convinced? How about this - they are the ones that will refer you like you're some tuition god, because that's what they see you as!

The mid year exams are just over and the results of my students start streaming in one by one.

There are two particular students that I wanted to compare because it's very interesting. Both of them just passed them exams, about 50% plus minus. One is a he, and the other a she. She just passed and I felt very happy for her. Why? She had not passed this subject throughout her entire upper sec and now she passed. And I only had 4 lessons with her to top it up. I always felt that this girl is not very confident about herself, and the best way to boost her confidence is to let her experience small successes. Every small little time that she did better than her previous attempt will contribute to a great way towards her overall self confidence. I felt happy for her.

The boy, even though he shared almost the same grade as the girl, evoked a different sort of feeling from me. He is over confident, and he didn't even study for his exams. He proudly told me even though he didn't study, he still passed his exams. Wow...imagine what kind of results he will get if he studies. He saw his grades for the exams but I only saw the missed potential. What a waste! If only he could spend that effort to better his results, it'll do wonders! I felt a tinge of regret and loss for him. It's as if someone threw a perfectly okay carton of soya bean milk down the drain even though it's still way before the expiry date.

So there you are, two similar grades and quite different feelings with regards to them. 

Why did I feel this way? I realised I don't really look at the results, but more at the attitude. When all these exams are done and over, the attitude that made the students persevere will certainly persist long after the contents had been long forgotten. And that's why it's not okay for a student who had the potential to do better but just passes his exam, and yet it's okay for another student to pass her exams when all her life she had failed previously.

No exams mean the same thing for different person, even if they have the same grades.

Been extremely busy preparing my students for the final leg of their journey, which is their national exams. First, there's a batch of Sec 1 to 3 students who had finished their final year exams, then almost immediately it's followed by the O'lvls, then A'lvls and finally the IB exams. It's a busy October period, where my work peaks as usual. But this year is especially busy because I took up more than my usual slots for graduating students. But more of that in another post.

In this post, I want to express how I feel during this time of the year. Usually my year will end with my graduating students finishing their exams, and some of them will continue with JC while others go to polytechnic. I'm always kind of emo when they left. It's like you've interacted with them, known their pain and happiness and was together with them as they go through their toughest period in their student life. And then the national exams come, and soon they'll be gone.

It's always interesting teaching my 'old' students because for some of them, I've taught them at least 3-6 years. I always end up wondering what happens if the following year, there's no more 'such' students. But as I look back and reflect when the year ends, I'm glad to say that there's always a few interesting students who brighten up my work and make some of the longest days more bearable. It could be the things that happened in their life that they kindly shared with me, or it could be their quirks that I can joke about and jab them (or they to me). Either way, it's the familiarity and the relationship built up over the years mugging and learning together.

When this current batch of graduating student leave, as always, I'll wonder if next year I'll get another batch of students as interesting as this current batch. 

I really hope the answer is always a resounding YES.

I think by now you should have read this post about a tutor who earns $10k a month. Most of what is mentioned in the article is quite true and I can vouch for its accuracy. Who don't want to earn $10k/month, given a choice? But here's some comments on it though, before you quit your job to become a Super Tutor.