Conclusion

I know it's been close to two years since I've last posted here. I haven't forgotten about this blog; I've just lost the drive to keep writing in it.

I started experiencing burnout, causing frustrations to mount. I didn't want to turn the blog into nothing but a stream of complaints about my work, so I just stopped posting. It was a good decision.

I should have stopped tutoring, but I kept thinking that I could overcome the burnout, that I'd be refreshed after summer vacation... winter vacation... spring vacation... My frustrations never stopped, and my work has suffered for it. I'll be finished tutoring for good in a month and a half, so I'm trying to make it until then.

I'm preparing for my trip to Japan in August. I'm hopeful that I'll enjoy teaching in a classroom setting more than teaching one-to-one. I'm going to start a new blog to share the experience with everyone - it'll be much better than this one. There will be more to write about - not just work, but the places I go and the people I meet - and pictures! Look forward to it.

Please, Just Follow the Directions and Write

New approach to getting Yosuke to write: I'll do the assignment myself to show him what the writing should look like, and he can use my example as a model to follow. (Up until now, I've only been doing outlines for him and have helped him brainstorm ideas. I guess he needs even more help, even though these assignments are so easy.)

I'm at my wit's end trying to get him to follow the directions - he just refuses to write the correct thing, causing him to rewrite these very simple assignments over and over - so I'm hoping this solution works.

It took me about ten minutes to write something he's spent hours on and still hasn't produced anything anywhere near acceptable. I know he's ESL, but I could have written the same thing in Japanese in thirty minutes. And that includes the time I spent revising.

So, has Japan produced a country of literate citizens who are unable to write?

Sorry for the harsh tone. I had a horrible day, and I haven't recovered yet.

Natsu

It's been a busy month! I've been too tired to do much blogging. Yosuke's summer classes have been placing more and more demands on my time, and now I'm tutoring him about 22-24 hours per week! Miki's tutoring sessions have been unofficially put on hold because her older sister, Natsu, is struggling with her English I online summer course. I've been working with Natsu 5-6 hours per week.

I enjoy teaching Yosuke, and the time flies by. But Natsu is so utterly different. She's prone to painfully long bouts of silence in which she is unable to speak a word. I don't know if this is due to painful shyness, fear of making mistakes, or adolescent sullenness (or perhaps some lethal combination of these factors).

My first impression was of sullenness, as she would just stare at the paper with what seems like an insolent look (although it's difficult to see through the long hair draped in front of her face). Later, I began to expect that a fear of mistakes was keeping her mute. The only sentences she speaks or writes are surprisingly well constructed. She clearly has a high level of standards.

In that sense, she reminds me of myself when I was learning Japanese. Until I studied abroad and was forced outside of my comfort level, I would only reply to questions in Japanese after carefully formulating a response in my head. As a result, I rarely spoke up in class, and the students more willing to take chances progressed faster.

I haven't decided what Natsu's problem is, and she has resisted my questions when I've asked her about it (just as she resists all other questions - I have to ask about five questions or more before I am able to get a response).

While I find myself dreading our sessions, I always manage to be positive and hopeful. After all, my initial sessions with Miki weren't enjoyable, but once she opened up and I got to know her, they became fun.

Summer School Update

I haven't had time to post recently. Last week especially was rather hectic. It was the first week of summer school, and both Yosuke and I were overwhelmed by the fast pace. Miki's sister is also taking a summer class - English I - and I helped her out substantially as well. I found out that she has a different tutor; I was only helping out because her regular tutor was on vacation. However, her mother has asked me to continue helping her occasionally after I finish tutoring Miki, so it may become a regular thing.

I'm enjoying the extra work and the challenges. There is one downside: Yosuke's Algebra 2 teacher is neither intelligent nor helpful. It would be manageable if she was one of the two, but the combination is lethal. Her online course is riddled with both errors and technical problems, and she is of little help resolving these. I don't have time for any specifics at the moment, but maybe I'll be able to post a list of her shameful failures later. I'm happy to say, though, that I'm enjoying the summer courses overall.

Algebra II Nostalgia

Yosuke's summer Algebra II class is nostalgic; it reminds me of when I took Algebra II over the summer. It was the summer before my freshman year at high school. I took it over three weeks at Duke University through the TiP program. At the time, it felt helplessly over my head. I honestly believed that I had reached my "math limit" and was incapable of learning the material. In the end, though, I managed to grasp the concepts, and I even scored 97 on the EOC.

Now I see myself in Yosuke, who was able to yawn his way through his regular math classes. He's struggling with Algebra II, and I can even sense a bit of hopelessness in him. I'm glad I'm here to help him, though, so he doesn't have to struggle by himself.

...
Well, he has to struggle by himself a little. We spent a long time working on this problem, and he's close to figuring it out. I left before we finished, asking him to try and complete it on his own.

Here is the problem:
1. You scored 92 and 90 on the first two tests. There is one more test. What range of grades should you get on the third test for your average to be between 88 and 93?
2. Repeat #1, only this time the third test counts twice as much as the other tests.

Yosuke worked out #1 with a bit of help from me. I recognized that the second problem is more difficult, but I didn't think he would have as much trouble with it as he did. I gave him several hints, but finally I just had to leave him to work it out on his own. I want to help him, but I can't just tell him the answer, so I had to leave him struggling and feeling helpless. This is going to be a rough summer for both of us!

A Fine Balance

I had a good day yesterday. We've had several rough sessions recently, but yesterday Yosuke seemed able to think and learn.

This is good news for me because I find myself unable to teach him when he can't think. When he doesn't think, "teaching" would consist of just telling him the answers, just explaining the author's purpose and meaning. That's both dishonest (he should be doing the work himself) and unproductive (he can't really absorb that much information). When he's thinking, though, I'm happy to give him some of the answers. I don't expect him to understand 100% of the material by himself.

On the other hand, my presence seems superfluous if he understands everything already without my hints and directing questions.

Yesterday was the perfect mix of understanding and confusion that allowed me to smoothly lead him to comprehension. It was one of the (sadly rare) tutoring sessions where I could walk away with the feeling that I had clearly made a difference in Yosuke's academic success.

Cultural Barriers to Understanding

I had the most infuriating tutoring session last night. Yosuke had to read a speech by JFK for his English II class, and I wanted to make sure he understood this important quote from it: "The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened." He didn't understand what it meant, and it became clear that he had no concept of 'rights.'

So I gave examples - voting, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc - and went into detail about freedom of speech. After a while, he interrupted me saying that he didn't believe that rights exist. Puzzled, I asked him to explain, and he said it was because "everyone makes mistakes." I had to emphasize, again, that 'right' doesn't just mean 'correct' and resumed my explanation.

He told me he disagreed with the freedom of speech because people might yell or say inappropriate things. I told him it was okay to disagree; I just wanted him to understand what rights are. And yet he continued to argue that they don't exist. I still don't think he understands what a right is. It took an hour and a half to read about three paragraphs of the speech.

It's probably not his fault. That a sixteen-year-old can have no concept of human rights can only be a result of the group-minded Japanese society. Individual rights are not important in Japan, and Yosuke's stubborn indifference to them illustrates this. Japan and the US seem so alike to me sometimes that I tend to forget how huge some differences really are. (Did you know that in Japan, you are presumed guilty until proven innocent? And proving innocence is prohibitively difficult as the court system is nothing but a farce.)

I find myself in a difficult position - I need to help Yosuke understand this speech, but the ideas in it are completely alien to him.