Alas, Spring Break Homework!

Miki was in a foul mood today when I went to tutor her. Her ESL teacher had given her, and only her, homework over spring break. It's frustrating enough to have homework during your break, but to be the only one who has to do the homework is just rough. Miki hates homework, so she was really frustrated about it. I think she also may have been embarrassed.

I can understand why her ESL teacher gave her the extra work. Miki is stubbornly resisting learning English, and her ESL teacher just wants to help push her to learn a bit more. But I can also see Miki's point of view - why should she have to do work over spring break if the other students don't have to? It's humiliating.

I remain neutral.

Hurray, Spring Break!

Well, my spring break was last week, but the kids' spring break is coming up soon. Normally, these breaks mean a cut in my tutoring hours, but this time it might not be the case.

Yuki is behind in Algebra because she missed a few days of school when she had orchestra performances. This is made doubly problematic because she wants to take Geometry over the summer to get ahead. Her teacher's opinion is that taking Geometry using the accelerated summer session will be too difficult, perhaps even impossible, for Yuki. I'm not sure how difficult it will be for her, although I'm confident that she can manage if she's willing to work at it.

Anyway, the upshot is that next week, I'll be working a lot with Yuki reviewing Algebra topics. I'm looking forward to this. Yuki is a fast learner, but not as fast as Yosuke. Teaching Yosuke math topics seems almost pointless; he picks up on them immediately and just zooms through the problems. It makes me feel rather superfluous! Yuki, on the other hand, actually needs instruction, but she's not as clueless as Miki. Essentially, she's just right.