Disappointment
I got 2 tuition kids, both studying A lvls, one of which is my new assignment. My students r just like "one east and the other is west"--poles apart, not in terms of standard, but in terms of their mentality and attitude towards work.
My new student (gal) is one who is extremely "siao on"--ethusiastic. The other one (guy) is extremely passive kind. I'm not at all worried abt the gal, cos i feel she got the calibre to get A and since she is so hardworking...i remembered during my 1st lesson wif her, i did prepare some questions (integration) from the ten year series for her to try, cos i want to gauge her standards, but in the end, there's no need for me to discuss those questions wif her, because she had already done them before. in the end, i was bombarded with questions from other schools prelim exam papers like RJC, SAJC etc.....quite stressed for me though...sweat....and next week, she wans me to discuss the whole of Statistics syllabus wif her.....more stressed for me since I've lost touch wif stats for about 1 year.......needa read up liao........
The other student, the guy, is so passive that I'm getting feelings from worried to disappointment. His foundation is already very poor.....imagine someone who gets C6 for E Maths, F9 for A Maths to do Maths C at A level........someone who can't even tell me the values of sin30, cos90, tan45........worse still, sin(A+B) = sin A + sin B..........ln(1) = 1..........cannot even complete the squares.........These are just very few of those many many mistakes he loves to make.....It's not that I've neva taught him how to do all these calculations.....I tried all sorts of means, from drawing, to mnemonics, soft, hard approaches.....Within 1 hr after i taught him, he can remember the stuff, but when i ask him the same questions again a week later during the next lesson, he'll forget everything as if everything is new to him once more.........
However, feelings of disappointment did not arise mainly from there. He is going to take his yr2 promos next week. To help him revise for the exams, I gave him homework for the 1st time---1 question from each topic that is going to be tested. I told him "I reali hope you can try these questions, even though i will not force you to do them, and i noe i cannot force u. If you tried those questions, pls email your solution to me asap so that i can mark them and go thru wif you on sunday when i see you. So you decide the deadline...
"Wednesday" he said.
It's already going to be friday and i've still yet to receive his work.
almost every week, i will ask him before i end each lesson,"so what topic you want me to revise wif u next week?"
he'll always ans,"I'll msg u"
But he never messaged me once....I gotta msg him the day before every lesson......
I'm disappointed, not because I did not do a good job, or i feel indebted to him...Towards him, i always held a clear conscience that i've done my very best....It's his passiveness and his lack of the sense of urgency and concern for his own work and future that reali disappoints me, and slowly, I was convinced that his grades did not improve significantly because he wasn't trying hard enough. I don't believe after nagging someone every week for 1 year, he still cannot tell me wat is the value of sin 60 or tan 30....if he is reali revising and practicing hard enough for his exams next week, he should have lots of questions to want to clarify with me. But i've been waiting for the past 4 days, not a phonecall, sms, or email from him..............I'm reali at my wits end.........can someone offer me some advice?????
I told myself I'm not going to give up on him..............unless he gives up on me, or his family gives up on me because I'm unable to create a miracle.....................