Walking in to your first tutoring session, you have so much emotion running through you: nerves, excitement, curiosity, anticipation. You are so excited to meet your new student and you can’t wait to see what the future holds! Walking out of the first session, you know that you can help this student achieve their goals. Not once do you think about how this student is going to affect your life and change you. Well, here’s the truth that I’ve learned: every student will change your life and make you a better person.
Enter Ben. Ben was a junior who needed tutoring for the ACT. Ben was one of my first students and after hearing all about him, I was so excited to work with him! Ben’s mom, however, was a little skeptical. She knew how new I was, and she also knew that Ben needed to do really well on his ACT to get into his top choice schools. My emotions went from excited to extremely nervous. (I mean, no pressure or anything to make sure Ben does really well on his ACT.) Ben and I started working together and it was a perfect match! We worked really well together; he responded well to my teaching techniques and feedback and always did EVERYTHING I asked of him without one ounce of complaining! I was always so excited for Sunday tutoring because I got to work with Ben! To make a long story short: Ben went up 6 points on his first real test, but then went down on his second.
After his second test, Ben, his parents, and I all sat down and had an amazing talk. We knew Ben was capable of surpassing his highest score, and he really needed to get one point higher to be a “shoo-in” to his top choice school. Ben was on board! He said he would do whatever it took to get that extra point. And if he didn’t get it in June, he would try again in September. Ben worked his tail off prepping for the June test, even with the load of finals weighing on him. But again, not one complaint came out of his mouth. A few weeks ago I got a phone call from Ben’s mom. I had been having dreams about Ben’s ACT scores - clearly I couldn’t wait to hear what she said. She told me that Ben had gone up two additional points from his first real test, raising his total score increase to 8 points - above and beyond what he needed to get into his top choice school. Then she started talking about how I have changed Ben’s life. She said that a year ago, she never thought that any of this was possible for Ben, but that we proved her wrong! Hearing her say all these wonderful things brought tears to my eyes. It was nice to hear how I had affected Ben’s life, but what about how he changed mine?
Ben made me realize why I love my job so much! He made me realize that life is all about the hard work you put into it. There’s no such thing as an easy path, and if there were, I wouldn’t want to take it. Ben and I worked so hard to achieve the impossible. The road was tough at times, but man does it feel good to look back and say, “We did that!”
Lauren Feldmann, Staff Development Assistant
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