At the end of her last tutoring class in June, I verbalized Jill’s last progress report to her father, outlining her abilities in addition, subtraction, and multiplication. I knew she had improved a lot from my ten months with her, and her father said he saw a lot of visible progress at home.

It caused me to revel in my success as her tutor. I had taken a student who didn’t know enough of this subject, and transformed her into a math prodigy. Well, that may be an overstatement. In reality, it was a coordinated team effort, Jill’s parents helped her at home, she focused on work, and I tutored to the best of my ability. Regardless, my service was free of charge, so it was always nice to see progress; my work was put to productive use.

What was unique about this class, other than it being the last until the next September, was a white envelope Jill reached out to give me as I was about to leave. I accepted it, and opened it to find a hand-drawn Thank You! card. Her father warmly expressed his gratitude for my work, reiterating how well his daughter had improved. Now, I wasn’t the emotional type; I was practical. But practically speaking, this expression of gratitude engrained a life lesson into my mind. Who was I, all this time, to think of tutoring as simply transactional? I wasn’t there just to tutor and leave; I was there to improve Jill academically. My small actions could have tremendous positive effects, and this strengthened my conviction to improve.

Now, it’s the first class in September, and I’m tutoring once again. It’s a recap session, and I go over addition, subtraction, and multiplication. The first two are fine, but it seems Jill struggles with the latter--as if she had forgotten much of the material. From a twelfth grader’s perspective, teaching Jill third grade math when I’ve already taught her how to do it before is no fun task. But what am I here for? Not to be entertained. Remembering the incident in June, I realize things can’t be like this. I’m not going to get annoyed--these thoughts should be chased out of my mind. Instead of worrying about my feelings, I was going to continue to focus my energy on making Jill a better student.