Brandy

I’d like to think that I’m the perfect tutor for every kid, but every once in a while I have to give up one of my students. Today I think I found a replacement tutor for a girl I’ve been working with for the past couple of months.

“Brandy” and I met last spring when she took an SAT class I was teaching. I was really impressed that this group of disadvantaged students had given up their spring break to take this free course. But Brandy was a different story. She never looked that committed. Instead, she chatted with the other kids and acted disruptive. And she was so grossly overweight that everything seemed to exhaust her. On the last day when I proctored a practice test, she left halfway through. I figured I’d never see her again.

But over the summer, I got a call saying she wanted one-on-one SAT tutoring. Her grandparents’ house where she lives is in such a bad section of Oakland that we agreed to meet at a Starbucks downtown.

Brandy didn’t show up for our first session. At our second and third sessions Brandy left after 45 minutes to catch her bus. (A typical session is 90 minutes long) But she told me that she really wanted my help. She said needed to score at least 1000 (out of 2400) on the SAT so she could get into the college of her choice.

I asked her to get a practice ACT from her school and see if she liked it. She claimed her school didn’t have any (most schools do). Finally, I loaned her a test prep book that I never saw again. She said she took it and liked it better than the SAT. So I asked her to buy a copy of the book for her own use. She never did. Finally, I bought one from Amazon and said she could pay me back. On Monday, she told me that she signed up for the SAT instead.

“And now my college counselor said I only need a score of 850.” Brandy said. “And I already did better than that on the practice test this spring!” Why was I here?

“Well… how’s school going?” I asked.

“Oh, it’s fine. I just have to pass Algebra to graduate. I failed it last year but I didn’t like my teacher.”

“If you need to pass that class to graduate, maybe we should be doing math tutoring. It’ll probably help your SAT math score too.” Brandy agreed.

I was embarrassed, but I knew I needed to talk to my boss about the situation.

“Did she ever do the homework you assigned?” he asked.

“Well, she said she did, but then she’d forget to bring it…”

“I probably would’ve been a bit harder on her. Usually, if a student doesn’t do the homework, I say that I have to leave but still charge them for the session.”

“I know. I remember you telling us that at our training meeting… I just didn’t know how to handle this situation… Usually I meet students at home and I can tell if they’ve done the work. But since we were meeting at a café…” My boss agreed that it was a tough situation. “It’s hard when students don’t have parents to support them. It really shows.”

“You know, her grandparents aren’t even paying. Brandy’s supposed to be paying for this herself. Although… I think we’re never going to get much payment from her. Anyway, if she needs remedial math, maybe we should have another tutor help her. We don’t have a lot of tutors like you who can do test prep so we should match you with a new kid.” We agreed to reassign her to a new tutor we just hired.

So why do I feel so guilty?? I tried to help this kid, but I don’t feel like I did a very good job. I should’ve been harder on her. I shouldn’t have cancelled those two sessions when my car broke down. My boss probably doesn’t think poorly of me – I’m the one who brought the problem to his attention in the first place.

I manage to help the majority of the students I work with… but the minority… well, some of them have been minorities. Last year there was a Latina middle school student who I finally had to “fire.” She just wasn’t doing the work. There have been rich kids who haven’t done the work too… but they didn’t bother me as much.

I just hate the idea that these kids and I can’t relate to each other. I hate the idea that I see myself as some sort of savior who they need to rescue them from their lives. I really hate the idea that maybe I’m just a white, upper-class, boarding school WASP who takes it too easy on them out of some kind of misplaced racial guilt.

Still… I did manage to teach her how to take the square root of 125…