Darwin the Student

I am working. I write and do other tasks for various websites that are governed by a big international directory company (I won't say who, since I don't know what my future blog entries will say about them, good or bad). Sometimes I create the whole thing from scratch, most times I write the filler paragraphs, catchy taglines and teasers. Almost every business I write about in the grand city of Montreal, is French in origin. I mean the owners' and workers' language of choice is French, but they are Quebecois in culture. Doing the write-ups is not so hard, it is the translating and communicating that sometimes gets muddled. Although I would rather be writing novels and bossing myself, I can't really complain too much about my current employment situation.

It was not too long ago that I had a much more unpleasant job. To get by in Montreal those first few months, I took a job with a tutoring company (I won't say who...) who would assign me to several students per week. I actually loved all of my students. For the most part, they were great. However, since this particular tutoring company specialized in helping kids who have either learning disabilities, personal/family problems or social problems (i.e., low self-esteem, etc.) the job soon became a lot more difficult than I'd anticipated. As someone who loves school, I found it frustrating to try to inspire these kids who hated it. And what's worse, I couldn't empathize, I couldn't understand their distaste for homework.

Here is an example of one of my tutoring sessions, taken from my diary at the time. I would estimate the date to have been around November, 2006:

It’s 4:30. I tutor Darwin (name has been changed) at 5:30 but since I need to buy some supplies at the bookstore I will leave now. I brush my teeth, stuff my ears with the little phones attached to my ipod, lock the door and continue down the hallway to our building’s main exit. Then I turn around, unlock our apartment door, and hurriedly grab my suede gloves.

Once I enter Darwin’s house a familiar feeling of frustration washes over me. Darwin is a nice boy, he really is, and I know he means well. But he is not real. He says things that I know are censored, things that do not reflect what is going on in his head. He is passive and submissive and does not think for himself. Or, if he does, he keeps it a secret. At our session today we are tackling French and math.

“So Darwin, when an adjective in French follows a feminine plural noun, what kind of accord must you add to it?”

His eyes barely open, his back curved from his slouching habit, he looks to me like one of the tired men who sit around me on the metro that I take home every night.

“True,” he breathes.

“What? Darwin, pay attention. Ok, what changes do you have to make to the spelling of an adjective if it follows a feminine, plural noun?” I ask.

“Uh… eehmmm… ess?”

Amazed by his ability to articulate sound while his lips remain closed, or barely parted, I almost hesitate before positively reinforcing him.

“Great! Yes, you add an ess, and what else Darwin? I know you know this.” After a huge pause and several other examples I finally give up: “an ee, Darwin, an ee goes on the end of the adjective in this case.”

“Oh ok, yeah, I was gonna say.”

Swallowing my frustration, I steer the session in a different direction. "Get your math book, it's time to find some percentages."

"Um, yeah. I don't know where my duo-tang is," He says.

"Well, I didn't ask for your duo-tang, Darwin, I asked for your math book. The textbook."

"Right, well, I was just sayin'." He gets up and moves to his backpack. He unzips the front and takes out the battered book. He goes through these motions slower than anyone I have ever seen do anything. I sigh.

I open to the first page in his math book's chapter on percentages. I quickly and neatly copy out the first problem. It is a simple one. Starting with a fraction, I clearly write down the four steps it takes me to arrive at a percentage. When I look up at Darwin, he is drawing a pattern of small circles, all connected, on a piece of loose-leaf. They look like fish eggs.

"Darwin, were you watching me?"

"Wha? Oh, yeah, I didn't know you wanted me to."

"Ok, follow this example and try to do a problem on your own." I take out a new piece of paper and line it up beside the one I'd been writing on. I look at the original fraction and add two to the number on top and subtract two from the number on the bottom. So that this second example is no more difficult than the first one I'd taken from the textbook.

"Darwin, listen please. I want you to take this fraction and follow the steps that I went through with this first example, to arrive at a percentage. If you follow each step correctly, you can't go wrong."

"But I don't know why I have to divide the top number by the bottom one. Why? That's how come I can never get this stuff; 'cause nobody ever explains anything." He throws his pencil down, leans back in his chair, and crosses his arms over his chest.

When it is time for me to go I look at Darwin’s thirteen-year-old hands and notice how fleshy they are. They are bigger than mine, and despite my Celtic roots and his Portuguese ones, whiter too. He is still so young, a child in fact. His face expresses exhaustion, although I don’t for the life of me know why, the boy barely used his brain for most of the hour I spent with him, and I can’t imagine he used it much at school today either.