Everyday Canvas

First Job

Write about your first job and what it taught you.

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My first job, so to speak, was tutoring a ten year-old neighbor's child who was attending a very strict private school. It seemed she was doomed to fail and the parents didn't know what to do. At the time, I was in jr. high and her mother asked my mother if she'd let me go over her child's work and tutor her, so at least she wouldn't fail everything. Also, that kid really liked me and was delighted at the idea, and I had the reputation of a good student. So, I did tutor her in everything, which started my at-home tutoring career that lasted until I finished the Uni., only because the girl not only passed that year, she also got very good marks on her report card at the end.

This incident became the talk of the neighborhood and people began bringing their kids to me. As to the first girl I tutored, I later realized she needed a one-on-one type of teaching because she had a serious attention deficit, which the schools at the time had no inkling of. I learned a lot from tutoring her, more than what she learned from me. Then, I used that experience as information in my later work, and I also got a teaching license which I used for only a short time in a high-school sr. class, in which the kids were deemed to be disturbed or low-functioning. At the end of the year, my students got very high grades in my subject.

After that, however, I'd had it with tutoring and teaching and branched into other areas. Plus, I also got married then, and my husband who was in mental health, warned me of the toll this type of a job (i.e. teaching) would take on me, especially in the long run. I sometimes wonder if I would still have stayed in teaching, if I hadn't met him at that time.

All these tutoring experiences helped me a lot in my life especially when raising my own kids. I could see why they did not succeed up to par or why they did so well. In most their cases, their relationships with the classroom teachers became the key, but luckily neither had to repeat a grade or get too low a mark in any one subject.

I think teaching/tutoring is an underrated profession and, to this day, no one takes into account the drainage in a teacher's health; physical or mental. Thus, some school districts just employ anyone who knows something about any subject as teachers for the lack of quality teachers. Teaching is much more than the bland information on any one subject. It has to do with relating to the students, and not just some but all of them.


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