Liar Liar Pants on Fire

Hello and welcome 2012! When I started this blog, I intended to post much more frequently, but fall is a slow season for SATs and I haven’t been working that much. But spring is coming and I’m back. With one very difficult student.

When I initially speak to my students (before our first lesson), I tell them to take a practice test before our first meeting. This is helpful in several ways:

1. It gives us a starting point and allows both myself and the student to see improvements.

2. It breaks down the student’s strengths and weaknesses and lets me know which areas to focus on.

So I spoke to my student a week before his first meeting, and told him to take a practice test. He agreed to do so. But immediately prior to our meeting, the results still aren’t online. I text him several reminders in the days leading up to our meeting – nothing. He tells me when we meet that he doesn’t have a login for the website and that’s why he couldn’t put in his answers. But the test is done, right? Yes, he tells me, it’s done.

He cancels our second meeting, and then he has school break and we don’t meet up. During one of the last days of his break, he texts me to ask for his login. I’m not near my computer at the time but tell him to check his email, since I sent him that information a while ago. He tells me later (when I ask) that he deleted that email, and I send it again.

So I remind him again to post his practice test answers before our second meeting. Ten minutes before our meeting, he still hasn’t. He runs into our meeting, and starts telling me that his computer broke, and he know this sounds like an excuse, but he hasn’t been able to get a loaner yet and that’s why he hasn’t put his answers in.

I look at him. “Did you do the test yet?” At this point, I know he hasn’t. Why else would it take him weeks to put in his answers?

He at least has the grace to look sheepish. “No.”

Well then, having his computer wouldn’t really help much, would it? We have a short discussion about how he’s taking the SAT, not me, and so he has to be invested, not me. He promises to do it for next time. We’ll see.

I’m still laughing a bit over how he thought he could fool me into thinking it was done. While I did very well in school and on the SATs, I certainly could have put in more effort than I did, and I came up with every excuse in the book to keep from doing more. One of my favorites (and I still can’t believe my parents fell for this) was when they would tell me to study and I would tell them I would do it later that night, because I would remember the material better “studying closer to the test.”

Helicopter Mom

In my tutoring job, I work with the students one-on-one in their home or school.  Hence, I am tasked with setting up sessions and updating the parents on how it’s going.  Most parents are really easygoing and pose no problems. Then there’s “helicopter mom.”

I was assigned a student for just a few lessons before the SAT. He didn’t live at home with his mom, but she was the contact and I was still supposed to talk to her first. So I call her, maybe around 11 AM, leave a message. She calls me back and immediately asks me what I will be working on with her son. Upon assigning me this student, my supervisor and I had agreed, through email, to talk later that day about his program. So I tell her I will be speaking to my supervisor later about his program, and make up on the spot a few things that I think we could do. I tell her I’ll have a better idea later and ask if I can email her then. She agrees.

I also check with her to see if her son has received his books yet. She tells me he hasn’t. I say I’ll check on that and let her know.

“If he hasn’t received his books yet-”
“He hasn’t! I know he hasn’t, because they don’t have an address to send them to!”

Okay. I call my supervisor repeatedly that day and am not able to get her. So later, around 5 PM, I receive a text message.

“Do not find an email from you was wondering what you learned from supervisor?”

I text her back quickly to say I haven’t spoken to her and will email her later. I email them both later – the mom to explain and my supervisor to say that I urgently need to speak to her.

Next day – text from mom at 11 AM.

“Do you have any information for me regarding tutoring?”

Okay, she knows I’m a grad student so she presumably knows tutoring is not my full-time job. I ignore the text. Later that day my supervisor emails me with a suggested plan for our lessons. I email the mom with this and ask her if she would like to give me her son’s contact information or if she will contact him. Does it surprise anyone that she did not give me his information?

So she speaks to him and I finally get his information. Keep in mind that the contact information for most students is included when we’re given our assignments, especially if they don’t live at home. So I contact the kid, we arrange a time and place to meet, I give him an assignment to do (because the materials did arrive – imagine that!), and we’re all set. Then the mom emails me again.

“The best way to contact [her son] is through his cell.” Well, we’ve already set up a time through email.

Four hours later: “Were you able to reach him to set up a time?” I email her back yes.

Twenty minutes later: “He is going to try to complete the assignment you gave him. He might not be able to – has been very busy with school and transition…blah blah blah.” Why doesn’t he contact me himself and tell me this?

So I meet with her son, and to my great shock she does not email/text/call me five minutes after we finish. In fact, I never heard from her and finally sent her an email after I finished her son’s program, updating her on how it went. Maybe she finally realized that her son is going to college next year and doesn’t need her to manage every aspect of his life anymore.

Welcome

Welcome to my blog.  I am the person behind the score – the SAT score, that is.  I’ve been doing one-on-one SAT tutoring for almost two years now, and have no shortage of entertaining stories and helpful tips.  Along with a hard dose of realism.

Enjoy.