My Unconventional Teacher
In your life, there are only a few people who have the ability to touch your heart and make you reevaluate the way you see and live your life. I was fortunate enough to be taught that my freshman year of college by an unlikely source.
It was the first day of scheduled tutoring, and my first day working with the Organization School on Wheels. After I patiently waited in the silence of the library for a few minutes, the regional director approached me with a not so eager looking boy. Although he stood taller than me at 5’5, he had a boyish demeanor, with big brown eyes that looked up only to say, “Hi,” when introduced. Little did I know this homeless 13 year old boy would teach me something more valuable than I could teach him.
The first few sessions were rough, and I quickly learned how much of a disparity there was in his knowledge compared to what they required him to know in class. Finding the hypotenuse served to be a challenge, and SOA CAH TOA equated to learning Greek. With every, “I don’t know,” passing his lips, he sounded more defeated, and I was afraid sooner than later, he would eventually give up completely out of exhaustion and confusion. Soon his dreams of playing USC football would escape just because he couldn’t understand the concepts to pass the 8th grade.
The fact he was homeless put him at a disadvantage to his classmates. Homeless students are more likely to fall behind for the obvious reason. They move too often to stick to a single curriculum, they are often put in the lower-division classes because of this, and most teachers don’t or can’t give them the necessary attention to catch them up. While the standard student goes to school and builds upon previous concepts, my student was more concerned where he was going to sleep that night, than abstract mathematical concepts. The moving disrupted his learning, and with a new school every few months, he hardly had time to grasp the concepts before solidifying them. Teachers quickly became unpleasant figures as they would brush him off as being stupid or lazy and hardly went out of their way to ask what was wrong.
But while he struggled with the technical computations this boy spoke with the intelligence of an old gentleman. He held the door and never once spoke out of line due to frustration. He was the most endearing when his eyes lit up after he understood a new concept, and felt heavy when the day mistreated him. I didn’t see a disadvantaged person, but instead a boy with a heart of gold, and a drive to change his situation. He talked about his future house, buffet-style meals that a king would envy, and how happy he would be “once he grew up.”
In one tutoring session, I suggested that we get a snack while we waited for his mom to pick him up. I’ll never forget the look in his eyes when I bought him Yogurtland. To most of us the four dollar frozen yogurt adorned by our favorite toppings satiates our sweet tooth without breaking the bank, but to this little boy it was more than frozen yogurt. He thanked me incessantly, and proudly displayed it to his mother when she picked him up. “Look what she got me.” He marveled at the swirls and toppings, barely touching his crafted master piece, and that’s when it hit me; because while I helped him learn mathematical concepts, he gave me a new perspective on life.
He taught me to think, and think again before blaming anyone for their actions. To first consider that their actions could not be because of their own person, but perhaps due to some bigger situation they can’t control. He pushed me to find happiness in the smallest things, and showed me that it is okay to say, “I don’t know.” But more than anything, he taught me that exceptional people are always around us, it just takes a little dusting to find that diamond in the rough.