“There was an old lady who swallowed a bird;
     How absurd to swallow a bird!
     She swallowed the bird to catch the spider
     That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her!”

Carmen smiles.

I always watch the faces of my students when I’m tutoring. You can see when they understand, or if their words say “yes” while their expression says “what???”

Tristan is starting engineering at university, and maths can often be a big step up from school level. I offer to help him if he runs into problems. He says no. Carmen is two years younger and just starting senior high school. She asks if I can help her. Would I prefer a gruff, 18-year-old boy, or a vivacious 16-year-old girl? Dumb question.

So first of all we start with maths, on something that she’d missed out on somehow:

     Carmen’s bird is reduction of surds;
     How absurd: Reduction of surds!

I always start with what the textbook says. When I go away, they need to understand the texts. It doesn’t help. She just doesn’t get it. Watching such a pretty face being sad hurts me. So we try a different way. Look at the sign of the square root, and multiply it this way. I demonstrate.

Carmen smiles.

It starts with her eyes, crinkling and wrinkling. Then it dances on her lips as it suddenly all makes sense. So quick on the uptake, so happy to discover that something she had thought difficult was just so easy for her. Clever girl, she makes teaching her a delight.

Tutoring is something I do to pay forward - I don’t say that I do it for free, because I am amply repaid by watching understanding grow. Carmen is a bonus. She is just so happy to be learning something new. So we do a bit more maths and a little bit of physics, and I get the reward of watching Carmen’s smile.

Finally, we do Chemistry. Redox reactions cause grief to many a student. They are often badly taught, by teachers and textbooks alike. Clearly, the teacher had missed Carmen on this one. We tried the textbook, but it didn’t help her either. I look at her face and the smile has gone on holiday. Her eyes are wavering - they say “I don’t get it!?” So I just say “Watch where the electrons go!

     Redox reactions are like Carmen’s spider,
     They wriggle and jiggle and tickle inside her!

Carmen watches as I draw a picture and demonstrate how electrons flow, just so, because there is no other place to go. And her smile comes back. Because she knows. In this tiny corner of the chemistry universe, Carmen is now in command.

Carmen smiles.
It starts with her eyes, crinkling and wrinkling.
It wiggles and tickles,
And the smile runs around her face,
And the wriggle and jiggle and tickle inside her
comes out out as a snort then a giggle.

Only a sixteen-year-old girl, halfway between childhood and adult, can make such an uninhibited and surprising sound. No self-consciousness, just the joy of pure surprise. She starts to stifle a snuffled out snort, a laugh, but she can’t hold it back, and out comes that glorious giggle.

“Is that all there is to it?” Carmen ask. “Yup, that’s it.” And off she goes again, face alive as if I’d just given her all the secrets of the universe.

“OK,” I say, “Let's do another one just to be sure you get it.”

I write another example down for her. Carmen picks up the pen and … starts giggling again. There’s no help for her now. End of lesson. End of tutoring. My job with her is done, and although I’ll see Carmen other times, I won’t have the joy of teaching her again. She’s gone past needing me for that. It’s a bit sad, like your child leaving home. But you can’t ever take that smile and that giggle away from me.

     Carmen has conquered reduction of surds,
     No longer absurd, reduction of surds.
     Redox reactions no longer her spider,
     They just bring a smile and a giggle inside her.

 

                                   26 November 2021