My journey of teaching – Inspiring Young Kids
Another one of those discoveries about myself happened during my sophomore year which is my passion for making a difference in younger kids. Upon a volunteering engagement during the spring break at my classmate’s father’s tutoring establishment, “Parinama Academy”, I got an opportunity to act as a teaching assistant to an elementary school kids’ maths class. It was an interesting experience; the kids were smart but very curious. And the challenge was none of
them were focused on the task at hand. I started stepping in and helping with some of the kids’ assignments and sooner, I realized that I actually have a knack for working with kids. I found it very easy to step into their shoes, and relate to them, and by doing so, they started trusting me and through this trust, I was able to get them to focus on the subject matter.
I found the entire experience cute and very rewarding and asked my parents to put in an Ad in the community Facebook pages for a summer job for tutoring. One of the objectives, during last summer, is to start making money to fund my other new passion – Gym and Physical fitness. As luck would have it, we were contacted by 2 families to tutor their 2 kids each (Ages 6-8) over the summer. One of the families asked me to engage their kids throughout the day. The other family asked me to work about couple of hours a week. Thus began my official tutoring engagement.
As a tutor, I found immense joy and purpose in helping kids with Math and English over the summer. Free from the constraints that are imposed upon me during a regular school term, I was able to make time to craft time in preparing a custom syllabus and lesson plan based on each and every kid’s strengths and opportunities. I also supplemented academic work with age appropriate play time. The tailored effort helped to address key gaps in their understanding of current grade-level concepts, thus building the necessary foundation for the upcoming academic year. This approach caught the attention of the parents, and they were very happy with seeing the changes and progress in the kids’ academic skills.
By the end of the summer, one of the families asked me to continue tutoring but due to school and after-school commitments I had to refuse. The other family did ask me to coach the same kids on Tennis which I gladly accepted and thus what started as academic tutoring over the summer continued as coaching tennis for another 6 months or so.
Tutoring during the summer was more than just a summer job earning valuable dollars; it was actually an inspiration for me. Witnessing a child’s face light up when they finally grasp a challenging concept, or when their confidence grows as they master a new skill, is incredibly rewarding. This experience fueled my passion for teaching and mentoring and reinforced the belief that with the right support, every child can excel. As I wrapped up my summer, It was not the dollars in my bank account which mattered much but what really mattered was knowing that
I inspired 4 students to develop a lifelong love for learning. The picture taken (below) shows me and 2 incredible kids I tutored last summer celebrating the end of summer at Pinballz.
