Making the Grade?

I have been tutoring, most recently math an English essay writing.

There is a serious problem

Tutoring keeps turning into therapy or parenting

Mind you A+ students are less likely to be using a tutor, these are students looking for help because they aren't making the grades. But in a one on one setting, on that supports them, geometry that never made sense or writing with figurative language clicks.
My qualm is I spend more of my class time not teaching the material but reassuring them that a bad grade doesn't mean they are worth less or that their writing isn't good, it just means their teachers are looking for something different. They lack academic confidence. It became easy for me to get an A as more and more people told me how smart I was. There was a shift. My expectations of myself changed as my grades went up and they never fell.

Maybe everything in my life turns into a therapy session (daughter of two psychologists) but maybe more young people need someone to address the various reasons they are not succeeding in school. One of my girls doesn't have a lot of friends at school, which means harder to find a study partner (I told her, just ask to study with the smartest person in the class, you will not only soon be beating her, but also probably become friends).

I could go on but the truth is I am so priviledged. My parents made time to help me with homework, wree involved in my education, had the educational background to be able to help me even as I advanced through the years. There are so many factors.

One of my 7th grade students has been in America for 4 years now and has learned English remarkable well. She struggled with using imagery in her writing. But instead of instructing her how to improve that, she was only told to do something about it. So I ask her about a scene she knows well, getting off the bus after school and the walk home in downtown LA. Her personal voice, her experience was overwhelming. She only needed to be asked what she felt like, what she heard, what it felt like before the image was thick in my mind. She is nervous and on edge when she passes an alley or when her heart rate spikes and she feels uncomfortable when men yell at her as they pass in their cars because she is two years older than the other girls in her grade she is friends with and her body shows it.

I only wish I was not told for the first time how important my voice and experiences are in my writing. That they are valid.

So that is what I tell my students. And with this realization, they become more confident in their work, their personal truths on paper, their vulnerability. And they begin to see the academic success they deserve for all the effort they put.