Home Instruction in keeping it postive

Within the NYC school system, there are teachers available to go to the house of a student who cannot come to school - either for a mental, emotional or physical disability.

I had two experiences with home instruction: One was GREAT! (Cannot emphasize that enough); the other was MISERABLE. Actually the people who coordinate home instruction wanted me to work with them full time. I had to turn it down as it was ALL over the educational spectrum - from babies to 21 year olds - all subjects, all types of needs.

I would do this after my regular job - it was supposed to be 2 hours an afternoon - 10 hours a week - to cover ALL subjects. I worked it out with both students/families that I’d come 2.5 hours each day for 4 days a week - same amount of time.

The first student was in Washington Heights. My first thought was a Spanish speaking student. No. He was a bipolar, oppositional young man who was an utter genius. He also had school phobia (actually was fairly agoraphobic at the time).

Since he was quite capable on the computer, we used it a LOT. We had to cover world history, earth science, math, English in the 10 hours. We used videos - he’d tape them from PBS and we’d watch and discuss them. We used software - Sim Earth - to cover almost all of the concepts in the science class. His English speaking, reading and writing were above mine (YEP) that I jettisoned the English part of the program. We would sometimes read the same books and discuss them. Math, ah, that was another story. He hated it and refused to do it. I brought a textbook once - flipped through the pages, gave him problems to do orally every few pages - he did fine.

Before Easter vacation, we went out for a slice of pizza together. I mentioned in passing that when I was his age (14), $1 could buy two slices, the sodas and songs on the juke box. HOW? Over our pizza, I gave him a quick introduction to economics (and this is a kid who hates math… uh, huh). When vacation was over, and I returned to teaching, he sat me down at the computer and showed me what he’d done throughout vacation (remember, bi-polar, manic times…): he’d logged into the e-trade website and took ALL their tutorials. Whew!

After each session, I’d go out to dinner and write notes about what we’d done, what materials we’d used, what parts of the curriculum our work touched on. At the end of the time together I had a BOOK about him. I gave him a copy and turned in a copy to the people in charge of home instruction to show what we’d done.

His father was blown away - “you wrote a book about my son!!”

The other student - I cannot even remember his name or his face. I spent more time with his grandmother, his sister and the little girl his mother was fostering. He and I did NOT get along. Often he’d take an aspirin (for pain) before I’d arrive, then say it was making him too sleepy to work. I tried and tried. I even tried to quit - but it was too late in the semester. At least I was able to get along with all the others in the house… and I did show up each time I was supposed to.

One great, one miserable.