Completion

It is the season of completion, as GCSE students finish, Open University modules conclude and summer holidays come roaring towards us all over the temporal horizon. It's confusing when students finish, because they almost inevitably all become friends to varying degree. The work concludes, the exams are sat, and then you never see them again. This model may have to be changed... The only thing to take away at the tutoring end, hopefully, is a sense that you've done some good and sent someone more peacefully on their path in life.

Yes, completion is in the air, and for every end there is a matching beginning. What will come next? There will be more people to help, more uncertainty and oddities in scheduling, and more crazy problems than you would ever expect. Every person is unique, and problem solved is one that can't be anticipated or duplicated. There is no magic solution, just an endless round of approximating to each individual, and hoping that it will work out okay.

Of course, it's different for longer-term students, at primary school or the beginnings of secondary, as then you have you have much more time to prepare and work with them, and the eventual completion is something which ensues naturally. Ironically, tutoring is as much about deprogramming as it is teaching. Sometimes, people have the weirdest ideas about maths, themselves, and how everything works. You wouldn't think that so much rubbish would still be inculcated and indoctrinated in the modern world, but then until very recently it wasn't obvious quite how much of what we read about the world in the news services is other than wholly accurate...

A sense of completion is upon us. What's next?

O.