I got nice surprise from my director today. It turns out that one of my wife’s relatives, a younger cousin, signed up to attend our school. It seems that the trip to the Korean beef restaurant with their family was a bit of a test to find out more about my school. During the ride to the restaurant they had mentioned that the academy the boy was currently attending had some staffing problems. Foreigners would call off for the day with no advanced warning, leaving classes canceled or substitutes scrambling to cover everything.They decided that the liked what they heard about my school and came to enroll today.
I wasn’t around when they came in for the interview, so I don’t know how well he did. My director mentioned that since my wife plans to tutor him in grammar in addition to his normal academy classes as a supplement, he got bumped up into a more difficult level to push him. He’ll be with students his age that are probably a lot better than he is at the moment. My director said he needed to work hard to keep up. I’m a little surprised at where he ended up, but it might be a case of modeling. If he sees other students working hard, if properly pushed, he can follow their example.
The reason they are interested in enrolling the boy in a harder class to get him up to speed quickly is because of a recent success another family member had following the same model. The boy’s sister recently enrolled at a school that might even be more difficult than where I work when it comes to vocabulary tests. She has to not only memorize fifty words a day, like our students at her age, but she has to memorize the sentences that use them in context. Since she’s been in this school, she’s shot up from the bottom student in her middle school class academically to the top five. Hopefully the boy will follow his sister’s model and kick his bad study habits.
Having been around the boy when he studies, I know some of his quirks and ways he gets out of studying. Water breaks. Bathroom breaks. Hiding books in elevators to "lose" them (!) Unfortunately, I won’t be teaching him in the upcoming semester, so I won’t be able to hold his feet over the fire and turn him around. My coworker will be getting wind of all the stuff he did that our aunt told us about.
I have an interest in seeing the boy improve. Of course I want to help my wife’s family as much as possible. Keeping a watch on a cousin to see that he’s studying is a good start. Also, my director will of course want to bring in good students to the school, so if I’ve got a relative that’s dragging down a class, it reflects badly on the family. Also, the another uncle in the family (his wife zip-locked my wedding buffet) I least get along with happens to be a private math tutor. I’d love to prove I’m working at a good school, or show that foreigners that teach professionally can earn respect.
With all this pressure for the boy to succeed, I’m a little worried that if he doesn’t get put in the right class, or with the right classmates, he’ll give up and make everyone regret the decision to enroll him. It might be for the best that he isn’t in my class. He’ll be less of a distraction for my coworker than me. My director told me "Thank you for recommending the school and getting him to enroll." She seems to think this was my idea. I have no idea why she would think this sort of thing, but if it works out well, I’ll be more than happy to try to take credit for his success.
