I had come to tutoring through a long history of volunteering and decided, last October, that I wanted to return to those roots.  I looked up volunteer opportunities in Cambridge and found the Cambridge Public Library Literacy Project.  Through them, I met my student, I’ll call her A, an Ethiopian immigrant who had only rudimentary English skills at best.

We began working together once a week and I was overflowing with pride at the thought that I’d be able to tangibly give someone the tools to fundamentally change their life.  After one lesson, though, I realized I was in way over my head.  I had never taught English and quickly found that I had absolutely no tools to explain our fair language’s most basic grammatical concepts without entering a vicious downward spiral of nonsense. Decidedly at a loss, I asked her to meet me twice a week instead of the originally-planned once a week, on the off chance that a constant stream of this nonsense would eventually become sensical to her.

The fact that now, 10 months later, she can speak almost error-free and has the confidence to retire her mother’s medical interpreter means she found some way to understand what I’m still piecing together.  Bless the hearts of all the ESL teachers out there.

“A” worked with me twice a week without fail, showing up on time and prepared to every single lesson.  Then, as managing Veritas Tutors became busier and busier and I looked for ways to shed any other responsibilities, I contemplated asking her to return to once a week.  Right as I was about to suggest that to her, I was somehow possessed to suggest that we meet three times a week.  That didn’t go as planned.

Then I realized why: she is the perfect student.  As ancient Indian lore surrounding teacher-student relationships says, the teacher is helpless to say no to the perfect student.

Over the last 10 months, “A” has shown me what a perfect student is.  It’s not just that she shows up on time with everything done, or that she goes above and beyond every single week, or that she manages to get mountains of homework done in the less than 24 hours between some of our meetings, or even that she cooked me a delicious Easter feast.

It’s more than that; it’s what’s motivating all of that.  “A” has a hunger to learn and a dependence on me to teach her.  I haven’t EVER seen this kind of hunger in an SAT student or a business school admissions candidate.  There are never any excuses with “A” about why something isn’t done or why she can’t make an appointment because this is something that she craves more than anything.

That desire to learn and dependence on me to teach her makes me helpless to do anything but give her all the attention that I can.  On days when I’m not in the office, or feeling under the weather, something draws me back there for our 5PM meetings.  I feel like I could be on the other side of the world, but still would be teleported back for that sacred hour of instruction.

“A” continually thanks me, but I haven’t yet been able to convey to her that she has taught me something just as great as a new language in a foreign land.  She has taught me how to really be a student.