For the past week, I am quite upset over my students’ results. 🙁

I was even wondering should i write this post. Oh well, life always has its ups and downs and there is always something to learn from the failures. I always tell my students that failures are launching pads to greater success. But when failures hit my own flesh this time, i just feel like hiding under my blanket and hibernate.  Haha.

My tuition career has been smooth sailing for the past 7 years. Students just keep coming through students or parents referrals and from this web page ( as a result of sharing some of my resources). My classes are always full and i have long waiting list every year. Hence, perhaps i become complacent. It has been a while that I work on new teaching resources. Especially for sec 3 and 4, I have been drilling students on ten year series and other school papers for the past years. It yielded good results. But this year, I didn’t seem to work so far. I have several new upper secondary students this year. Their foundation is really weak and they are not motivated. Some of them just failed their mid year exams. I felt so discouraged maybe because this had not happen before in my tuition journey. I also felt helpless because I do not know how to make them retain the knowledge they pick up during the lessons. I usually test my students the concepts they learned during the lesson before they leave. This is to ensure they understood the mistakes and is able to do their corrections. But some of the students can come back next week totally forgotten what was covered last week. 🙁

I question myself “Am I not coaching well enough?”. Especially, social media shows me frequently how many tuition centres state they have SPECIAL and PROVEN sets of methodologies to help students score well in exams. WAH.  After talking to some parents, MOE teacher friends and friends who are also in the tuition business, I have concluded that most of these centres indeed have good set of education systems or programs but unfortunately we are dealing with people. There is no one size fits all. Educators must constantly fine tuned and even customize their methods to help each student do well. The basics of doing well in examinations is still understanding concepts and practice for knowledge retention. Some parents infact assured me that they have been centre-hopping to find which set of methodology suit their child. Haha. I really thank God for such parents. They take responsibility when their child didn’t perform instead of blaming the tutor who only see their child 2hrs every week. I am very blessed. So far, i have not met any parent who blame me when the kids dont do well or even ‘hint’ that.

I am discouraged partly also I fear that these students will ruin my reputation. Sorry for being real. Haha. My husband reminded me all my students come from God and He will bring students to me because I am a blessing to them. Awwww. My husband also reminded me that I am responsible to coach them in the best way I can BUT I should not be accountable for their results. These statements put my heart and mind in the right perspective.

My husband then asked me some questions and prayed over me. God is so good. I woke up the next morning knowing this set back will be a launching step to greater success. He put in my heart a idea of re-enforcing certain mathematics concepts to these weaker students. I am generating some new teaching materials to coach these students and I believe and pray that they will benefit from it and improve. I am declaring this in faith and looking forward to my testimony at the end of the year. Amen!

Below are some of the screenshots of some students doing well. Actually, MOST of my students did well. Its only a minority that didnt improve and yet Im quite discouraged over this. Hee. 

You can see from some of the screenshots below that some of them are not scoring distinctions (yet) but I want to celebrate their achievement. Jumping from a F9 to B4, scoring 20+ to 40+ are achievements worth celebrating to me.

 

 

To all my sec 4 students/Parents reading this, sec 4 runway is shorter and lets work HARD together for the next few months! No more lips service hor! 🙂