Older Brother?

A few days after I joined ECA, a Counselor sent an e-mail asking for updated information of the tutors, and also asking if someone else was willing to become one. So, since I thought it could be an interesting job (plus the extra money and gaining experience as a teacher) I proposed myself as a tutor. I never got any call, until one HS student approached to me a couple of weeks ago.

I know this kid since I joined school because I gave a workshop on video production to all 9-graders (the idea was making an adaptation of The Oddysey) and obviously he was in that group. As seems to be usual in international schools, kids come from very rich families, some others come from diplomatic missions and some others are here because the Multinational corporation their parents work for pays the tuition. One doesn't have to be a rocket scientist to realise most of these kids are usually spoiled, and have an uptight nose. But some are not, it seems: after the videos were shot and edited (with my help and suggestions) all the kids asked their teacher to call me, because they wanted to thank me for all I did with them and for them. Needless to say, that was too much :-) and some weeks after that, the school organised a concert, and after that concert I stopped by a mall close by to retrieve some money from an ATM machine. On my way to the machine, some of these kids approached to me and said they were going to have dinner at a TGI Friday's and asked me if I wanted to have dinner with them. That dinner was SO nice! I felt I was in High School back again! Of course, after the dinner and all the chit-chat, I made sure all the kids were on their way home with their cauffeurs and bodyguards. This kid I'm tutoring was in that group also

Two weeks ago this guy stopped by my office and asked me if I could tutor him in World History, English and Native Spanish (my favourite subjects in HS) and well, since I didn't know how much a tutor could charge and all that stuff, I asked him to find out at the HS Office and then we'll talk. On the surface, it seems like a pretty good deal -US$ 16 per hour- but hey, it is actually draining my energy; the kid lacks so much family affection and gets very easily distracted, which are direct consequences of the way he was raised -his mom left them when he was a baby and his father is a VERY busy, rich and important lawyer who ocassionally uses his fists to punch him when he gets bad grades .. and this year his grades have been F, D-, D-, D+, C+, C and B so far.

We have gotten very close in a short period of time; One day we were comparing how our childhoods have been somewhat similar (I was not raised by my parents and both of them worked for the national security forces, his friends had bodyguards and I was always escorted to school by a police car) and I also studied at a "different" school (mine was an adventist religious school, despite being the son of an agnostic jew and a catholic that practiced sorcerery) and also about the differences, from racial (he's as venezuelan as an empanada) to cultural to time-differences (I grew up in the last days of the Saudi Venezuela, he did so in the times of the economic mishaps and adjustments of Jaime Lusinchi and Carlos Andrés Pérez) but one day we were chatting on MSN and he asked me if I missed my mom (mom lives in Germany and I haven't seen her in 4.5 years) and, when I replied that I missed her, but not the way one misses a mother he replied "well, I don't know If I am weird or sound childish, but I do miss my mom a lot". That shook my heart . See, I have known him for a year and a half, and how can you imagine a kid who's always hangin' out, being a jackass (and sometimes a jerk) and also the party's soul, saying he misses his mother. G"d, that was too much for me! That sorta provoked parental feelings to blossom in me, definitely. How can one raise a kid that way?

We have been talking a lot about that, but I tend to avoid looking at the downsides of being a poor rich kid and focusing on the good things and always giving him some advice, laughing at his jokes and offering as much support as I can. But I also have a big responsibility, which is making him get better grades -it's not an easy task to accomplish, but we are getting there step by step. Last week he got 7 out of 7 on a World History quiz about the Scramble for Africa, and his teacher was TOTALLY and HAPPILY shocked, and he also got a 6 out of 7 in an English assignment that consisted in learning by heart a short fragment of Macbeth, and reciting it alod. Give me some credit, ad I chose the fragment, read the book and analysed the context with him, and explained him very facts about the European colonisation of Africa in a very colloquial-teenagerish language so he could get the full picture. His father seemed partially satisfied, 'cause he said "Good, but I want to see such kind of grades on your report card". It´s not that simple, because what he had in this subjects was a set of 0s, 1s and 2s (on a scale of 1 to 7)

Another thing that is making this "adventure" interesting is the fact that I kinda feel like a teenager again, hearing all those stories and feeling like when I was and High School, especially all that teenager shallow gossiping (oh, that story of the popped cherry and the girl's bitchy-and-offended mother shocked me!) which I find very amusing, since in my High School years I was a Student Council high profile member and sometimes a nerd (in grades, not in aspect .. I guess). Progress reports are fast approaching, and if he gets good grades, I'm thinking of taking him out, maybe to the movies, maybe to eat french fries (what teenagers only tend to eat) somewhere or something like that. The problem is, How can you compliment a guy that has it all but someone he can just talk to? That is the question, would say my dear Shakespeare. Maybe just continuing being some sort of older brother for him would work. We'll see