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Real Stories from My Years of Teaching and Tutoring
A note about these stories: The situations described in this article come from my real teaching and tutoring experiences. I have purposely omitted students’ names and modified some identifying details to protect their privacy.
Over the years, as both a teacher and a tutor, I have heard many parents describe their children’s academic difficulties in similar ways:
“My child understands everything in class. They just don’t know how to start when they’re working alone.”
“They understand the math. It’s really just the word problems.”
“They were doing well last year. They finished with a 70%, but this year they’re getting 60%. I don’t know what happened.”
“They’re doing well. They just need some help reviewing for the next test.”
Sometimes, that is exactly what is happening.
But often, once I begin working with the student, I discover that the difficulty described by the parent is only what is visible on the surface. There is something else underneath it.
A student struggling with word problems may actually be trying to solve them before fully reading and analyzing the information. A student who needs “a little test review” may know how to reproduce familiar examples without having mastered the concepts behind them. A student with excellent grades may still struggle to move beyond a familiar method. A student who understands a Grade 11 concept may lose marks because foundational mathematics from earlier grades is not secure.
And sometimes, what lies underneath has little to do with the academic concept itself. It may involve study skills, willingness to accept help, motivation, confidence, expectations, or what a student believes they are capable of achieving.
These are some of the situations that have taught me to look beyond the grades.
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“They were doing well last year.”
A parent once explained that their child had finished the previous year with a mark above 70%. The following year, the student’s mark had dropped to around 60%.
What had happened?
An assessment revealed that some foundational algebraic concepts from Grades 8 and 9 had not been mastered. It also showed weaknesses in the student’s study skills.
The 60% was visible.
The underlying difficulties were not.
A grade tells us how a student performed in a particular course at a particular time. It does not tell us exactly which concepts are securely mastered, which remain fragile, or how effectively the student can study and learn independently.
This is particularly important in mathematics and science, where new learning frequently depends on knowledge acquired months or years earlier.
A student may continue progressing while carrying gaps forward. Eventually, the curriculum becomes demanding enough that those gaps become harder to work around.
How tutoring can help
In a situation like this, tutoring cannot begin with the assumption that the current unit is the entire problem.
We need to find out what the student actually understands.
At the same time, subject knowledge may be only part of what needs attention. Learning how to study, organize information, recognize what has not been understood, and prepare independently can be just as important as practising the current course material.
Sometimes the first step toward improving a grade is understanding what lies underneath it.
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“They understand. They just don’t know how to start.”
This is one of the statements I hear most frequently.
But what exactly do we mean when we say that a student understands?
Over the years, I have seen different versions of this situation.
As a teacher, I have watched students working in groups write down a solution reached by a classmate without necessarily understanding all the reasoning that produced it.
As a tutor, I have worked with students who could follow a demonstrated example but struggled to begin independently when the question changed.
I have also encountered students who start reading a problem, recognize something familiar in the first sentence, and immediately begin solving—before they have even finished reading the question.
The question resembles something completed in class, so the student assumes that the same procedure will work.
Then something doesn’t fit.
The data are different.
A value they expected to find is missing.
The information is presented in another form.
And the student stops.
“I don’t know how to do this.”
But at this point, we still don’t know whether the student can solve the problem.
They haven’t finished reading and analyzing it yet.
What we work on in tutoring
The first step is often to slow down.
Read the entire question.
Then ask:
What is happening?
What are you being asked to find?
What information do you have?
Which information is relevant?
How are the quantities related?
What do you already know that could help?
Only then can we decide how to approach the mathematics.
The purpose is not simply to get the student through today’s problem. It is to develop a process the student can eventually use independently.
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“Do I add or divide?”
One student I worked with over several years—from approximately Grade 7 through Grade 11—initially had a very particular way of approaching word problems.
He would look at the numerical information and ask:
“What do I need to do? Do I add or divide?”
He was looking for an arithmetic operation before analyzing the situation.
In tutoring sessions, I did not tell him which operation to use because that was not the purpose of my support.
Instead, I guided him through the process of analyzing the information by asking questions.
What are you trying to find?
What information do you have?
How are the quantities related?
What do you already know that could help?
My role was not to do the thinking for him, but to guide him through the thinking process until he could determine for himself what he needed to do.
This took time.
By around Grade 10, he was no longer automatically jumping to the operation. He had developed a more analytical way of approaching problems.
But that did not mean every difficulty had disappeared.
Other foundational difficulties remained, particularly with fractions and algebra. We worked on these during the summers and reinforced them whenever they appeared in his coursework.
Even during school years when he was not taking mathematics, these skills were still needed in subjects such as chemistry. By Grade 11, when mathematics was again part of his coursework, we continued addressing them alongside the current curriculum.
His progression reminded me that learning is not always a matter of identifying one difficulty, solving it, and moving on.
Different needs can emerge at different stages, and some require sustained work over time.
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“We didn’t do questions like this in class.”
I have encountered another pattern with many different students, particularly during test preparation.
The student can successfully complete questions that resemble the examples completed in class.
Then I change the question.
The concept is the same, but the wording is different. The information may be presented differently, or the student may have to make an additional connection.
The response is often:
“We didn’t do questions like this in class.”
This is an important moment.
Understanding a concept means more than being able to reproduce it in the same form in which it was first learned.
Can the student recognize the concept when the question looks different?
Can they determine which knowledge applies without being told which method to use?
Can they connect ideas?
Can they use what they know in a situation they have not previously seen?
What tutoring may reveal
Sometimes a student who appears to need only test review actually needs to move from familiarity with a procedure to understanding and mastery of the concept.
That means varying the questions, asking why a method works, and providing opportunities to apply the same knowledge in unfamiliar situations.
The goal is not to make the test harder.
It is to determine whether the student can use what they know when the question does not announce exactly what to do.
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“That’s not how we did it in class.”
Not every underlying struggle belongs to a student with low grades.
One student I worked with was an excellent student.
However, he strongly resisted approaches that differed from the method demonstrated in class.
“That’s not how we did it.”
At first, even considering another valid approach was difficult.
This student also had ADHD, which was an important factor for me to consider in understanding how he learned. For this particular student, routine was crucial—even the wording used to present a question could matter.
The classroom method was familiar and trusted. Considering another solution meant moving away from that familiar routine and becoming comfortable with a different way of approaching the same problem.
We worked on this over many sessions.
Could there be another way?
Could two approaches both be valid?
How could we determine whether another strategy works?
What happens if we try your idea?
Gradually, his willingness to consider other approaches increased.
Then came the crucial shift.
He began proposing and testing his own ideas.
What tutoring helped develop
The objective had never been to replace the teacher’s method with mine.
The important achievement was the progression from resisting an unfamiliar approach, to considering it, to eventually generating and testing his own ideas.
This student was already achieving excellent grades.
His grades showed academic achievement. They did not show this particular challenge, nor could they show the significance of the growth that followed.
Sometimes meaningful progress happens in an area a report card does not measure.
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“I know. I can understand it.”
Another student I worked with was very intelligent but was scoring extremely low in Grade 11 mathematics, at times to the point of failing.
Yet accepting that she needed help was difficult.
She knew she was capable.
She took initiative and was known within her school for being helpful and demonstrating leadership. She was accustomed to being the person who helped others.
She also had ADHD.
Her attitude during our sessions was often:
“I know.”
Or:
“I can understand it.”
And she was right.
She could understand it.
But important foundational algebraic knowledge was missing.
Before beginning an assessment, I usually ask students to identify the areas they find challenging. Most students simply tell me during the consultation.
With this student, it was different.
She took the time to reflect on the concepts she found difficult, type a list, and send it to me.
That was significant because acknowledging those difficulties was not easy for her.
Even after sending the list, the resistance did not simply disappear. During our sessions, she would still often try to show me that she already knew or could understand what we were working on.
She was beginning to recognize where she needed help and was able to communicate those needs to me. At the same time, during our sessions, she still felt the need to show me that she knew or could understand the material.
Recognizing the gaps and becoming comfortable receiving help were happening at different rates.
Her ADHD was also important in understanding how she approached learning. Focusing for an extended period on concepts she had missed in earlier grades could become overwhelming. When studying independently, she tended to skim over what had been covered in class rather than stop and work deeply through concepts she did not fully understand.
What tutoring helped change
This was not a quick transformation.
We spent a great deal of time working on foundational algebra, beginning with simplification and solving equations before progressing to quadratics and factoring.
Her grades improved somewhat, but her final Grade 11 mark remained low—around the low 60s.
We continued working on mathematics.
Over time, I began noticing something much more significant in her work.
She was tackling challenging questions and factoring quadratics with a level of understanding and mastery that had not been there before.
She noticed the difference too.
She told me that she now felt much more comfortable in math class because she understood better and could do the questions in class.
Reaching that point took almost a year and a considerable amount of work.
Her achievement was not discovering that she was intelligent. She already knew she was capable.
Part of her progress was academic, but another part was learning to identify what she did not understand, communicate what she needed to work on, and actively participate in addressing those gaps.
Her final Grade 11 mark alone could not show that progression. If we looked only at the low 60s, we would miss the change that was taking place in her understanding and in the way she approached mathematics.
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When the mistake isn’t in the Grade 11 concept
Another Grade 11 student presented a different situation.
We were working on the Grade 11 curriculum, but through our work together—and particularly by reviewing his tests—I began noticing foundational gaps involving fractions, negative numbers, and algebra.
Sometimes, a missing foundational skill would reveal itself unexpectedly in the middle of an otherwise correct approach.
For example, the student might correctly work through an equation until reaching a simple algebraic step such as::
2x = 3
Then, instead of dividing by 2 to isolate x, he might subtract 2.
That told me something very different from simply seeing a wrong final answer.
The student could understand the Grade 11 concept being assessed and know how to approach the problem, yet still lose marks because an earlier mathematical skill needed to complete the solution was not secure.
The same thing could happen when a calculation involved fractions or negative numbers.
This is why reviewing and auditing the student’s actual tests is an important part of our tutoring approach.
The mark tells me how many points were lost.
Looking at the work can help reveal why they were lost.
What tutoring could—and could not—do
During the school year, we continued working on the Grade 11 curriculum while addressing these foundational difficulties as they appeared.
But the gaps were significant, and at the same time we needed to keep pace with the current course.
I explained this to the parent in my reports and discussed it with the student.
I then recommended summer tutoring.
Without the pressure of keeping up with the current curriculum, the summer would have given us time to focus systematically on those missing foundations.
We could have worked on fractions, negative numbers, algebraic expressions, solving equations, and other prerequisite concepts, with the goal of developing understanding and mastery before Grade 12.
The family decided not to continue.
Tutoring had helped identify where many of the errors originated and allowed us to address them as they appeared.
But identifying a gap and developing mastery are not the same thing.
Mastery takes time.
Sometimes the support ends before all of the work that has been identified can be completed.
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“I don’t want tutoring. My mom wants it.”
The decision to begin tutoring can come from the student, but more often, it is initiated by the parent and then discussed with the student. In many cases, the student recognizes the potential benefits and agrees with the parent’s decision.
Sometimes parents decide that their child needs support.
I have had students who initially did not want tutoring but, after attending sessions, began to see its value. Some eventually asked for additional sessions themselves.
At that point, something important had changed.
Tutoring was no longer simply something their parents had arranged. The students had begun to take ownership of it.
But I have also encountered students who remained reluctant to participate.
During the complimentary consultation with a high-school student and his mother, I asked him what he wanted to do after high school.
He didn’t know.
I asked which subjects he liked.
Perhaps science, he said. Then biology.
Why biology?
Because he found it easy.
I ask these questions during consultations because a student’s future interests can help me understand the academic level they may eventually need for postsecondary admission.
Then I asked why he wanted tutoring.
His answer was very clear:
“I don’t want tutoring. My mom wants it. I’m good with my 75%.”
He attended some sessions and skipped others.
When tutoring may not be the first need
There was nothing inherently wrong with being satisfied with 75%.
The issue was that the parent wanted an academic outcome that the student himself did not currently want. He also did not yet know what he wanted to pursue after high school, so he had no personal reason to see a higher mark as necessary.
In this situation, I felt that academic tutoring alone was not necessarily the first need. A coaching conversation around interests, future options, and goals might have helped the student understand why academic improvement could matter to him personally.
Before asking, “How do we raise this mark?”, perhaps the student first needed an opportunity to explore:
What interests me?
What might I want to do after high school?
What will I need to get there?
A tutor can encourage, challenge, and support a student. Sometimes a reluctant student discovers through tutoring that the support is valuable.
But particularly with older students, meaningful progress eventually requires some degree of ownership.
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When tutoring has already changed the student
One student I worked with over several years illustrates another side of tutoring.
When he first came for science tutoring, his marks were low and he had not developed effective learning and study skills.
He was intelligent, but studying was simply not part of his routine. Much of his free time was spent playing sports and being with his friends.
We worked on both the academic material and his learning skills.
His study habits improved.
His marks improved.
We continued the following year with mathematics and later with chemistry and physics.
By Grade 12, he had become a high-achieving student.
His needs had changed. Tutoring was no longer only about helping him catch up or develop study skills; it could now also challenge him and help prepare him for what came after high school.
In Grade 11 physics, he had worked with a very good tutor whose focus was appropriately on the Grade 11 curriculum.
In Grade 12, he began working with another excellent physics tutor.
This tutor also had experience teaching university students. She knew that he planned to pursue engineering, so her approach included not only supporting him with Grade 12 physics but also helping prepare him for the transition to university.
She worked with the strategies used by his classroom teacher while also introducing other valid approaches to solving physics problems.
The intention was not to replace what he was learning in school.
It was to broaden his problem-solving skills, help him become comfortable considering different approaches, and begin preparing him for the greater independence and flexibility he would need at university.
The parent preferred the tutoring to remain more closely aligned with the classroom teacher’s strategy and decided to discontinue the sessions.
What tutoring had already accomplished
Stopping the Grade 12 physics tutoring did not erase what had happened during the preceding years.
The student had progressed from low marks and very limited study habits to stronger learning skills and high academic achievement.
The purpose of tutoring had evolved because the student had evolved.
Initially, the focus was on developing knowledge and learning skills.
By Grade 12, tutoring could also challenge him as a strong student and help prepare him for what would come next.
This experience also reminded me that students, parents, and tutors may not always have the same expectations about what tutoring should accomplish.
Sometimes the immediate priority is the current course.
Sometimes there is also value in looking ahead.
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“Amina, don’t worry. I’m used to these marks.”
Perhaps one of the most memorable students I worked with came to me when he was in Grade 4.
He was receiving Fs in mathematics.
Around Grade 5, his parents had him assessed, and his father told me that the assessment indicated a high IQ. According to the assessment his father described to me, intellectual ability was not the issue, yet it was not translating into academic achievement.
Working with him was challenging.
He did not want to confront the areas he found difficult and resisted moving outside his comfort zone.
At the time, expectations for his academic future were modest. His parents would have been happy simply to see him complete high school.
Progress was slow.
His marks eventually moved from F to D, but reaching the real turning point took two to three years of work.
One day, I asked him to show me a test on which he had received a D. I wanted us to examine his errors and understand what was still causing difficulty.
He looked at me and said:
“Amina, don’t worry. I’m used to these marks.”
That sentence stayed with me.
He wasn’t particularly disappointed by the D.
He had accepted it as normal.
I told him that he was capable of improving, but that improvement would require effort from him as well.
Eventually, he received a C.
He was extremely proud.
He almost couldn’t believe that he had achieved it.
Then he received another C.
This time, his reaction was completely different.
“Amina, I know I can do better.”
That was the real turning point.
The grade was still a C.
What had changed was his expectation of himself.
From that point, I saw a conscious change in his behaviour.
He began completing his homework without being told.
When he did not understand something, he asked for help.
He started putting deliberate effort into his learning.
His marks moved from C to B.
Eventually, they reached A.
But his story did not end with an A in mathematics.
Years later, he graduated from college.
That outcome had once been beyond both his own expectations and those of his parents.
What tutoring contributed
Tutoring was only one part of a much longer journey. Much of the work was academic, but there was also an important coaching element: challenging the expectations he had developed for himself and helping him gradually take greater responsibility for his own progress.
The effort, choices, and persistence that ultimately carried this student forward belonged to him.
What tutoring could provide was instruction, challenge, encouragement, and a consistent message that his current performance did not have to define what he was capable of achieving.
For me, the most important moment in his story was not the A.
It was that second C.
The moment he said:
“I know I can do better.”
The expectation was no longer coming from his parents or from me.
It was coming from him.
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When students discover they can achieve more
I have seen other versions of this change.
One student in an IB program was struggling with intermolecular forces in chemistry. We spent two or three sessions working through the concepts.
She then received a Level 4- on her test.
Her reaction was immediate:
“I can’t believe I got 4-!”
She was genuinely excited. She was already strong in mathematics, but she had not believed that she could achieve this level in chemistry.
For her, that result was evidence that she could achieve more in chemistry than she had believed.
Another student I worked with for two years across mathematics, biology, chemistry, and physics generally earned marks around 70–75%.
She worked hard.
During one chemistry session, I noticed that the way she was processing the questions was actually very good.
What I noticed was that she did not always trust her own reasoning.
I told her what I was observing: she was processing the questions well, but she seemed to second-guess reasoning that was often sound. I thought she was capable of achieving more if she began trusting that reasoning.
By the end of the year, some of her marks had moved into the 80s.
The first time she received an 80%, she was extremely excited.
There was nothing wrong with a 70% or 75%.
What mattered was that she had discovered that the level she had become accustomed to was not necessarily her limit.
Sometimes students quietly develop an idea of what a “normal” mark is for them.
I’m a 60% student.
I’m a 70% student.
I’m not someone who gets 80s.
That expectation can become a ceiling.
The goal should never be to tell every student that only an A represents success.
But neither should we decide too early—or allow students to decide too early—what their limit is.
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So what lies beneath a grade?
These students were very different.
Some were struggling academically.
Some were already high achievers.
Some wanted tutoring.
Some did not.
Some needed foundational knowledge.
Some needed study skills.
Some needed to learn how to analyze a problem before calculating.
Some needed to become comfortable with unfamiliar approaches.
Some needed to recognize what they did not understand and learn to communicate where they needed support.
And some needed to discover that the level of achievement they had become accustomed to was not necessarily their limit.
The parents were different too.
Some wanted immediate improvement in marks.
Some wanted tutoring to remain very closely aligned with classroom methods.
Some continued long enough to see changes that took months or years.
Others chose to stop before all of the identified work could be completed.
These experiences have changed the questions I ask when working with a student.
I don’t only want to know:
What mark is the student getting?
I also want to know:
What does the student actually understand?
Which foundational concepts are secure?
Can the student explain their reasoning?
Can they begin a problem without having an identical example in front of them?
Do they read and analyze before calculating?
Can they recognize a concept when it appears in a different form?
What happens when the familiar procedure doesn’t work?
Can they consider another approach?
Can they test their own ideas?
How do they respond to mistakes?
Do they know how to study?
Can they identify when they need help and communicate what they need?
What do they believe they are capable of achieving?
And does the student see a reason to engage in the learning process?
A grade cannot answer those questions.
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What tutoring can—and cannot—do
These experiences have also taught me to be realistic about tutoring.
Tutoring can help identify missing knowledge.
It can provide time to develop understanding and mastery.
It can help students develop learning and study skills.
It can create a space where a student is expected to explain, analyze, and think rather than simply reproduce an answer.
It can challenge a strong student to consider another perspective.
It can help students learn to identify and communicate what they do not understand.
But tutoring often involves coaching as well as teaching. Sometimes the student does not only need help understanding mathematics, chemistry, or another subject. They may need guidance in how they study, how they approach a difficult problem, how they respond when they make a mistake, how they ask for help, how they set goals, or how they take responsibility for their own learning.
That coaching component can be just as important as the academic instruction. It can help students recognize habits that are holding them back, develop more effective ways of learning, and begin to see possibilities in themselves that they had not previously considered.
But tutoring and coaching are not magic.
Foundational knowledge that has been missing for years cannot necessarily be understood and mastered in a few sessions.
A tutor cannot force a student to want a goal that the student does not value.
And progress requires time, participation, and some degree of alignment between the student, the family, and the tutor about what they are trying to accomplish.
Sometimes progress appears quickly in a mark.
Sometimes the mark takes much longer to change.
Sometimes a student passes a course with a low mark while something much more important is beginning to change underneath: their understanding is becoming stronger, their approach to learning is changing, or they are beginning to take greater ownership of their work.
And sometimes the most meaningful progress is not immediately visible on a report card at all.
It may be the first time a student finishes reading the question before reaching for an operation.
The first time they say:
“Let me try something.”
The first time they accept another approach.
The first time they propose their own.
The first time they identify for themselves what they need to work on.
The first time they ask for help instead of pretending they understand.
The first time they complete their homework without being reminded.
Or the moment a student who has spent years thinking:
“I’m used to these marks.”
finally says:
“I know I can do better.”
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Beyond the grades
Grades matter.
They provide useful information about academic performance.
But they don’t tell the whole story.
A low mark does not tell us why a student is struggling.
A satisfactory mark does not tell us whether important gaps are being carried forward.
And an excellent mark does not mean there is nothing left to develop.
Sometimes the most revealing moment comes when a student encounters something unfamiliar and doesn’t immediately know what to do.
What happens next can tell us a great deal about how that student learns.
If you are a parent reading these stories, perhaps one of them sounds familiar.
If you are a student, perhaps you recognize yourself.
The purpose is not to place students into categories. Two students can show similar behaviours for completely different reasons.
The purpose is to look beneath what is immediately visible and understand what may actually be affecting the student’s learning.
Before deciding what kind of support a student needs, we first need to understand where the difficulty really lies, what strengths the student already brings, what they believe about themselves, and what they need in order to move forward.
For me, that is where meaningful tutoring begins.
Tutoring should not make a student dependent on the tutor. The tutor’s role goes beyond teaching academic content. It also involves guiding, questioning, challenging, encouraging, and supporting students as they grow in the way they think, approach learning, and take ownership of their progress.
Real progress happens when students begin to do on their own what they once needed a tutor’s guidance to do: read the entire question, stop and think, analyze the information, make connections, try an idea, question an answer, recognize when they don’t understand, and ask for help when they need it.
Ultimately, the goal of tutoring is for students to develop the skills, understanding, and confidence to do on their own what they once needed support to do.
You can also explore our other articles on mindset and learning in the STEM TUTOREX blog.