I am not a Tutor

A Critical Reflection on Illich, Remen, and Calderon.

What?

For nursing students, it is common for people to ask why we want to pursue nursing. Some students explain that they want to become nurses because they want to be in the medical field, have nurses in the family, or even had good experiences in the hospital. But what I commonly hear from a lot of aspiring nurses is that they enjoy helping people. It is true that many individuals need help, but by acknowledging they need help we put them under the category of “other”. In “Helping, Fixing, or Serving” Rachel Remen states,

“Helping is not a relationship between equals. A helper may see others as weaker than we are, needier than they are, and people often feel this inequality. The danger in helping is that we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity or even wholeness.”

Remen brings to light a new meaning to “helping others”. Remen’s writing also describes how “fixing” people further deems individuals as lesser and “broken”, while serving people is seeing them as equals. Ideally, serving people consists of a deeper understanding of the similarities and differences people share yet Ivan Illich’s, “To Hell with Good Intentions”, explains that Americans should not help Mexico due to a barrier in cultural understanding. Illich states,

“You are ultimately -consciously or unconsciously- “salesmen” for a delusive ballet in the ideas of democracy, equal opportunity and free enterprise among people who haven’t the possibility of profiting from these.” (2)

Throughout history, the United States is known to “help” and be involved in foreign affairs. Even on our own soil, Americans forced Native Americans to assimilate due to their beliefs that it was helping their population. Many individuals go to Mexico to “help” the people when in actuality, a language barrier and cultural differences hinder Americans from truly understanding the people. Illich strongly condemns Americans from continuing to help Mexico due to the privilege Americans have and inability to truly conceptualize the situation of poverty in Mexico. Serving individuals displays greater empathy for others, rather than simply helping.

So What?

My community partner is Catholic Charities Kids Club. My service consists of helping first through fifth graders with homework and listening to their reading skills. The program was created to help students in this area lessen the achievement gap due to coming from families that speak Spanish as their first language. When I visit my community partner every week I honestly feel like I am mainly there just to help the students out with their homework. Some students talk to me about toys they like and invite me to play games with them, but I feel like I will never be able to know what their lives at home are truly like.

Since I have been a student for most of my life, helping these students is a very different experience for me. I believe that my role is supposed to be a tutor to these students but I am not comfortable being deemed as just a tutor. I follow the daily goal for each student to complete their homework and reading, but I also make sure I speak to the students in a friendly tone rather than an authoritative one. I choose to treat the students this way mainly by Calderon’s statement of “Through perspective-taking, we can better comprehend and appreciate each other’s differences in order to find our commonalities” (2).

I am still a student just like these students are. I had one student who had an extremely hard time focusing on his homework. It took me a while to think about what can I do to have him complete his homework. I then thought, “What would make me want to finish my homework?” I decided to remind him how he would be able to play right after he completes his homework and it worked! He took this as a challenge and even made a bet that he could finish his work in under five minutes. He was completely focused and I saw him answer all the questions thoughtfully and correctly in silence. After this, he had to read for 20 minutes alone but he insisted on wanting to read to me. While he read to me, I can tell he enjoyed reading out loud from having different voices for each character in his book. This moment will always be a highlight during my service at Kids Club. I had fun listening to him make different voices and laughing at how funny the characters were. At this point I agree with Remen’s statement that “In helping we may find a sense of satisfaction; in serving we find a sense of gratitude.” After leaving Kids Club that day, I felt lucky being assigned to him after seeing how focused and fun he was with me since I have observed that he usually is disruptive with his teachers and classmates. I agree with Remen’s statement that “Fixing and helping are draining, and over time we may burn out, but service is renewing.”

Now What?

I see Kids Club as a fundamental tool that will help these students create a positive work ethic and have the opportunity to continue pursuing education. I had this perception of the program prior to attending my first day and still believe in the effectiveness this program has for these kids. This program gives these students a fair opportunity for possibly completing and succeeding in higher education. Calderon’s writing, “Perspective Taking”, explains the importance of how “..the ability to communicate one’s perspective affects one’s ability to participate in society, and with it, one’s access to power. Power exists in language, too, where words create a foundation for understanding” (1). By giving these students an opportunity to improve in literacy, these students will develop the language and power to convey their perspectives and lessen the achievement gap in their area.

During our training, we learned that some of the students that were in the Kids Club program have returned to help the organization as mentors. This further proves the gratitude these past students have for the program. For the remainder of the semester, I hope to have students be comfortable enough to speak to me about life at home. I would also like to hear from past students how much of an impact Kids Club has made in their lives and futures.