The Deportation Paradox

I had my first tuition session yesterday with this boy from china, Huang Jia Yao. He's a bright little kid, pretty pleasant to teach. He was good in maths, actually, it just that his lack of understanding of English brought him down alot. His aunt was very annoying, constantly barging in to check up how we were doing. seriously, 12 times in 1 and a half hours.

Today after the UT, i headed over to his home again for the second session of the week. He was much more mischeivious for the day, through the whole lesson i only managed to teach him the words "Sugar" and "energy" for his spelling. Towards the end, his aunt started to scold him and told me about a story which is the reason for my duress right now.

Jia Yao has failed Primary four twice. If he fails one more time, his entire family will be deported back to china. Being his current tutor, i feel like the burden is on my shoulders, and it is not a good weight to bear. I am accustomed to weights like "passing the semester" not "the fate of the whole family"

His aunt asked me if i was confident of raising his english to a primary four standard in 2 months, and i told her very honestly "Auntie, my english got to where it is through many years of reading. I simply cannot imagine how he will be able to do it in just two months."

So far, we have not scheduled a date for next week's lessons, and im honestly not sure if there will be more after my reply.. But me, having lived in my cocooned world of online games, i can safely say i have caught a glimpse of the cruel world out there, and am currently bearing a tiny portion of it on my shoulders.