The past few weeks had been very fulfilling for me. Several of my students had improved by leaps and bounds. Let me share the stories of four students with you. Let’s start with the story of student 1.

Student 1 is an N level student. When his mum first called me in April this year, she told me that Student 1 was very weak in Chemistry. He had never passed chemistry before and his marks were about 10-15 out of 50. His N levels is end of this year, so his mum was very worried. She decided to engage me as his tutor. After 4 lessons with me, he had his mid-year exams. For the first time, he passed his chemistry, achieving 28/50. Two weeks ago, I received an SMS from the mum thanking me. For his recent prelims, Student 1 scored 38/50 for chemistry! He went from a fail grade to A1 within a span of 5 months. He was so happy that he informed his mum with a photo of his grade immediately after receiving it. With this achievement, he is confident of doing well for his N levels.

Student 2 is a sec 3 combined science student. When she first came to me, she was weak in both chemistry and physics scoring D8-D7 for both subjects. I realised that her fundamentals were weak as she did not understand her concepts and she also did not have sufficient exposure to application of the concepts learnt. Under my tutelage, she announced happily to me last week that she scored 20/25 for her physics test, 18/25 for her chemistry test and 10/10 for her chemistry quiz. I could see her glowing with joy. She also had a second physics test and she excitedly related to me one of the questions she found challenging. I had never seen her so excited about science before. This was an amazing transformation from a girl who was once weak in science.

Student 3 is a sec 4 pure science student. She had a history of changing tutors. When her mum called me in early June this year, I can sense her frustration with the frequent change of tutors and the seemingly impossible quest to find a suitable tutor. Her mum asked me if it is possible to have one trial lesson with me to determine if her daughter like me to teach her. I told her, sure, why not. After the trial lesson, this student decided to continue with me. In her mid-year exams, she had only borderline grades for chemistry and physics. After four months of hard work, she scored a distinction for chemistry in her recent prelims.

Student 4 is a sec 2 student. He has never passed science in sec 1 and always had very low marks (<15 marks). He just joined me in mid-august. His mum told me that his goal is getting into pure science stream but achieving this dream seem very impossible. It happened that after the first lesson with me, he had a science test the same week. For that test, he scored 21/50. To me, that was an amazing feat. Although he still failed, more importantly, he scored more than 20 marks for the first time. He needed only 4 marks to pass and this improvement was made after only 1 lesson. Can you imagine how much more he can improve with more lessons? His mum thanked me and feedback that his confidence improved greatly after one lesson with me. He was very confident of passing the test and was disappointed with his marks. I told his mum that it was a very good performance and her son may be able to achieve his dreams as we still have one more month till his finals.

Witnessing the improvements and confidence gained by these students has truly given me a great sense of satisfaction. Moving beyond grades, I am happy that their dreams are slowly but surely turning from impossible to possible: Student 1 wants to do well enough to go on to Sec 5, Student 2 and 3 want to go to JC and Student 4 wants to be a pure science student.

My sense of satisfaction comes not just from the improvement in grades but also from knowing that I have helped my students to realise their dreams, develop their potentials, and gaining the “ I Can Do it” spirit.