Putonghua Shmutonghua, There Was Another Lesson In There

So our Putonghua tutor dumped us. And I was furious. (She could’ve easily quit when Rockstar didn’t want her anymore! WHY did she have to bribe him with a little plastic Doraemon fan (only heard about it from Rockstar much later), send me a nice text claiming it was sorted, THEN quit on email not 12 hours later, leaving behind a much harder conversation with Rockstar?? Also a bunch of unsolicited, slightly theatrical “I’m so ashamed” texts and “please let me sort it out” (Yeah really – “Ashamed.” That should’ve raised warning bells because I said nothing to her that warranted it but at the time I thought it was something Beijing that was lost in translation <sheepish>) when I asked if she’d lost interest and should we call it off. Instead she came in one last time and then she called it off.) But when I cooled down, I realized it had to end.

Our now ex tutor was obviously “in-demand” and could pick and choose, she’d turned down referrals before. My point to this post is “in-demand” matters squat if you have a little kid the tutor isn’t making the effort to inspire enthusiasm in. The problem with Hong Kong is sometimes when you are good and in demand, you are so aggressively rewarded you can tell everyone else to go to hell. Fine if you work in banking. (Kind of.) Not so fine with little kids.

I can understand the “banking” argument – while some loyalty is valued, often people will not fault you for hopping about. I did it during mergers, guilty. (For the record I often still hold fierce loyalties to some of my ex-bosses, what I was doing was leaving quickly when bank mergers moved my reporting line away from them.)

Anyway it just occurred to me, super in-demand international schools in super-competitive-land are going to be hard-pressed to produce results like no other. It’s just what it’s like here, but to what extent is there a real incentive to work with a child who falls behind for whatever reason, before easily replacing the child with another out of the massively long waiting lists? At the end of the day top schools need the results to stay up there. I’ve met mums who tell me of kids who fell behind academically (not say, did drugs or filmed each other and posted it on Youtube tho yes, heard those too, there is even one international school reputed for taking these kids in haha), get 6 month warning, cannot improve enough, get kicked out.

Back to the Putonghua tutor for the moment and forgive my flaffing about, I’m on medication. It took some back-tracking to realize she had not been happy we spread out Rockstar’s lessons couple times a week after school instead of pulling him out of school a day a week for her (we were strongly advised not to do that anymore because Rockstar is one of the absolute youngest in his year and it will be primary school interview season shortly after he begins K2). Why didn’t she just come clean she was already considering quitting because her travel time (read: non-bill-able hours) significantly increased? How come I didn’t realize her cutting more and more classes was the new schedule and her preparing to quit? (Though we did half-heartedly consider getting a second tutor cos she skipped so much.)

“It wasn’t Rockstar,” she says, her “official” reason, sent on email, was “lack of parent trust.” This offends me royally. Just come clean about the scheduling la, don’t bullshit.

My one request was to manage Rockstar so he doesn’t fight using Putonghua. She was free to get him to enjoy Putonghua in any way because in the first place we weren’t looking for formal lessons – when she morphed Putonghua play sessions into formal lessons we just paid the bill. I said nothing when she repeatedly walked into our master bedroom to pull napping Rockstar out for class if he overslept, and I said nothing when I learned she gives him candy and chocolate without ever checking with us. (Rockstar doesn’t get hooked on sweets anyway and doesn’t eat more than 1 or 2, so I left it. Potato chips would be another story. But funny how I found out -one day Rockstar sarcastically said, “When’s she coming again, I need more candy,” when we asked how his Chinese was going.))

She had a lot of freedom because I thought she was doing a good job – when asked to pick a book for us to read together, Rockstar used to often pick one of her Putonghua books and proceed to “read” to me (I have no idea how much is reading and how much is memorizing because I’m completely Chinese-illiterate.) I consider this a good result for which I will pay not just money but “free-reign” for. She is the teacher, I thought to not question her authority over how she ran her class. But then Rockstar stopped doing that for awhile and I got so comfy I didn’t notice immediately.

It was another warning sign that came too late, when our new helper kept calling me because this tutor who has handled Rockstar for 2 years without incident even when she plucked him still sleeping from the master bedroom and he started crying (she easily distracted him with a storybook), would now go to a helper whom she knows has only been about 3 months with us, to sort out Rockstar. Because it implied she was now putting very little thought into what she was doing. Rockstar probably reacted to it way before we picked it up.

In the following days as I called girlfriends, I realized to what extent Putonghua tutors/ nannies were in great demand (Putonghua is pretty much acknowledged as one of the things kids have to learn nowadays – whether you’re on Upper East Side Manhattan (where an article in Harper’s Bazaar US famously commented about the bemoaning of Putonghua nanny shortage) especially 3 or 4pm onwards, our regular time slot. No wonder our last one dumped us. Still probably not as bad as living outside Northasia, I guess.

A girlfriend who’d been doing some ground work for a nanny pointed out you could actually hire teaching assistants from some of the local schools on the outskirts of Hong Kong for longer hours as a Putonghua nanny and they’d be happy to take it up because on an hourly basis they still made more as a nanny in Hong Kong (and lotsa people get worried about leaving their kids with helpers all day) so that’s what we’re trying.

Anyway Rockstar kept to his word. The tutor and nanny I sent home to him on two separate days registered virtually zero resistance.

I went with the Putonghua-speaking nanny. (Second lesson was a bit harder tho, she forgot something, but I really hope we can stick with a nanny now that he’ll get Putonghua twice a week in school for K2).

To be honest the tutor’s accent is exquisite, far better than the nanny’s. But we don’t know the tutor, the nanny was a referral from a girlfriend, she was actually a Chinese Kindy teaching assistant. Who is already fully-booked after the summer hols. Fortunately as a sluggard afternoon session parent I get to book her in the morning where she’s still wide open.

Everything’s a package isn’t it, just like the investment product termsheets I used to read for a living… Good nanny/ tutor = much higher probability of being all booked up for the popular time slots (ie after morning school lets out). Since I suck at being neurotically competitive at vying for the best time slot (ie have to scope out- book up super duper early) I’m going to have to give something up.

So which am I going to give up, quality of nanny/ tutor, or popular time slot? Hmm. This is hard.

I understand the concept well, from my old job – if you’re good, if you produce, you can go anywhere. I assume to some extent this is at least partly true of most industries and career paths, but when little kids are involved I find it disconcerting where meritocracy is sometimes too aggressively rewarded.

Aren't they supposed to work at it

To what extent does a too highly sought after tutor, or for that matter educator, still have an incentive to stick it out with a child and sort it out, before quickly giving up on them and moving on to the next “easier case”? There are so many lining up to take that child’s place.

What do little children learn about this? It’s life? All of it? If you’ve ever been dumped or rejected by a top school, I’m guessing “It’s life” wouldn’t be as easy to swallow. Especially if you are that ex-colleague of mine who got a rejection from a top school stating the reason as your child being “too stubborn” or “strong-willed.”

Little kids aren’t projects or investment products, they’re well, people, with growing pains and such. Maybe their parents are going thru a difficult time at work. Or a split. Or there’s a new baby. Or any other of a myriad number of stuff why a child might act up. Belatedly I realize Rockstar’s school actually asks discreetly in the standard “About Me” form we were supposed to fill asap re Rockstar when we started K1 there… Anything they should know, like new baby in family… The thing took me 2.5 hours to fill, but I start respecting it more and more.