Tutor

After graduating as Master of Science in the Spring of 1999, the first innovation challenge I threw myself into was initiated in a small library in Lystrup near Aarhus in Denmark. As I was there one day to do some research, for example about topics I had studied during my masters education, I saw - as I was on the way out of the library - a note about a campaign focusing on helping refugees from the former Yugoslavia. I got in contact with the people already involved, Kaospilot graduates, and joined the pioneering initiative. A few weeks later, a large number of volunteers in the population around Aarhus had managed to collect more than DKK 1 million for refugees in a wonderful community effort. I learned a lot from the interesting experiences with the Kaospilot graduates and was happy to help serving people in need. And the pioneering initiative organizing a local campaign for refugees encouraged me on to work more with refugees and expatriates. 

Over several years I have worked with children, whose parents come from, for example, the former Yugoslavia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and not least Sri Lanka. I have had numerous good experiences learning with children. What has worked well working with children over several years is helping out with homework, for example in math, German, French and/or English. Questions as well as AI powered technologies such as ChatGPT, Cortana, Google Assistant have been useful  to inspire learning by working with children on asking good questions. What I also experienced that children like is talking about challenges they have in their lives. Playing games and singing with children have also proved useful to strengthen learning in a variety of ways. I have learned with children in families homes as well as using a variety of digital technologies.

A 10 year-old girl asked me once what I do to find out how good a teacher I am. Thinking about this great question, what comes into my mind is to help ignite the love of learning. So my response went something like this: When I come to learn with you and your sister next week, and you tell me about what you have been doing over the past week to learn more about different topics, you will help me to find out to what extent you love to learn. For example, if you tell me that you were really curious to learn about how to solve a certain math problem  and tell me what you have been doing by yourself as well as with your friends to find solutions, I will understand how curious you are and how self driven you are in learning more.

In conversations with children and their parents, who fled Sri Lanka to save their lives, I learned that many years ago, ancestors of people, who now live in Sri Lanka, came from India. During work I did for people, I served, I saw it a a necessity to travel to India to better understand the working lives, private lives, geography, economy and ways of thinking of people. Therefore, I decided to travel to South India - via Dubai - and lived there some weeks. In conversations I had with people, I worked with in Switzerland and who come from Sri Lanka, I learned about places to go to in India to learn more about where they come from.

Problems I experienced working with refugees, who live in Switzerland, have primarily been related to payment. In Switzerland, I experienced several times that the need for tutoring children of refugees is very large. Also, I experienced that some parents of the children, I worked with, had difficulty paying for tutoring. In several situations, I worked for little pay and also worked without getting paid for work I did. During these situations, these were some of the questions that came up in my mind: 

1. Should I work for very little pay, for free or even have larger costs than income when working with children of refugees? 

2. Should I accept when parents of children do not pay me what they said they want to pay me? 

3. Should I accept low pay even when I observe that the same people buy cars? 

4. Should I write payment reminders to parents who do not pay or pay late?

In several situations, I did not do any of this. I just continued working with the children - regardless of whether parents could pay me little, nothing or did not pay me on time. Why? Because I experienced that the need was very large. Due to very little pay, I got into situations where I had difficulty paying the high and continuously increasing health insurance premiums. I learned that the size of health insurance premiums, which people pay in Switzerland, do not depend on the income people earn. What I also learned is that even if I did not get paid for work, which I did for people living in Switzerland, there was no possibility that I could pay less health insurance premiums. On the contrary, I learned that for some types of insurance, the system worked like this: If I had not received payment for work I was doing for children of refugees and therefore was not able to pay for insurance, I would receive a message that I had to pay a fine for not paying the premium on time.

Another challenge, I ran into, was related to transportation. Due to little payment, which I received for work I did, I sometimes had difficulty to pay for transportation by bus / train to the children I was working for. In this regard, I learned that just as the price of health insurance premiums, the price of a bus ticket or a train ticket does not depend on income people have.

In this process, during which I experienced a very large need for tutoring on a high number of topics and also a need for mental health work, I started feeling exploited because of the little payment I was receiving. I felt exploited by some parents, who paid me little or sometimes said that they were not able to pay for work, which I did for their children. However, due to the situations that refugee families, whom I helped, was in, I mostly felt exploited by insurance companies and by city, canton and state for supporting this type of education work and mental health work very little. I felt let down in taking pioneering steps in education as well as in proactively helping innovate and improve conditions for refugees living in Switzerland. What also contributed to the feeling of being exploited was when I read in the media about large salaries of people working for insurance companies and other organizations in the broader ecosystem. I had difficulty understanding the very large differences in incomes of people, who live in Switzerland. I felt that there was no interest in creating cohesion across society.

Among the difficult challenges, which more of the children, I worked with, put focus on in conversations, was discrimination. Some of the stories I heard over the years were shocking. And I cried several times reflecting on the stories I heard from the children about discrimination. I learned that some children with dark skin color were discriminated in schools - by other children as well by adults - because of their skin color. I found out that children of refugees, with whom I worked, had tried out different kinds of strategies to make their lives function better. For example, I learned that often, it works best for people, who are discriminated due to their skin color, to ignore discrimination - even when discrimination feels very wrong and humiliating. And I understood that sometimes, it works to have dialogues with people, who discriminate, and dialogues with other people. Conversations can help to, for example, improve understanding and prevent problems from increasing.