Tutoring at its best is an act of generosity. By volunteering your time and abilities for Schoolhouse, and by caring when people show up or miss the sessions you create, you're investing in an effort that I like to call "building for others." Building for others may sound like a hippie saying, but it has real outcomes when taken to heart. When we strive to be people that put others before ourselves in thought and action, we create a compassionate community that can mean a lot for people, as many long-time tutors may know.

Because you're a tutor (or in the process of becoming one), it's probably a gratifying experience to be able to look at something that someone else is having a hard time with, and then being able to guide them toward understanding. But because you understand something so well, it may also be much more frustrating when you fail to understand something. Maybe it makes you lean more heavily into the things you do understand, or become stubborn in receiving help because you want to be the one to figure it out for yourself. When that happens, tutoring has stopped becoming something you see as a gift given to you and instead becomes something you cling to as a source of your identity. Then, it's important to remember that you are not a computer with all the answers, but rather a human, with unique gifts but also deeply flawed.

It's important to distinguish between the desire to improve and wanting to achieve recognition. Certainly metrics provided by Schoolhouse in engagement are helpful, labels like "Senior Tutor" or "Coach" are achievements to be celebrated. However, working solely toward an optimal engagement level or one particular title will never be what gives you lasting fulfillment. At a certain point, "building for others" becomes "building for myself." There's nothing inherently wrong with striving for personal achievement except when it makes learners miss out on what could have been a fulfilling tutoring session. They've given us a chance to share the joy of understanding, and it would be a missed opportunity if we saw it only as a stepping stone to our next achievement. This applies beyond tutoring too, in whatever we pursue in the future.

With these things in mind, let's strive to be a community that uplifts and embraces each other in spite of our shortcomings. Let's encourage self-forgetfulness and embrace the gift of building for others in the Schoolhouse community that we get to serve and be a part of.