It happened rather unexpectedly. Our daughter missed a week of school due to illness and then had a week off due to a trip. When school resumed, Reina struggled to keep up in Chinese class. She clearly needed extra help, but my Chinese is laughable and her mother’s work schedule was making it difficult for Savvy to assist her too. We decided that what our daughter really needed was a tutor, but how to find one?
I contacted her school and was surprised that there was no official recommendations for where to find one. Savvy also checked with a few of the local neighborhood moms, usually our best source of information, but this time she came up empty-handed.
Fortunately, one of the staff at our daughter’s school had used a service to locate a tutor for her son last year and she sent us a link, www.jiajiao100.com. Savvy gave them a call and that weekend Anne, an English major still in university, showed up and spent two hours patiently working with Reina.
After the lesson, we decided to hire Anne for three 2-hour sessions a week at RMB 75 an hour. In the beginning it was slow going, but within a couple of weeks, Reina had caught up with the class. Most days she can now complete the homework on her own if she hasn’t finished it up at school. Even though Reina isn’t struggling anymore, we are keeping Anne on as her tutor so that she can delve deeper into lessons with Reina and so that they can spend time reading together.
Photo: Mac Vincente (via Flickr)
