What actually happens in a Math lesson.

She told me she was hopeless at Trigonometry.

Not struggling. Not behind. Hopeless. That was her word.

We were separated by a screen. I went through the paper with her, question by question. At some point, I invited her to explain things to me. She was reluctant at first, then decided to give it a go.

She went further than she thought she could. Then she stopped.

"This is as far as I go. I don't know what comes next."

I didn't tell her what came next.

Instead, I reflected back exactly what she had just said to me — in her own words, in the order she said them.

"You said this. Then you said that. Then you said this. So what do you think should come next?"

She was quiet for a moment.

Then: "Is it… this?"

"Why not?"

She saw it.

The excitement that came after — I can't describe it properly. "Oh my God. Oh my God. I finally get this. I can't believe I actually understood this."

I wasn't in the room with her. But I was beaming. I couldn't help it. She must have felt it.

---

Here's what I believe:

Every student already has basic logic. They came with it.

What accumulates over time — the fear, the "I'm just not a Math person," the self-doubt — is not a lack of ability.

It's a disconnection from their own thinking.

My job is not to pour knowledge in.

It's to help them hear the logic that is already moving inside them — and trust it enough to take the next step themselves.

That's what happened that day.

She didn't need me to give her the answer.

She needed someone to show her that her thinking was already going somewhere.

I know someone who was a government scholar.

Near perfect scores. Top of his cohort. By every measure the system uses — he had made it.

But when his boss asked him to present a proposal, he fumbled. Not because he didn't know the answer. Because he couldn't translate his thinking into words another person could follow.

He never rose through the ranks. Eventually he left.

I'm not sharing this to be harsh. I'm sharing it because I think about him sometimes when parents tell me grades are everything.

---

Good grades matter. I won't pretend otherwise.

But the world your child is stepping into has changed faster than the advice most of us are still giving them.

University graduates are struggling to find jobs. Companies no longer offer lifelong employment. AI is reshaping entire industries — including ones that didn't exist five years ago.

In that world — what is a perfect score worth, if the thinking behind it can't be communicated?

What are we actually trying to give our children when we push them in Math?

---

What I'm teaching is logic.

But more than that — I'm giving students a place to practise it out loud.

My scholar friend was likely brilliant on paper. What he didn't have was enough practice thinking with someone. Presenting an idea. Being challenged. Defending his reasoning. Doing that repeatedly, with someone who takes his thinking seriously.

That's what I try to offer in every lesson.

My lessons are never one-way. I don't talk at students — I spar with them. Logic is the common thread. The language we both speak. And the more they use it with me, the more natural it becomes everywhere else.

How to break a problem into steps. How to present thinking clearly enough that another person can follow it. How to sit with confusion and not collapse.

These things don't become obsolete. They don't get replaced by AI. They are what make a person functional — in work, in relationships, in life.

The grades are a byproduct. The thinking is the point.

When I was 13, I arrived in Singapore from Malaysia. Everything changed overnight.

My entire life, I had learned in Chinese. Every subject. Every teacher. Every textbook. Then suddenly — English. Everywhere.

I remember my first day of school. My form teacher was an Australian lady with an accent I had never heard before. The whole day, I didn't understand a single thing.

And I remember the moment I needed to go to the washroom. I didn't know how to ask.

Not because I was stupid. Not because I wasn't trying. Because I was operating in a language I didn't yet speak.

---

I think about that day every time I meet a Secondary 1 student.

They were fine in primary school. Some scored AL2 for Math. They were confident. It's Sec 1 Math. How hard could it get?

Then the results come back. Single digits. Just passing. Devastation. Panic.

---

Here's what most people don't realise.

Secondary 1 Math is not harder primary school Math. It's a different language.

In primary school, Math sounds like this:

At a fruit stall, 1/4 of the apples were green and the rest were red. The fruit seller sold 30 green apples and 1/3 of the red apples. In the end, he had 1/2 of the total number of apples left. How many apples were there at the stall at first?

Concrete. Human. Followable.

In secondary school, it looks like this:

Express 3675 as a product of its prime factors, giving your answer in index notation. Hence, state the smallest integer value of n such that 3675n is a perfect square.

Instruction manual. Symbolic. Cold.

Your child isn't lost because they got lazy over the holidays. They're lost because nobody told them the language changed.

---

So what do you do?

First — understand what is actually happening. Your teen is not suddenly bad at Math. They are sitting in a foreign language class without a translator.

Second — help them translate before you instruct. Ask: "What do you understand from this sentence?" Clarify. Then move to the next.

You may be surprised. Once they truly understand the question — they can often solve it on their own.

The logic of Math didn't change. Only the way it is dressed up.

I was speaking to a Secondary 3 student recently.

She did well in Secondary 1. Confident. Competitive. The kind of student who doesn't like to fall behind.

But somewhere in Secondary 3, everything collapsed. Concepts she couldn't grasp. Topics that made no sense. She didn't know why.

So we did something unusual. We didn't open her Secondary 3 textbook. We went back.

---

As I talked to her, I started to see what had happened.

In Secondary 1, there were things she didn't fully understand. Small things. A concept here. A connection there.

But she was competitive. She didn't want to lag behind. So she did what many bright students do. She brute-forced it. Memorised. Regurgitated. Moved on.

It worked. For a while.

---

Here's the thing about gaps in Math. They don't stay small.

Every new concept builds on the last. And when the foundation has cracks — the higher you build, the more unstable everything becomes.

By Secondary 3, the cracks had spread. And she couldn't understand why she was suddenly lost when she had been fine just two years ago.

---

I told her:

"You've been running with pebbles in your shoe.

In the beginning, it was uncomfortable — but manageable. You didn't want to stop. You didn't want to fall behind. So you kept running.

But the longer you run with a pebble in your shoe, the worse the wound becomes. And before you know it — you have a blister so bad you can barely walk."

The only way forward? Stop. Take off the shoe. Remove the pebble. Let it heal. Then run again — faster and further than before.

---

As a tutor, my job is not just to teach what's in front of me. It's to trace back. To find where the pebble entered the shoe.

Sometimes it's a concept that was never properly understood. Sometimes it's a period in life when the student couldn't focus — and nobody noticed. Sometimes it's a teacher they didn't click with, and they quietly shut down.

The damage is rarely where you think it is. But it can always be found. And it can always be fixed.

A student once told me she studies three hours every day. Sometimes more. Sometimes she couldn't sleep at night because she felt she should be studying… but she didn't know what to do. So she just sat there. Looking at her paper. Looking at her textbook. Letting time pass.

---

Another student of mine used to cry during tuition. Not once. Repeatedly.

When I first saw her notes, they were smudged. Her tears had drenched whole pages.

She's a very nice girl. Hardworking. Obedient. She does her work. She just keeps getting things wrong. And nobody ever really explained why.

---

When parents tell me their child is lazy… I struggle with that word.

Because the students I see are not lazy. They are lost.

One of them described Math to me as standing at the foot of Mount Everest. She wants to climb. She is willing to climb. But she doesn't know where to start. So the mountain just feels… impossible.

---

I'm starting to see that "feeling lost" happens at different levels.

Sometimes it's not knowing how to break things down. When I told her the whole syllabus could be broken into specific examples — finite, countable — her eyes changed. The mountain became… smaller.

Sometimes it's language. Math is precise. If you don't understand what each line is saying, it feels like reading gibberish. And if nobody slows down to help you interpret it… you start thinking maybe you're just not smart enough.

And sometimes it's repeatedly being wrong without knowing why. That's the most painful one. Because the more you try, the more you reinforce the wrong thing. And after a while, you stop trusting yourself.

---

If your teen feels overwhelmed by Math… maybe it's not effort. Maybe it's not attitude. Maybe they just don't know where they are lost.

These days, instead of asking "Did you study?" I wonder if better questions might be:

"Do you have a clear plan?"

"Which part doesn't make sense?"

"What do you keep getting wrong but don't know why?"

Sometimes, clarity changes everything.

My daughters love to watch the chefs at Din Tai Fung.

You know the glass panel — where the dumpling chefs wrap each piece by hand, fold after fold, perfectly identical, every single time.

Even as toddlers, my daughters would stand there for 20 minutes, completely mesmerised.

One day I said: "Let's go home and make dumplings using Play-Doh."

They were confident. But when the Play-Doh was in front of them — they couldn't do it.

---

Watching is one thing. Doing is a completely different story.

You can watch an Olympic swimmer race a hundred times. Study their technique. Memorise their strokes.

But the moment you jump into the pool — you realise how hard it actually is.

---

The same thing happens in Math.

Your teen sits in class. The teacher explains. Everything makes sense. They watch the working on the board, step by step, and think: I get it. This is straightforward.

Then they pick up the pen to attempt their first question. And everything goes blank.

Because understanding what someone else does is completely different from constructing it yourself.

The moment they attempt the first question — really attempt it, from scratch, without looking — that is when learning actually happens. Not before.

Before that, they were a spectator. The doing is what makes them a practitioner.

---

So when your teen says: "I already understand. I don't need to practice."

Gently remind them of the dumpling chefs.

Watching is not practicing. And understanding is not the same as knowing. The only way to really know — is to pick up the pen.

I once taught a student who could never admit he didn't know something.

Every time he got something wrong, the explanation came immediately.

"I didn't read the question carefully."
"I thought it was similar to something else I'd seen before."
"I made a careless mistake."

Always an explanation. Never: I don't know.

---

I didn't scold him for it. I was curious about it.

Because the explanations weren't lies exactly. They were shields.

Somewhere along the way — in a classroom, in a group, maybe at home — this student had learned that not knowing was dangerous. That admitting confusion had a cost.

So he protected himself the only way he knew how. He performed understanding he didn't have.

---

It took a long time to earn his trust.

I told him repeatedly: "It's okay to not know. I will never scold you. I will never lose patience with you. I will always find another way to explain. And if I run out of ways — that's okay too. We come back to it another day."

I meant every word. And I kept showing up that way, lesson after lesson.

---

Then one day, quietly, he said it.

"Teacher Jason. I still don't understand."

No explanation. No excuse. No shield. Just the truth.

I cannot tell you how much that moment meant to me. Because that was when I knew — real learning could finally begin.

---

A closed cup cannot be filled.

A student who is busy performing understanding has no room left to actually receive it.

But the moment they feel safe enough to say I don't know — everything opens up.

That safety doesn't come from being smart. It doesn't come from working harder. It comes from trust. Built slowly. Quietly. Lesson by lesson.

That is what I try to build with every student I work with.

Life in Singapore is hectic, don't you agree?

Most of us are always hurrying somewhere. Chasing for more, better, faster.

That spirit of hurrying inevitably seeps into how we treat education. Maybe parenting too.

It's time to ask ourselves: what's the hurry?

---

A few days ago, I was teaching a Secondary 1 student.

He has a habit I see often in younger students. Scans the question for numbers. Pieces them together. Applies a formula. Hopes for the best.

Not because he's lazy. Because he has always been told: be faster, be more efficient, do it the short way.

Bam. Bam. Bam. Get it done.

Perhaps nobody had ever slowed down with him long enough to ask what the question was actually saying.

So that day, we slowed down.

---

This was the question in front of us:

Two security cameras monitor the trophy cabinet of a sports club. The first camera scans it every 28 seconds. The second camera scans it every 70 seconds. In 10 minutes, how many times do both cameras scan the trophy cabinet together?

Any experienced Math teacher sees this immediately. Lowest Common Multiple. Find LCM of 28 and 70. Divide 600 by that number. Done in two minutes.

I bit my tongue.

Instead, I asked: "What is going on in this question?" "What is happening with the cameras?" And after he told me what he thought — "What is the question actually asking us to find?"

I drew a timeline. Put dots at 28, 56, 70, 140 seconds.

"The timings don't match."

He paused. Stared at the dots. Then started listing multiples of 28.

"Mr Jason, should I go on?"
"Go ahead. Do what you can."

Then he listed the multiples of 70. Two long columns. Slowly. Carefully.

I stayed quiet. This was his time. His discovery. If I had said "just find the LCM" — I would have taken that away from him.

---

After a while, he paused.

"Mr Jason, I see 140 appearing in both columns."

"Yes. What does that tell you?"

He thought for a moment. Then a long, slow: "Ohhhh."

He saw it. Not because I told him. Because I gave him the space to find it himself.

---

I know Singapore moves fast. I know the syllabus is long. I know exams are coming.

But here is what I have come to believe after years of teaching:

A child who discovers something himself owns it in a way that no shortcut can replicate.

The slow route that day was not inefficient. It was the only route that actually worked.

---

So when you see your teen fumbling slowly through homework — resist the urge to jump in.

Sit with them. Stay quiet a little longer than feels comfortable.

Ask: "What do you think the question is asking?"

Then wait.

You may be surprised what they find when you give them the space to look.

When parents tell me their child is careless in Math, I always ask the same question.

"Can she tell you why she got it wrong?"

Most of the time, the answer is no.

She knows she got it wrong. She can see the red mark. But she cannot explain the reasoning behind her mistake — which means it wasn't carelessness. It was a gap she didn't know she had.

Carelessness is when you know how to do something and make a slip. What I see in most students is something different: they don't know what they don't know. And every time they attempt the question, they reinforce the wrong thinking.

More practice doesn't fix this. More practice without diagnosis makes it worse.

What these students need is not more questions. They need someone to sit with them, trace the mistake back to its source, and help them see exactly where the thinking went wrong.

That is a completely different kind of help.

During my lesson yesterday, my student surprised me with his approach in solving what was, to me, a straightforward polygon problem.

I want to bring it up here because I noticed how I handled it differently compared to how I'd have handled it many years ago. The approach reflects an important teaching principle called 舍己从人 与人为善 — loosely translated as "giving up my own way and flowing with the other's way to help him."

This flies in the face of traditional Math teaching in too many classrooms.

---

I won't go into the technical details, but there are at least two approaches to solving a polygon problem — through the sum of interior angles, or the sum of exterior angles.

I'd have gone for the interior angles method. It is faster, neater, more straightforward and less prone to errors. I suspect many Math teachers would agree with me.

My student independently worked out another method. Long-winded. More tedious. Introduced too many variables. Made a mistake in his calculation.

I frowned at his working. It was so... inefficient.

I was tempted to say: that is not how you do it. There is a smarter and faster way. Let me show you.

Yet another voice in my head gently challenged me.

Why can't he do it his way? Why not celebrate his ingenuity and the uniqueness of his approach? He is not wrong. He is conceptually sound.

Is my job to teach the one and only fastest and smartest method? Or is it to help him sharpen his thinking?

What message am I sending him if I reject anything that isn't the most efficient?

Isn't that why many students hate Math? The tyranny of the best method.

My other voice won.

---

So I took a deep breath and said: "That is an interesting way to approach this problem. I'd have done it a little differently — I'll show you later, for comparison. You decide what works best for you."

He said: "Sure."

So we walked through every line of his working. Clarified what he meant by every symbol. Explored what he noticed, what he missed, what he got wrong.

All around his unique approach.

In the end, I said: "If you want to do it your way, that is how to do it right. Now — are you ready to see how I'd do it?"

He said: "Sure."

I demonstrated my approach. He said: "Oh yeah, your way is much faster. I wonder why I didn't see that."

What would have been over in three minutes took around fifteen — and considerably more effort.

But the outcome? My student learned how to avoid his own pitfalls in thinking. He learned how to troubleshoot his own working. He learned that his original effort matters — to me. And he now has two methods instead of one, and understands why one is better.

---

There is a philosophy called 舍己从人 in ancient Chinese wisdom — applicable to life as well as martial art.

Roughly explained: give up your own fixed frame of mind. Follow your opponent. Exploit their strengths rather than overpower them with yours.

Sometimes when we teach Math as a subject that always has one best method, we crush our students' creativity and snuff out their original thinking.

Purists may disagree with my heretical thinking.

But I'd rather teach Math as something that sharpens thinking — than a collection of methods to be memorised and executed on command.

Yesterday I had a trial class with a 10 year old student in Indonesia.

Forty-five minutes. Her first time experiencing the way I teach.

I didn't lecture. I didn't explain formulas. I just kept asking her what she thought — and when she got stuck, I didn't rush in to give the answer. I held back. Asked careful questions to find out what was actually keeping her from moving forward. Sometimes it was the language of the question. Sometimes it was a concept she hadn't fully understood yet. But the answer was almost always closer than she thought.

After the lesson, I spoke with her mother for nearly an hour.

---

The mother told me something that stayed with me.

Her daughter was used to a very different kind of lesson. The teacher would stand in front of the class, pick a few of the smarter students to answer questions, and when nobody could answer — proceed to teach everything from scratch. The rest of the class just sat there. Waiting to be filled.

I knew exactly what she meant. Because that is how I learned Mathematics too.

The teacher as the source of all knowledge. The student as an empty bucket. The lesson as the act of pouring in formulas, concepts, methods — and hoping enough of it stays.

---

What I try to do is the opposite.

I don't believe students come to me empty. I believe they already have logic, curiosity, and the ability to notice patterns. My job is to draw that out — not pour something in.

Here is a simple example of what that looks like in practice.

If I want to teach the volume of a cylinder, I don't walk in and say: the formula is π r² h, now let's apply it.

Instead I ask: if you had a tube of Pringles and wanted to know the volume of all the chips inside, how would you find it?

We talk it through. Maybe we could find the area of one chip, then figure out how many chips stack up to fill the tube. And slowly, naturally, the student arrives at the idea themselves — that volume is just the cross-section area multiplied by the height.

The formula becomes something they derived. Not something they were given. That changes everything about how they remember it — and how they use it.

---

I want to be honest about something. This is not how I was trained to teach. This is not the approach I started with.

The shift happened when I began lecturing at Republic Polytechnic. That experience gave me language for something I had been fumbling toward for years. I was introduced to constructivism — the idea that new knowledge is built on top of what a learner already knows, not installed from scratch.

It was a small word for a big idea. And it changed the way I walk into every lesson.

---

If you are a tutor who has been teaching the way you were taught, and something about it has always felt incomplete — you are not alone. There is another way. And it is worth learning.

I just came back from Korea.

Our tour guide was exceptional. And somewhere between the royal palace in Seoul and a bowl of seaweed soup in Busan, I realised why.

She wasn't just showing us Korea. She was representing it.

---

When we visited Gyeongbokgung Palace, she paused at one particular spot and mentioned, almost in passing, that this was where the last Korean queen was murdered by the Japanese.

I don't think many people in the group caught it.

But I did. Because underneath that casual sentence, I could hear something real. A quiet grief. A pride that had been wounded and never fully healed.

She had probably said those words dozens of times to dozens of tour groups. But they didn't sound rehearsed. They sounded personal.

---

That's when it struck me.

To her, Korea was not just a collection of facts and attractions to be delivered efficiently and on schedule. Korea was her story. Her identity. Her pride.

And because of that — Korea became real to me too.

I started thinking about Mathematics.

---

As teachers, we are tour guides to our subject.

We represent Mathematics to our students — perhaps for the first time, perhaps at a moment that will shape how they feel about it for the rest of their lives.

If we are dismissive of Math — if we treat it as a collection of formulas to be memorised and regurgitated — that is the vibe our students will absorb.

If we are genuinely in love with what Math reveals about the world — about logic, about patterns, about the way problems yield to careful thinking — that love will find its way into the room.

Students feel the difference. Even when they can't name it.

---

Our tour guide never assumed we knew things.

Even facts she had shared hundreds of times, she delivered as if we were hearing them for the first time — because we were.

She didn't say "Daegu is an industrial town" and move on. She brought us back to the 1960s, when Korea's GDP per capita was six US dollars. She told us about presidents who shaped the nation's destiny. She made us feel the weight of how far Korea had come — so that what we were seeing wasn't just a city, but a story of transformation.

How often do we do that in Math? How often do we share the story behind a formula — the brilliant, sometimes eccentric minds who discovered it, the historical moment it emerged from, the way it changed what was possible?

Math has all of this. We just rarely tell it.

---

Our tour guide also paid attention to us as individuals.

She noticed things. She commented on how a mother and son interacted. She said something kind about how a brother looked after his sister. She saw us — not as headcounts, but as people.

The best teachers do the same. They notice. They remember. They make students feel seen in a subject that can easily make them feel invisible.

---

She shared her own life too.

She told us about making seaweed soup on her birthday when nobody remembered. About her mother-in-law decorating the walls with printed photos from past trips. About the time she bought expensive beef to cook for herself, only to have the moment quietly ruined.

I used to think that sharing personal stories in a lesson was unprofessional. I'm here to teach Math — why talk about myself?

But watching her, I understood something.

When she shared her life, two things happened.

First, she became a real person to us — not just a voice delivering information, but a human being with her own joys and disappointments. And that made everything she said more worth listening to.

Second, her stories made dry facts come alive. The reason beef is expensive in Korea landed differently when it was attached to a birthday she spent alone with a pot she had saved up to cook.

That is exactly what a good teacher does. We are not just delivering content. We are making our subject human. We are being human, in front of people who are learning what it means to be human.

---

There is one more thing I noticed about our tour guide — and it is the thing I needed most to hear.

She has led tour groups through the same streets, the same palaces, the same restaurants, probably hundreds of times. Everything is familiar to her. Nothing is new.

I know that feeling.

After eighteen years of teaching the same syllabus, I sometimes catch myself getting impatient with the simplicity of what I'm explaining. I have taught this concept so many times. It feels trivial to me now. And that impatience, if I am not careful, leaks into the lesson.

The irony is this: the more familiar a tour guide is with the destination, the better equipped she is to guide — and yet the more bored she risks becoming.

The antidote lies in where you place your attention.

The destination is the constant. The people are the variable.

Our tour guide understood this. She didn't just lead us through Korea — she paid attention to us. She noticed the dynamics between family members. She made comments that showed she had been watching, quietly, all along.

And I think she appreciated the 缘分 — the particular fate that brought this specific group of strangers together, with her, at this moment in time. Something that would never be exactly repeated.

That is the reminder I brought home.

As teachers, we are not here to teach the subject. We are here to teach the person.

The Math stays the same. The student in front of you — never.

I used to be bothered when my students don't pay attention in class.

They do things I think they shouldn't do. Some watch YouTube videos. Some fall asleep. Some play games. Some chitchat with friends. Only some pay attention and engage with me in discussion.

I saw this same dynamic repeat itself during my tour to Korea. And watching how my tour guide handled the group gave me some inspiration.

---

Here is the first thing I noticed.

Not every tourist gets into the tourist mood immediately.

Before our trip, we were handling an emergency at home. We were tired and tensed up when the trip happened. As much as I tried to relax, it wasn't easy. For the first one or two days, I was still thinking about work. Still trying to learn how to slow down. Still trying to learn how to smile.

And when I looked around the tour group, I saw that everybody was there for a different reason.

Some just wanted to chill — they came to bring their children out and play the role of a present parent. Some were mother and daughter pairs who just wanted each other's company in a scenic setting. Some came for the shopping and wanted to maximise every chance to pop into a store.

Everybody had different objectives.

---

That led me to think — maybe that's actually what's happening in my classroom too.

It is idealistic to think that every student should be focused, attentive, and hungry to learn the moment they walk in. I still give that pep talk at the beginning of every semester. But is it realistic?

Every student comes from a different background, carrying different things on their mind.

I remember asking one student why he was always playing games in class. He told me: "I worked so hard to get into this class. I think I deserve a break."

I couldn't tell him whether he was right or wrong. But I asked for the truth, and he gave me the truth. And I respected that.

If someone genuinely believes they've earned a rest — no wonder they behave that way in class.

---

I appreciated how my tour guide handled this.

She recognised that every one of us wanted different things. She did encourage us to stay engaged — she would say, you paid so much money to come here, so instead of sleeping on the coach, let me tell you the history of Korea. But she didn't insist. She didn't get upset when people preferred to rest.

Because she understood that group dynamics are complex. Everybody is at a different stage. Everybody has a different history.

And the good news? By the middle of the trip, I had finally relaxed. I started paying attention to what she was sharing about Korean history — and I learned a lot. Those who preferred to rest got what they wanted. And I, being a learner, got what I wanted too.

---

There is a time and a place for everything.

As educators, we want everybody to be focused from the very first minute of every lesson. But if that doesn't happen — we don't need to get upset.

We just need to be patient. Be understanding. Continue doing what we are supposed to do.

And when the time comes — the learner, like the tourist, will get into the right frame of mind.

And they will get what they came for.

A few days ago, I conducted an online trial class with a Secondary school student.

She was bubbly. Articulate. Immediately took over the session.

We never talked about Mathematics. For an entire hour, she shared candidly about school, her family, her aspirations, her dreams. We talked almost like friends.

After the trial, I called her mother to debrief.

I told her what I had observed. That her daughter was an exceptionally strong communicator — someone who might thrive in media, communications, even as a content creator or influencer. But I also shared something I had quietly noticed underneath all that confidence: a pattern that suggested she might struggle to sustain effort over time. Something the surface performance didn't reveal.

The mother was quiet for a moment.

Then she said in Mandarin: "I told my daughter that Teacher Jason indeed 阅人无数, that was why he could perceive so much about you just after one session."

阅人无数. I have read countless people.

It was the first time anyone had used that phrase to describe me. This phrase stayed with me.

---

I have always thought of my eighteen years of experience in terms of lessons delivered.

3,000 students taught. That many lessons. That many explanations. That many exam papers marked.

But what the mother pointed to was something different.

3,000 students read.

3,000 different profiles observed up close:

• how they deflect
• how they signal confusion without saying a word
• how they reveal their real struggles underneath the surface story they present
• how they see themselves based on their test scores
• and perhaps, how they were unaware of their brilliance

That kind of reading doesn't come from a curriculum or a course. It accumulates over years. One student at a time. It slowly changes the way I look at students.

---

It has been 18 years since I started teaching. I think you'd agree that our world has changed so much in these two decades.

In the tuition industry, I observe the rise of younger tutors with more energy, sharper marketing instincts, more social media savvy and more followers. They are impressive. I believe they naturally attract students.

I've also talked to tutors in their 40s, 50s and 60s. There is a real worry that older tutors might not stay relevant for long. Students will prefer younger tutors, who are more fun and can relate to them better.

And then there is the rise of AI. Students increasingly do not need straightforward answers from tutors. AI can do that 24/7. Maybe not perfectly now, but it certainly is improving at exponential speed. Where do older tutors stand in the midst of these?

Here is what I am slowly learning to believe.

In the age of AI, in a world where information is abundant and content is everywhere — what becomes rare is not knowledge.

It is wisdom. Discernment. The ability to look at a person and see what is actually there.

That is not something you can prompt an AI to generate. That is not something a young tutor acquires in their first three years. That is what years of interacting with students builds in you — if you pay attention.

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If you are an experienced tutor feeling overshadowed by AI and younger competition —

Your years are not a liability.

They are 阅人无数.

And that is worth more than any AI or TikTok videos.

I did something unusual today.

In my university class, a few students seated near me had been distracted for weeks. They chatted in their native language, laughed quite hysterically, and had a good time.

On a few occasions, I reminded them — a finger on my lips, or a gentle verbal reminder to keep their volume down.

They would say sorry, sorry. Then go back to their old ways in a moment.

I used to take a deep breath and ignore it. Why waste time that could be spent with other students?

But today I decided to be honest about my feelings.

I paused the lesson. Looked them in the eyes — not with hostility, anger or disappointment, but with a genuine desire to be honest.

"May I be honest with you about my feelings?"

The leader quickly said, "Sorry sorry, we will keep quiet."

"No. It's not about keeping quiet or not. I want to tell you how your actions make me feel — in case no one has told you before. I think you need to know."

They started to look down. I continued.

"Honestly, when you talk like I'm not here — when I am trying to teach — it makes me feel disrespected.

Although I get paid to teach you, it does not mean I am someone you can dismiss or ignore.

I have my dignity as a teacher.

Maybe the people around you have been too polite to say this. But I think you deserve to know the truth."

Then I stopped.

The whole speech was not loud. Not confrontational. Not accusatory. It felt like a confession.

After that, those students went absolutely quiet. What many reminders could not accomplish was achieved in one honest moment.

Usually when I scold someone, I know it. My heart races. My muscles tighten.

That didn't happen. It felt like a heart to heart talk with a friend.

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How is this useful to you as a parent?

Often, the more we lecture our teens, the more they rebel.

Positioning ourselves as an authority is an almost surefire way to invite resistance.

What I stumbled upon today was not to lecture.

I didn't say: your behaviour is not acceptable.
I didn't say: you're being inconsiderate and wasting everyone's time.
I didn't say: get out of my class if you're not interested.

I told them — as a person — how their behaviour made me feel.

I could tell they weren't out to make my life miserable. They were bored. Distracted. Having a good time with their friends. But at a cost to others. Including me.

When I told them that — plainly and kindly — they got it.

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So next time your teen does something that boils your blood —

Instead of pointing out how wrong they are, consider telling them how you feel.

Your worries. Your concerns. Maybe even your heartache.

Not your accusations. Not lectures. Not "you should have..."

As a friend.

Maybe that will help you drive your message across.