By Avanti Chajed

Gargoyle staff reporter

Posted Monday, April 16, 2007, The OG, features

Avanti Chajed tutors a student at Kumon. (Gargoyle

photo by Karen Han) (click to enlarge)

AFTER SCHOOL ON a recent Thursday, my mother drops me off at Kumon Math and Reading Center in Champaign, where I will spend the next two hours tutoring elementary school kids.

While I'm grading a large stack of Kumon packets, a small African American girl comes in with her Kumon box clutched in her hand. I look up and smile at her.

“Hi, Makayla,” I say, sounding as friendly as I can after having spent the last 40 minutes tediously grading work from a large stack.

She sits down next to me and stares into space.

“Come on, Makayla, write down the time,” I prompt her. She sits up a little straighter and looks at the first problem. Slowly she starts to work …

INTRODUCING KUMON

Kumon is a worldwide math and reading program that uses repetition to teach children basic skills. The children, most of whom are between the age of 4 to 12, have to complete worksheets everyday, which can be anywhere from one to 10 pages.

Jo Lee, helping a student, runs the Kumon Math and

Reading Center in Champaign. (Gargoyle photo by

Jason He) (click to enlarge)

Every Monday and Thursday they come in to do class work and collect more packets for homework.

All of the math the students do is done without using a calculator, even after they have mastered the basic operations.

Students also have the option of taking reading, either by itself or in addition to the math program.

Once they have joined Kumon, students receive a white box in which they store all of their worksheets, and a clear plastic folder, which is kept in the classroom so they can pick up the next week's homework.

There are different levels in Kumon, with each level focusing on a different skill. The first is Level 4A, where the younger students learn how to write numbers from where they progress on to addition and subtraction in Level A.

The children continue until they have completed doing quadratic equations and factorization in Level I, at which point they have officially completed Kumon. The levels continue to Level Q but very few people continue after Level I.

The Kumon Math and Reading Center, located at 405 W. Windsor Place, is quite small, with a waiting room full of chairs against the wall and children's books scattered across a center table. Parents wait here while their children finish their class work.

The kids go on into the next room and put their homework into the baskets on the front desk. The baskets are labeled “Math” and Reading” to keep the worksheets separate.

They then pick up their homework from clear plastic folders, which are in little shelves along the side of the wall, and put the worksheets into their white Kumon boxes. With their Kumon box in hand, they go into the classroom and finish their class work, which is then graded by one of the graders in the room.

Before they leave, the kids are careful to remember to put two stickers on their sticker charts. Once they fill up their chart, they can pick out a prize from a box that contains small trinkets such as yo-yos and necklaces.

JOINING THE WORK FORCE

“Fun” is rarely used to describe Kumon. Who would like trudging their way through worksheets everyday when there are so many better things to do? I hated Kumon when I went there from second to fifth grade, and while I now realize how useful it was, I wouldn't want to go through it again.

There are some kids, though, who disagree. Mahrukh, a girl about 6 years old, says she started Kumon because her parents wanted her to, but she says she likes coming to Kumon “‘cause it helps me learn.”

She comes with her older sister, Mahnoor, who started taking Kumon when her sister did but who prefers reading to math. Mahnoor talks quietly and timidly, quite unlike her sister's vivacious manner.

Even though I'm not as exuberant as the two sisters, I have a certain fondness for the place. This might be part of the reason I said yes in September 2005 when Jo Lee, the woman who runs the Champaign Kumon Center, called and offered me a job on Thursday afternoons, paying $6.50 an hour.

At first I just came for the money and bragging rights. None of my friends were working at the time, so I had the pleasure of telling them that I had a job. I felt so grown up.

It has taken me over a year to realize that there's more to working than getting paid. There are so many kids who all have their own special quirks, and the atmosphere of the room depends entirely on the kids who are present.

APPRECIATING THE STUDENTS

I can hear the door open and close as a student walks in. I look up quickly from my grading to see who it is.

“Uh-oh,” I mutter to myself. The 7-year-old boy who has just walked in is a troublemaker if I ever saw one. Sure enough, when he drags himself in the boy takes a seat toward the front.

Even though he is taking an achievement test that will allow him to move on to the next level, the boy starts talking to the kids sitting around him. If others start talking he shouts at them to be quiet, even though he is the one making the most noise.

Ms. Lee tries to control the situation by reminding him how important speed is for passing the test, but after a few minutes even she abandons the attempt.

Fortunately, most of the kids are driven to excel by self-motivation as well as by their parents, so very few of them cause trouble in the classroom. In fact, many of them are very engaging in their own ways.

Take Delaney, a second grader with a cute freckled face and long blonde hair. She tells me slowly in her polite little voice, “I like [Kumon] very much.”

She hesitates for a moment before going on: “But sometimes I don't want to do it at home because I want to lay down and watch TV.”

It's the kids like Delaney and Mahrukh who help me get through days that seem to go on forever.

But no matter how hard I feel my job gets, it's nothing compared to what Ms. Lee has to do outside of class. Each student follows his or her own timetable, and Ms. Lee has to plan out the number of times the student will repeat a level based on past performance.

“They have to finish within a time limit with few mistakes,” she explains.

Ms. Lee says she spends about two hours a day planning and preparing student packets and meeting with new parents who want to enroll their students in Kumon.

There are some days I have a chance to work out at the front desk where I have to interact with the parents rather than the kids. Often, I have to help new parents who didn't know what to do, or I answer questions. On those days I feel especially useful.

ANOTHER KIND OF EDUCATION

Learning to interact with complete strangers was new to me when I first started. Often I looked to senior Daniel Ito, who has had five years of experience at Kumon, and the college students working there to see what they did to make the kids so relaxed.

I listened to them talk to the kids: “Hey, how are you? What school do you go to?”

I found out that their friendly tone made the kids open up, making it easier to get even the stubborn ones to work.

Many of the people who work there needed a job, and so when they found out, either by word of mouth or from newspaper ads, that Kumon needed more graders, they joined. Other Uni students who work at Kumon include sophomore Karen Han and junior Samantha Nguyen.

For some of the tutors, such as Fred Kim, a University of Illinois student, the job gives valuable experience as well as money.

“Working with kids is what I hope to do in the future,” he says.

Uni alum Katie Carmody, who graduated in 2006, started working there when a friend recommended the job.

“I love little kids and I love math, so it's perfect,” she says.

It was hard at first, but I've gradually become better at communicating my thoughts, and I've even managed to make friends with a few of the students.

One girl named Hana confided in me and said she didn't like “that weird man.” I had to force back a laugh when I realized she was referring to Ito. From then on I enjoyed her company, and she would often come to me with her class work and corrections.

I became accustomed to Ms. Lee flitting around the classroom. Her keen eyes can spot daydreamers quickly, and she brings them back to earth quickly but kindly.

She often can be heard catching students before they leave, asking them to show her their class work. She asks them, “What's seven times five? Nine times eight?” to see if they are ready to move on. She encourages struggling students: “This is the hardest part. You're really doing well.”

Now that I've gained some experience, I realize that working at Kumon has been just as educational as going there as a student.

Switching roles always comes with a new perspective, and I can now truly appreciate the task of grading. I thought it was nothing short of torture to be forced to sit in the small room for more than half an hour to do long division when I was 9 years old, but now it seems preferable to sitting for two hours and grading.

THE INVALUABLE MS. LEE

I stop grading from time to time to check on Makayla's progress. She is still trying to get through the first page.

“Come on Makayla, keep working.”

There's a note of annoyance in my voice. She does the next two problems under my watchful eye.

But as soon as I look back at my grading she starts nodding her head. I can't believe it. She's falling asleep. I've never had to deal with this before.

“Wake up. We need to finish this in 10 minutes, right?”

She doesn't respond, but her eyes are closing again. This time I let her sleep for a couple of seconds before prodding her awake again.

We manage to get through the next two pages in half an hour. Only three more pages left, I think. Her eyes keep closing, and I continuously have to edge her on.

Finally I just let her sleep. Ms. Lee will take care of it. She always does.

RELATED

— Audio slideshow: Working at Kumon

— Kumon Math and Reading Centers: Official site