The Spanish Prisoner. I inherited Noreen* from a friend who was leaving to study in Spain for a semester. I was forewarned: the petulant eleventh grader refused to learn Spanish, and her parents had somehow managed to strike a deal with the teacher in which Noreen would receive an automatic B+ simply for completing all of her assigned homework, no matter the quality. (The parents' end of the deal was unfortunately not divulged.) The $40 hourly rate is hard to turn down, so once a week I shuttled down to her apartment on 73rd and Riverside.

"Is viajar a regular verb?" I would ask patiently.

"I don't know."

"Well, it is. I know you know how to conjugate regular verbs in the present. I've seen you do it before. So tell me how you'd conjugate this one in the first person."

"Viajaro?"

"...Try again."

I learned to resist the urge to seize and destroy her messy loose-leaf, becoming more and more committed to the Socratic method with each of her bratty pouts—even when she tested my patience with pressing questions like "Why do I have to do this? Everyone at my hotel will speak English to me anyway!"

It was the only time I've ever felt like hired help while tutoring.

Brain Food. Eighth-grader Lauren was a bright student who just needed some positive reinforcement and a buddy to coach her through algebra of the y=mx+b variety. When she struggled, I'd urge her to "talk it out" because you know you've learned something when you can explain it—and her mom's cooking kept my own mouth busy. It started slowly, with a glass of water, carrot sticks, and crackers. I soon graduated to tea, cheese cubes and fresh-baked cookies. At some point I stopped eating dinner before our sessions, as grape leaves, stuffed pasta shells and sesame chicken materialized on my placemat. When Lauren got into her specialized high school of choice, I was thrilled, and helped myself to seconds.

Back to Basics. I met Alissa at her large apartment in TriBeCa to prepare for her Regents exam in chemistry. With a week to go before the exam, I expected to walk her through the best "test-taking tips"

I'd picked up from thumbing through review books at Barnes & Noble. I soon learned, however, that Alissa attended one of those "alternative" schools, and it became clear that my tutee needed more than sure-fire strategies.

"There are some atoms on the periodic table of elements that lose electrons more than others... did you learn why?"

"No," she said, close to tears, poring over her reference table.

Where could I start but the beginning?

*All tutees' names have been changed.