I had one of the toughest assignments of all my tutoring jobs when COVID was over. Michael is quite intelligent and had done reasonably well at school, but he had become tremendously lazy during COVID; he had been supposed to be learning at online classes, but he had not taken them seriously, had not listened to the teachers and had, frankly, not bothered. 

He had had serious problems settling into school life after COVID and his parents were worried enough about his progress (or lack of it) to take him out of school and employ me as his full-time tutor for a few months. They had heard about Tutors from England from friends of theirs whose son had been tutored by one of our tutors and had spoken well of us. 

At first, of course, Michael was very belligerent and un-cooperative, but slowly I managed to win him over and gain his respect and even admiration. His attitude changed entirely and we started to get on very well together, playing a lot of squash together and other sports and generally having a good time together. Slowly his attitude to his work changed and he became much more attentive and focused. So much so that he roared ahead of what his contemporaries were doing at school at the time; he also gained a great deal of self-confidence. It was a great pleasure for me to see. 

Michael is now back at school and top of his class; his teachers tell me that his attitude towards his work is entirely changed and that he is much more intelligent than they had previously realized. 

It seems one of the success stories of COVID as he is a far better learner, team-player and person than he was before COVID. HN