Once upon a time, I didn’t want to work with children. The idea of teaching had crossed my mind a few times over the years, but it always involved instructing older students. It would be too challenging, I reasoned, to work with young ones.

But that was then. Now, I’m happily in my second year of working as a tutor with students at Mastery Charter Smedley Elementary in the Frankford section of Philadelphia.

It is challenging work. Children are still curious about what is happening around them; they are still messy, and the simplest things — like burping — can be hilarious to them, and derail any well-thought-out lesson about sounding out and writing the letters of the alphabet.