With more than five years experience teaching in the NYC Public School system, I began tutoring homebound students with special needs. Student C, a Chinese-American boy who'd not attended school even one day of his sixth grade year, needed over the summer to pass the test to advance to the seventh.

C at first refused to leave his room. He'd been traumatized by the "tough" school in his new neighborhood. I'd been at the school to pick up text books, so I knew what he meant. Outside his door I...