prompt #7 Two things I will use when I Teach

This experience has been very rewarding. It is not completely helpful because I am not in an elementary school but I have learned a lot about two elements of teaching I had never really given thought to.

The first important fact I learned is that group work is a great tool. Often we do not see how beneficial it is for students to solve problems as a team. Whenever I tutored two or three students they were willing to share more with me and ask more questions. I now understand that that is because they felt better knowing they all were confused by the same assignment. Often I think students do not speak up in class because they do not want to be singled out, a group shows you that you are not alone in your confusion. I also think group work generates more that one solution to problems. This is important, especially in English and History. The students learned more when they disagreed and than discussed their answers.

The second way tutoring this has prepared me to teach in a Providence is that it exposed me to ELL students. I have never worked in an environment where I had the chance to create fun opportunities to share language. We used translators, we spoke slower, we looked up definitions together and used pictures. I looked up idioms on the computer with one girl because I didn't know how to explain them but I realized the definition was not enough. Some of the words she had never heard before so I had to create better examples with English words she had already mastered. It was challenging. It reminded me that I cannot take things for granted. Just because I eat asparagus does not mean it is an appropriate choice for a lesson in my classroom. I need to be organized enough to pole the students before the lesson I want to relate to vegetables. I may find that I learn about cool fruits I have never even heard of. The last day during tutoring I tasted a fruit from Laos I can't even pronounce but it was delicious.

When I began this semester I did not see how multicultural my classroom was destined to be. I now realize that is not enough to just learn a little about the ethnicites of my students and have black history month. I want to emulate the set up of the DC Center where there are pictures of ordinary kids doing extraordinary things. I want to put up pictures of woman like in Peggy Orenstein's article and be seen as extreme simply for including woman in my curriculum. I want to stop calling a school "diverse" when my students are made up of fifteen black kids, five Dominican kids, one Chinese girl and two white boys. That is only a fraction of the ethnicities in our culture. Like Kozol points out, my class will not be that diverse because most students will share a similar trait, they will be poor.

I enjoyed this experience. It reenforced that I am built to teach. Rob told me as he signed my evaluation form that he forgot what it was like to have tutors who were not afraid of the students. These kids are great despite the challenges. I really enjoyed working with them. Next semester I hope to complete my last 10 hours there.

Prompt #3 Assessment Practices

Today, 11/22/10, I worked with Jelissa who really helped me think about assessment. In Jelissa's science class she had to give a presentation on the chemical element Chlorine. Originally she was going to have to give this presentation live but Jelissa has a speech impediment when she gets nervous. Apparently she asked her teacher to turn in a paper or a powerpoint instead but he said no. Finally she went to the guidance councillor who spoke with the teacher. The teacher agreed to let Jelissa record her presentation in a video and include pictures to help her explain Chlorine. We worked on the project for two hours. We could not do the recording because the DW Center is too loud but we wrote a script and found all of her pictures. In the time we worked her anxiety around me decreased and her stuttering became almost unnoticeable but initially it was very hard to understand her. I am glad she was given a alternate assessment. I hope i never put a student through that kind of stress. I feel that all class projects should have options. If a teacher feels a student needs to branch out it is important that the student get the chance to decide how far and how fast. If Jelissa was told "yes" to an alternate assessment right away the teacher could have suggested the video in a way that still made Jelissa feel good, instead she felt like an outcast. The teacher did not give choices to the whole class so now Jelissa's was the only project that would be different. For class this week we read Shore who said "their curiosity and social instinct decline, until many become non participants. It is not the fault of students if their learning habits wither inside the passive syllabus."Jelissa did not feel engaged by her assignment she felt terrified. According to the methods described in this article, to truly have engaged this situation in a democratic way, the teacher should have discussed the benefits of being comfortable speaking in public with Jelissa and offered her a few smaller opportunities to get her feet wet. Maybe she could have presented to a small group of friends that she chose. They could come to the science class as soon as school ended and listened to her give her five minute presentation while the teacher graded her. Because Jelissa chose the group she may have felt more comfortable. What would it have cost the teacher? Fifteen minutes to care enough to come up with the alternative assessment and five minutes to listen? I am angry that Jelissa will be singled out. I will never be so narrow minded.

prompt #5 Martin's Mom

Today, 11/8/10, at the Down City Center I had the opportunity to work with Martin again. I asked Rob to call his mom and see if she wanted to come in at 5 so she could see a project Martin and I were working on. Rob called and Martin's mother decided to come in. Martin and I were making a powerpoint presentation on The Crucible. Martin was much nicer today but a little weird because he knew his mom was coming. I was nervous because I wasn't sure about her background. I was afraid she might misunderstand me and because I don't speak Spanish, I would have no way to clarify. The meeting went much better than I had hoped. Martin's mom spoke English well because she works in the school cafeteria. We talked about the project her son had and how he had to research characters and find quotes that explained how each character propelled the main themes in the story. She told me that she is not comfortable with computers and she is glad he can do work at tutoring because at home the computer is too distracting. "Martin starts to work and then ends up listening to music or talking to friends" she said. I told her that lately students in college are being permitted to listen to music during tests because it helps then collect their thoughts more effectively and that what my generation finds distracting, her son's may find necessary. Either way we talked while Martin worked and we were not distracting. She asked me if there were things I felt Martin needed extra help with and I told her that Martin knows the answers but I think he is afraid to really get engaged. Martin is popular and it looks un-cool to do school work. I told her that tutoring is a great way to give him access to a range of help not just academic but social because the center is a comfortable place just to talk about learning. She said she would like to see him get a job because than he would understand why he has to go to college. Real life is tough she said. She only stayed for half an hour during which Martin was perfectly behaved. I think this proves that forming relationships with parents really strengthens our ability to help the child. There is no way Martin does not have exposure to enough English to write out his own assignments. I learned that from meeting his mom Also I think having an opportunity to talk to the parent positively about their child gives them reason to get more engaged. Even with a slight language barrier we did very well. The job comment was hard because I think we should teach our children to learn for learning's sake but I can see why jobs are very important to most parents.  Kozol says "Childhood is not merely basic training for utilitarian adulthood. It should have some claims upon our mercy, not for its future value to the economic interests of competitive societies but for its present value as a perishable piece of life itself."

Monday 10/25/10 My First Breakthrough (prompt #5)

I went to the Down City Center today to tutor for the fourth time. The students are getting use to me and even though there is a language barrier we are beginning to communicate. Today two girls needed black pens to do their math assignment. I normally tutor in English and History but the boy I was assigned was promised half an hour of Facebook time before his tutoring session so I was free for a bit. The girls asked to use my pens and I told them they could, if I could look at their math homework. The assignment was pretty easy... on their worksheet there were several triangles that related to each other (isosceles, right, equilateral) the girls needed to pick one color and circle all the triangles that matched. The next part was to break down larger triangles into smaller, congruent triangles, by drawing only a certain amount of lines (2,3,4,6) and then to write an expression that explained the process. I knew I could handle this kind of math so I asked the girls to stay with me. Another tutor from Brown University saw that I had engaged some students and came to sit with us. Together we worked with the girls. It took a while to explain the directions because of our language barrier but with a little scrap paper and a series of pictures the two of us explained the objective. I think I built some trust with these two girls because they continued to work with the English speaking Brown tutor right next to me until almost six o' clock.

I was proud of my breakthrough so when Martin, the boy who needed English help came over, I was excited to dive in. He hands me his English assignment. He has to read the first act of The Crucible and breakdown some dialogue. He also needed to explain "who was speaking" from dialogue context clues. The second part was easy because the dialogue was on the ditto along with a description of the characters so we started with that one. I asked Martin if he understood the instructions and he said "yes, but you need to write for me 'cause I can't spell in English." I refused and explained that he simply had to copy the character's names next to each dialogue box and the character's names were on the top of the paper. He was angry. I think he is such a trouble maker that other tutors do his work for him so they don't have to deal with him. He insulted me a lot "you are a lazy tutor" "Juan said he got an 89 on his English paper with you because you actually helped him. Why won't you help me?" I just kept asking questions "can you describe any of the characters in The Crucible?" Do you understand how the characters are related?" He finally stopped trying to scare me away and in a last ditch effort to free himself said "I can't do this 'cause I don't have my book." I was ready for this so I told him The Crucible is public domain and we could download it on the Internet. In five minutes we had printed the character descriptions and the first act. We worked together for an hour on the two dittos that I felt most students could have completed in twenty minutes. If he had stopped complaining about the length of the first act (16 pages) and worked hard it would have gone much faster but I refused to let him make me angry enough to start giving him the answers. When his Mom came to get him I introduced myself and told her her son worked hard today. She looked impressed.

After Martin left, Rob, the director of the Center told me he has never had a single tutor willing to sit with Martin that long. In fact he rarely finishes an assignment before he makes a tutor or another pupil so angry that Rob has to ask him to leave. This kid has learned how to waste time and cause problems but when you don't react to his childishness he actually is very bright. The program is mandatory and Rob reports the weekly time attended per student to their schools so Martin can not get up and leave. If Martin is there next week on Monday, Rob said he is mine again. If Martin's mom comes in again I think I might invite her to come in early some Monday so we can work with him together. I think seeing how they interact might help me make more progress with him.

The Make-Up of My Service Learning Group (Prompt #1)

I am completing my service learning project hours in an after school mentoring program that we will call "The Down City Center". The tutoring facility is made up of mainly spanish speaking students. After speaking to the instructor I found that many of the students are from the Dominican Republic. These students are offered this program through their high schools which are less than a hundred feet away. We will refer to the two high schools as "Purple High" and "Crimson High". Students and parents sign an agreement to enter this tutoring program. Parents sign their children up to attend a certain number of tutoring hours each day. After school the students come to the Down City Center and sign in. If their parents have requested they attend the full tutoring session they must be at the center from 3pm until 6pm but most students attend from 3:30pm until 5:30pm. Volunteers come to the center to offer tutoring in all subjects but the number of volunteers differs daily and the supervisor does a great amount of tutoring on days with few volunteers. The make up of students on my visits have so far consisted of 1 Purple High student and the remainder of students all being Crimson High students. The State Learning and Achievement Assessment rates these schools very differently.

Purple High: making "adequate yearly progress" and has hit 19 out of 19 target standards. Purple High has no ESL program and less than 1% of the students are receiving special education services. White and  Hispanic populations are roughly the same size at 35% the rest of the students are 20% Black and 11% Asian. Only 50% of Purple High Students are eligible for free or reduced price lunch. In grade 11 all students are above proficiency standards in mathematics, reading, and writing when compared to all other Rhode Island high schools. The population of this school is not mobile at only 3% but 99.3% graduate. This school has an entrance exam.

Crimson High: making "insufficient yearly progress" and has hit 20 out of 24 target standards. Crimson High is rated below all other Rhode Island High Schools in mathematics, reading, and writing. 63% of the population is Hispanic, 20% is Black, 10% is Asian, and 6% is White. 81% of students qualify for free or reduced price lunch. 5% of students in ESL and 8% identify as bilingual. Crimson has both self-contained and supported special needs classrooms. Crimson High has a highly mobile population at 33% and graduation rate of 72.8%.

Crimson High benefits from the tutoring done in the Down City Center far more than Purple High. I interested to interact with students that are trying to improve themselves but I wonder why the tutoring center is not packed everyday considering Crimson High's failure to meet standards. The structure of this program makes it ideal for Hispanic students as they receive additional ESL class on Tuesdays and Thursdays from Brown University students. I look forward to reporting more about my service learning project at the Down City Center.

Thinking about activities that embrace difference....

When I was growing up I was fortunate to attend many culturally diverse schools. My Elementary school was the most amazing cultural melting pot I have ever encountered and the teachers there changed my life. I believe I learned respect in those walls. I want to be clear, not just the concept of not “making fun” of others, I learned to embrace difference. I realize funding has changed but many of the activities my school offered made me want to become a teacher. Some examples of what I participated in…

1.     A Native American Pow Wow in the fall every year.

2.     We read culturally diverse books about Jackie Robinson, the Holocaust, Poverty, Powerful Woman etc.

3.     In fifth grade my class hosted a talent show where we delivered a speech in 14 languages about all the work we had done in class that year. 

4.     We learned Latin and were given special Latin nicknames that followed us all through school.

5.     We went to Alton Jones and participated in the “The Outdoor Classroom” project.

6.     We learned to write in Chinese with brushes and ink and had Chinese pen pals.

7.     We wrote a short story every year that we illustrated and the school had bound like a real book. This was displayed for parent day and then given to us to take home.

8.     We had potluck suppers in the school gym with dishes from around the world.

9.     We ran a mock political campaign and then a mock election where we voted on the Governor of Rhode Island.

1   We had an Earth Day celebration every year where we grew plants in classroom greenhouses and then brought them to the Children's Hospital.  

An Indian Father's Plea

 

In the Delpit piece it is clear that Wind Wolf becomes an outcast because he grew up in a completely different culture from the rest of his classmates. Wind Wolf values nature and earth and his views do not neatly line up with the classroom curriculum. The teacher sees him as distracted and like many teachers looks at a distracted student as an affront to their teaching style and ability. I have always known I would have to get to know my students as individuals because I always expected to teach in the same environment that I went to school in, which was incredibly diverse. I expect to have to research the cultures of my students and use classroom activities to learn about them so I don’t make the kind of mistakes that drive them to silence. In second grade I was the only white person in my classroom besides the teacher and even we had little in common. To get to know the students she brought in a hippo stuffed animal. Every weekend a student would take home the hippo and a diary. The instruction was to write about all the things that you and the hippo did. After writing you had to do a creative activity, write a poem, draw a picture, make a word scramble, etc. By doing this project she learned who went to church, temple, played sports, liked reading and so much more. Looking back I think it was great.

About Me

Hi, My name is Danielle and I hope to become an elementary school teacher, hopefully 3rd to 5th grade.  I am the baby of 5 and will be the first sibling to graduate college. My semester so far is a little overwhelming considering I work full time days and go to school 4 nights a week. When I am not at school I work for The Home Depot's MET team and love spending time with my boyfriend Ryan and my mini schnauzer Sammy. I have a passion for teaching and have already spent several hours in a classroom. With my old company, Panera Bread, I was in charge of teaching all of the training and orientation courses and I am very comfortable in front of a classroom. I'm just happy to finally pursue my educational goals.