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."