I've been thinking about the last post I made. I wanted to write something about it but I wasn't sure it fit in with the rest of what I wrote so I decided to post it here separately.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Tutoring for Prof Hendrickson's ENG 101, Part Two
As far as my self-assessment for this session is concerned, I think I did pretty well. In fact this may have been the best tutoring session I've held for this class. Unfortunately I think it might have the least impact on the grade of the student I worked with.
Friday, May 16, 2014
CATW Tutoring 5/12/2014
While I know that there were things I could have done better, I thought this tutoring session went pretty well. I tutored two students working on an essay in response to a short online essay about men and women who share an equal amount of domestic chores in the home and some of the controversy surrounding the idea that this is a good thing. The title of the article was something like, "Men Who Do Housework Are Happier."
Friday, May 2, 2014
Friday, April 25, 2014
School Reform, ALEC, etc.
I have two things to say in response to the videos we just watched regarding school reform. They may seem contradictory. I kind of hope they are because I would really prefer not to see one of them happen.
So the first is primarily in response to the influence of money on the American political system and by extension, our educational system. I don't think it's ever going to change until people start dying. And I think that possibility is a lot closer than people think. I'm not a crackpot conspiracy theorist and I'm not advocating armed rebellion. Far from it. But the extremely wealthy in the US have set themselves apart and above everyone else. Their actions are becoming more and more extreme and overt. They seem to be bent on ending every social program they can influence, and because their money confers an incredible amount of influence, there are few over which they hold no sway. If they had their way they would pay no taxes at all. If that were to happen schools would close, hospitals would close, housing assistance would become a thing of the past. If the track we're on doesn't change people are going to start dying. Poor people will starve to death in America. After a couple food riots make it to the front gates of the guarded compounds of the Koch brothers, then, maybe, things will start to change. Maybe.
In case you can't tell that's the one I hope never happens.
I do have some ideas about school reform that might work if we can get money out of politics. I don't think that will ever happen. But I'll just ignore that and talk about what I think might work if we can ever manage to pull our collective heads out of our collective asses.
There is no secret about what would improve our schools. We need better teachers, smaller classes, and students with the freedom to take ownership of their own education. That's what rich kids get in school and there are very few rich kids who don't make their way into decent colleges. The way to make this happen, I think, is union reform. Teacher's unions need to change into professional organizations like the AMA. They need to lobby in the same way. They need to hold themselves to higher standards, and insinuate themselves into the regulatory process in the same way that doctors have. Teachers need to be treated as professionals, self-regulating professionals. If a teacher does something wrong they should go before a board of their peers, the same way a doctor does. If a teacher is up for tenure they should do the same. School administrators should be educators who come from the ranks of their professional association.
I don't have time to think this out the way I think the idea deserves. But basically, the answer to fixing our schools is to treat them like hospitals. See education as important as health. See teachers as important as doctors. Put teachers in charge of their regulation in the same way that doctors are of theirs. Require high standards for teacher training and education. No doctor would dream of taking someone with an MBA, giving them 8 weeks of training, and sending them to the OR to remove gall bladders. But for some reason that's seen as a fine thing to do in the field of education.
So the first is primarily in response to the influence of money on the American political system and by extension, our educational system. I don't think it's ever going to change until people start dying. And I think that possibility is a lot closer than people think. I'm not a crackpot conspiracy theorist and I'm not advocating armed rebellion. Far from it. But the extremely wealthy in the US have set themselves apart and above everyone else. Their actions are becoming more and more extreme and overt. They seem to be bent on ending every social program they can influence, and because their money confers an incredible amount of influence, there are few over which they hold no sway. If they had their way they would pay no taxes at all. If that were to happen schools would close, hospitals would close, housing assistance would become a thing of the past. If the track we're on doesn't change people are going to start dying. Poor people will starve to death in America. After a couple food riots make it to the front gates of the guarded compounds of the Koch brothers, then, maybe, things will start to change. Maybe.
In case you can't tell that's the one I hope never happens.
I do have some ideas about school reform that might work if we can get money out of politics. I don't think that will ever happen. But I'll just ignore that and talk about what I think might work if we can ever manage to pull our collective heads out of our collective asses.
There is no secret about what would improve our schools. We need better teachers, smaller classes, and students with the freedom to take ownership of their own education. That's what rich kids get in school and there are very few rich kids who don't make their way into decent colleges. The way to make this happen, I think, is union reform. Teacher's unions need to change into professional organizations like the AMA. They need to lobby in the same way. They need to hold themselves to higher standards, and insinuate themselves into the regulatory process in the same way that doctors have. Teachers need to be treated as professionals, self-regulating professionals. If a teacher does something wrong they should go before a board of their peers, the same way a doctor does. If a teacher is up for tenure they should do the same. School administrators should be educators who come from the ranks of their professional association.
I don't have time to think this out the way I think the idea deserves. But basically, the answer to fixing our schools is to treat them like hospitals. See education as important as health. See teachers as important as doctors. Put teachers in charge of their regulation in the same way that doctors are of theirs. Require high standards for teacher training and education. No doctor would dream of taking someone with an MBA, giving them 8 weeks of training, and sending them to the OR to remove gall bladders. But for some reason that's seen as a fine thing to do in the field of education.
Friday, April 11, 2014
Tutoring ENG 101 for API
This is a comparison between tutoring for Prof Hendrickson's ENG 101 and tutoring for API. I started writing this as part of my post about Prof Hendrickson's class. But it ran long so I decided to make it into it's own post.
When I got hired to tutor for API, the only experience I had teaching was doing corporate training. I just figured I'd apply what I had learned doing that, and kind of wing it. I'm good at talking to people. I'm good at asking helpful questions. I know the people I worked with as a trainer learned a lot. So I figured all that would work for me. And to an extent, it has.
Luckily for me, students didn't start coming to my API tutoring sessions until after the first week of ENG 220. So I was able to apply the things we discussed in class with the students who attended my tutoring sessions, and it seems to have worked pretty well. The professor in the ENG 101 class I tutor for says she can tell when I've worked with someone and that it's definitely helping. So that's good.
But, after watching the tutors in the Writing Center and after having had both some good and some not-so-good sessions with students, I know I have a lot of room for improvement. Which is cool, I knew I had a lot to learn, that's why I came here. And in my experience, the more I do something the better I get at it. My immediate goal right now, the thing I'm thinking about most anyway, is figuring out the difference between a good session and a bad session.
When I got hired to tutor for API, the only experience I had teaching was doing corporate training. I just figured I'd apply what I had learned doing that, and kind of wing it. I'm good at talking to people. I'm good at asking helpful questions. I know the people I worked with as a trainer learned a lot. So I figured all that would work for me. And to an extent, it has.
Luckily for me, students didn't start coming to my API tutoring sessions until after the first week of ENG 220. So I was able to apply the things we discussed in class with the students who attended my tutoring sessions, and it seems to have worked pretty well. The professor in the ENG 101 class I tutor for says she can tell when I've worked with someone and that it's definitely helping. So that's good.
But, after watching the tutors in the Writing Center and after having had both some good and some not-so-good sessions with students, I know I have a lot of room for improvement. Which is cool, I knew I had a lot to learn, that's why I came here. And in my experience, the more I do something the better I get at it. My immediate goal right now, the thing I'm thinking about most anyway, is figuring out the difference between a good session and a bad session.
Tutoring for Prof Hendrickson's ENG 101
I don't think I helped as much as I could have in Prof Hendrickson's class. I worked with two students and one of them I couldn't help at all. He was the first one who showed up. He didn't have anything written, didn't have a copy of the assignment, the course packet with the readings, or the outline that he told me he had started. I think we also had a communication barrier. He had an accent, but I didn't have trouble understanding him. And I thought he understood me, but he gave contradictory answers to the questions I asked him, and when I asked him again to make sure I understood, he'd answer them differently. We kind of went around in circles for a minute. I wanted to try to help him do something so I decided to see if we could discuss the readings or maybe work on a thesis. From his responses it seemed as if he hadn't done the reading at all, and since he didn't have the course packet, that kind of left us nowhere. I told him that we'd be back again to work with his class, and that if he brought the course packet and whatever work he'd done, I'd be able to help him out with it. But that basically, there was nothing I could do to help him. That's when the second student showed up.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)