Reflection On My Last Session

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.

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.

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."

notes from freire

i can't promise these are any good

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.

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.

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.

Notes for our quiz

This is where I'm going to put the notes I take for class.

Expectations and Questions for Tutoring Monday

I feel like we covered this pretty well in class and I don't have much to add. I expect to be working with two students from an ENG 101 class writing thesis driven argumentative essays on the topics of race relations and gentrification. I've been tutoring through API and I used to be an instructor for a tech company so I'm not nervous. I know I need practice to be a better tutor, but that's what this is about. A lot of the discussion in class was about people skills, getting people's names, using good body language, being friendly and approachable. I feel like I've met so many clients and customers in a corporate setting that I have a pretty good handle on that kind of thing. Most of my work experience isn't real applicable in school but in this case, I think it is.

The things I really need to be concerned with, the stuff I need to try to make sure I remember, are the techniques we discussed. I have to remember ideas for what to do with students who haven't done any work, how to use leading questions to draw them in the direction of the work, things like that. I'm planning on reviewing my notes from class today right before the session just to remind myself of some of the things we discussed that I might nor remember or come up with on my own otherwise.

Writing Center Observation #4

I watched a really great session this morning. The student knew and requested the tutor I observed today. He later told me he had been working with her for two or three semesters. She had come in for help with the second draft of an English 102 essay on "The Story of an Hour" by Kate Chopin. She already had a well developed first draft that had been graded by the professor. The tutor started by reading the first draft and discussing the professor's feedback with his student. They discussed the issues she wanted to work on and he asked if she had done any work yet. She said yes and took out a second draft. They worked primarily with this draft.

Writing Center Observation #3

I feel weird about writing this entry, because I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus, especially a tutor who I think has the tutee’s best interests at heart, and who tried her best to help. I also don’t know that my interpretation of what I saw was valid, or matched up with what the tutor or tutee might have to say about the session. I’m talking about subjective things like body language. They sat next to each other but the body language wasn’t great. The tutee rolled her eyes a lot. The two of them both seemed frustrated at times. The tutor seemed bored at times and condescending at others. At one point the tutee looked at me and subtly asked what time it was, as if all she wanted was to get out of there. This is all subject to my interpretation. Neither of them said anything nasty or confrontational or demeaning. I don’t want to condemn anybody for something I might be wrong about. But I don’t feel like what I witnessed was a very good session

Writing Center Observation #2

Wednesday, March 26, 2014
10:30AM

I was not terribly impressed by this session. It wasn't bad. I think it was probably pretty good. But there were some issues.

The tutor and his tutee already knew each other and had worked together before. They had a good rapport and it seemed like she worked with him regularly. The tutee's first language was Spanish and she had some confidence issues about her mastery of English and her writing skills. But she already has a Masters from a university in her home country and from what I observed today she's already a really good writer. Considering only higher order concerns, what she had written was better than 90% of the first drafts I've ever seen. Even considering grammar, punctuation, spelling and other lower order concerns, what she brought in was probably better than at least half of the work I've seen from people who only speak English.

API Tutoring #1

This post is about the tutoring I've been doing for English 101 through the API program at LaGuardia. The way API works, a tutor gets assigned to a class (I've been assigned to ENG 101). Then they take a survey of the time the students in the class are available and set up regular tutoring sessions during the week for the students from that class to attend. It's interesting from my perspective because I want to be a high school English teacher, so in addition to tutoring, I get the opportunity to watch a professor teach a class.

Writing Center Observation #1

Friday, March 21, 2014
1:00PM

Today I observed my first tutoring session in the writing center. The tutor I observed assisted two Chinese-American students who came in together for help with the same assignment: a 750-word essay describing how they learned English.

At first I thought the session was a little quiet, there were some awkward silences. But the tutor I observed worked well with her students and they both left acting as if they appreciated her help. It certainly seemed to me as if they were back on track with the assignment.

The Writing Center - What I Expect

I'm a student in ENG 220 - Seminar in Teaching Writing at LaGuardia Community College. As part of our class requirements we have to visit four sessions in the school writing center and blog about what we observe. Since I haven't visited the center yet this blog entry is about what I expect to observe when I go, and what I expect it to be like.

I've visited the writing center as part of my ENG 101 class. Our professor brought us there to show us where it was and so that we could observe a brief presentation by Bert, the director of the center. I have taken a class with a professor who was a supervisor at the writing center, and spoken to students who visited the center for help, although I've never gone there my self. My expectations for what it will be liked are based on all this, as well as the material we've covered and discussions we've had so far in ENG 220.

I know that the sessions are one-on-one between one tutor and one student. I expect most of the tutors to be English or Ed majors who are good writers and who are genuinely interested in helping other students with their written assignments. I'm not sure how effective I expect them to be. In my experience, many people who mean well don't actually know how to talk to other people without coming off as condescending. Writing is a particularly sensitive topic because it's a representation of one's self, one's thoughts. Criticism, even well-meaning constructive criticism is often not well received.

I know I've done it myself. A classmate of mine asked me to take a look at something he had written. I thought it was pretty good, and I gave him feedback regarding what I thought were minor concerns. There were a few spelling issues, some punctuation issues. Some of his wording was a little repetitive. I asked him questions about word choices he made and told him about similar issues I had, and told him what I tended to do when I encountered similar errors in my own writing. I thought I did a decent job but I know he was offended. I still don't know what I said or how it was I said it that was too much. But there was something.

Another thing I expect to be an issue for tutoring sessions is student attitude. Some students I've worked with at LaGuardia who have asked for help have actually expected me to do their work for them, or have asked me for help the day before an assignment was due and handed me a draft that was... really... extremely... definitely not ready.

I'm interested to see how the tutors I observe in the lab overcome these two issues that are my primary concerns about working as a tutor, at least right now. I expect I'll also witness things I haven't foreseen at all. I'm just as, if not more, interested in the unforeseen issues as I am in the ones I anticipate.