first tutoring reflection

Walking into the hallway on my first day of tutoring was an eye-opening, nerve wrecking experience. At first glance it was easy to see that this is a school atmosphere I have never experienced before. Racially it is extremely diverse, from a quick overall assessment the school appears to be over 50% African American, 20% white, and 30% Latino. This racial diversity however does not hinder any of the children from academic cooperation. Esthetically Kiley middle school appears to be more on the lower socioeconomic sphere. The building is lacking many of the resources that i feel are necessary for a functioning school; there are no computers inside of the classroom and the text books are old edition and badly beat up. 

My main apprehension before my first day was whether or not I was knowledgeable over the material that we would be covering. Upon starting my actual tutoring experience I realized that knowledge was the least of my worries when it came to working with the kids. The two students i was given were apprehensive about answering any of the questions, even when it was just one on one time. I attribute this behavior to the idea of learned helplessness. After years of getting the answer wrong and falling behind they have a given up attitude. It is just easier for them to say I don’t know and let the teacher or their peers answer the question for them. 

My biggest challenged came when I was involved with the entire class. I forgot how mean middle school kids can be, unfortunately I experienced this first hand. While walking through the class keeping the kids on task I overheard a conversation between two girls. One girl whispered into the other ear, and the other girl responded, “I know you didn’t say Miss Cook was pretty because you know she ain’t pretty.” This was extremely hurtful to hear, especially from kids you are trying to help. I know that this back stabbing mean girl spirit comes from their own insecurities but I felt like I was back in middle school again. I hope that next week will be a better experience. 

Comment of weinstien article

I really liked what Katie had to say about time management. I have the same worries that she has about how to keep the class moving and avoiding downtime. After reading this weeks article, like her I was happy that my fears were not warranted. That most of the time teachers don’t have enough time to get through all the material before the end of the class period. I also liked her writing about transitional activities. This week I saw first hand how helpful these activates can be during a transitional time for the teacher. I think as educators we should move away from statements like “I hated that when I was in school,” and move into what strategies will be most helpful in controlling my class. In Katie’s blog she pointed out that she did not like transitional lessons but she sees the usefulness of them now.

Eat your veggies

Recently all of my blogs have been full of motivation and I wanted to change up the articles and write about a different kind of problem facing schools in every town regardless of socioeconomic status, race, or gender; childhood obesity. The article I read was about a new system they are trying to implement into schools were parents can electronically monitor their child’s eating habits. 

“ Primero Food Service Solutions, developed by Houston-based Cybersoft Technologies, allows parents to set up prepaid lunch accounts so children don’t have to carry money”, said Ray Barger, Cybersoft’s director of sales and marketing. Now parents can log into the school system and set up a lunch account for their child. There are several benefits in using this new system. One kids no longer have to carry around cash, with this system parents can put money into the account up front. The main focus of this is for parents to regulate what their kids are eating. If a parent doesn’t want their kids not to eat dessert or they only want them eating chips once a week they can program that into the computer and it flags all of those items. The cashier is now aware of any food allergies or parent-set diet restrictions for his or her account, and the student is not allowed to buy an offending item. 

This system already is being used in schools in Arizona, Oklahoma, Michigan and Tennessee, and Texas. Several other companies have similar cafeteria monitoring programs at other schools. Schools have been using some form of this system for the last 10 years. This article was focused on a Houston school district, and they are spending an estimated 5.3 million dollars on this program. They felt like by implanting this system will shorten lines and allow parents to control money and diet without having to be there. 

There are some skeptics to this program. Karen Cullen, an associate professor of pediatrics at the Children’s Nutrition Research Center at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, cautioned that this program will only work if parents and children continue communicating with one another. School lunch is an important tool for kids. This is the first time many kids are choosing on their own what to eat. “Kids need to be able to make healthy choices,” Cullen said. “Parents can’t be in charge. Children need some freedom.” If parents are still regulating what their child is eating how will the child be in college, or when they move out? 

To me this system is going to be a great addition to schools. Parents need to be respectful of their children and sit down and talk about healthy eating and what are appropriate eating habits. I think that childhood obesity is something that we as educators should really care about. If a child is filling themselves with junk at lunch what kind of student are they going to be in your classroom? 

Time management

“Making the Most of Classroom Time” by Weinstein focuses on time management and ways that teachers can increase ALT (academic learning time). The section that i wanted to focus on was the section on ways to increase academic learning time. What drew me to this section was the evidence of exactly how much time was wasted versus how much actual academic learning was taking place. 

The reason this section stuck out in my mind was due to my first experience inside a classroom this week as a tutor. From the start of class my teacher wrote up a timeline of the class schedule for that hour. They had two learning objectives they had to get through before they could watch a movie. Every time the class got out of hand he reminded them that they were taking away from their own movie time and that every interruption just took off more time. He illustrated this by deducting time on the board from the movie when things began to get out of control. This method really seemed to work with the kids and soon everyone was cooperating and working together to get through the objectives. However a teacher can not always revert to an extrinsic reward to regulate student’s behaviors. That being said I think that the timeline is something I will use later as a teacher because the kids really see exactly how much time they are wasting by being disruptive. 

One of Weinstein’s suggestions for increasing ALT was to increase the hours of learning. This can be done through block scheduling. I was never part of a school system that had block scheduling; however I had friends and sibling that participated in this type of scheduling. When classes are blocked for a longer period of time the teacher has time to do the tedious tasks like attendance without taking away from actual learning time. The flip side to this is that if the teacher is having a hard time keeping his/her students engaged for an hour what’s to say that adding an hour will increase the amount of learning.   

A great strategy that Weinstein suggests and that I observed during tutoring is to increase hours of learning by monitoring the student’s progress. As mentioned above my teacher started the hour with goals in mind and time limits to complete those goals. He also monitored progress by constantly engaging students in the assignments they were working on. Asking questions like how does this relate to what we learned yesterday and what did you get for number 4. By including every kid into the assignments they were working on the kids needed to be paying attention in order to keep up with the other students. He did not simply give an assignment and give a time limit to complete it. He kept the students engaged by having the entire class work together to get the answers.   

After reading this section I realize how important time management can be to a class. How much actual learning is lost when a teacher is constantly being distracted and has to stop. Time is something that as a teacher I am going to really work on. The line then becomes how much time do you spend on each student and what benefits the class the most. Is it stopping the disruption, or ignoring it and continuing on with the lesson? 

The Rise Model

In wrapping up our section on motivation, I thought I should write one last blog just to beat it into my brain. This week we read about motivating the alienated or at-risk student. The article I found was a model on how to motivate these types of students. This is the RISE model, composed of four main components; relevant subject matter, interesting instruction, satisfied learner, and expectations for success. 

In class we have touched upon root causes and factors that may increase the likelihood that a child may be an “at-risk” student. These factors are also included in this article, what I found shocking was the number of students that are affected by this. “Estimated 25 percent of students in this country drop out before high school graduation, and in some urban areas 30 percent of the students do not complete eighth grade.” As educators we need to see these numbers as a huge red flag, understanding that students are becoming less motivated and more alienated at a younger age. 

Relevant subject matter 

“Some interest, some bond of connection must be found between the subject matter and the learner” (Dewey,33) In order to engage at-risk students we need to make the topic relevant and meaningful, this can be done in several ways. The first is to connect content to students’ interests and experiences. This article uses the example of Romeo and Juliet, in order to connect this story to students she asks the question “has anyone ever dated someone that your parents didn’t like?” Already students can use outside personal experiences to connect with the material. Another way to increase the relevance of the material is to communicate the intended value of the activity. An example of this would be that it is important that you learn math so that you are able to balance a check book when you are older. 

Interesting Instruction 

As a student reaches middle school their curiosity declines, increasing the likelihood that students will come to school already bored and uninterested. This article suggests sparking new curiosity by providing conflictual paradoxical information. Example of this would be” We have learned that mammals bear their young, yet there is a mammal that lays eggs.” A second avenue to increase interesting instruction is by making abstract material more concrete by using metaphors and analogies. 

Satisfies learner 

This section focuses on the teacher more that the student. As educator we need to decipher between our students, understanding that not all rewards are the same for every student. What may be a good thing for one student may completely discourage another. At risk students need to believe that their efforts lead to rewards that they value. The best way to do this is through immediate positive feedback about the students progress. Keep in mind that feedback needs to be specific instead of controlling. Controlling statements such as, You did well enough to earn free time, tell the student that they only need to perform to please the teacher. There is no intrinsic reward to pleasing the teacher and students will begin to lose interest. 

Expectations for success 

Students tend to do better on an assignment when they believe they are responsible for their own success. There are a couple different ways that teachers can increase this awareness. First is by encouraging students to use “self-talk affirmations. The way the author describes this is that students need to first make a statement about their assignment (i need to take my time) followed by a statement about themselves (these problems are fun for me). These affirmation statements will invoke images, feelings, and ultimately actions. A second way educators can increase expectations for success is by emphasizing that working hard will lead to success, this concept is a fairly familiar. However how does this work when a student works hard and still fails? We need to be using this concept even more so when the child fails. This is done by asking the child to evaluate the steps they took to complete the assignment. This way teacher and student can sit down together and talk about a new strategies for the next assignment. Here the author notes that “students will likely expend more effort when they can plan, monitor, and evaluate their own learning.” 

This RISE model is a framework that incorporates knowledge about students’ motivation and ways to include that into their instructions. This model is based on the idea that students needs to know that what they are learning is valuable TO THEM. Teachers need to make learning valuable right now, while avoiding statements like “You will need this as an adult”. I really liked all of the ideas in this article and I plan on using them in the future, because they are valuable to me 

TE 302 Tutoring Plan

Tutorting Plan

Goals

- Improve student’s motivation to learn material by effectively communicating the value and importance of education

- Effectively teach and aid in student’s understanding of at least one important concept in the subject matter

- Improve students organizational skills (i.e. keeping assignments organized, having assignments completed on time)

Establishing a Connection

- open each lesson with a few open-ended questions about the student’s life, hobbies, and goals. Such questions will allow us to better understand our students and how we can better teach them. For example, if they like to play basketball we can weave an analogy between math and basketball into the lesson

- Establish a healthy professional realtionship with your student

- Be patient with your student. They’re going to ask questions and give answers that may sound silly to you and this is because they don’t have as much knowledge as you do so try and be as patient as you can.

- Let them know whenever possible that just because they gave a wrong answer or asked the wrong question that these are still valid questions and answers. Don’t dismiss a wrong answer outright.

Pre-Assessment

- Ask student to try to complete some selected work on their own first. That way we can observe how they would attempt to solve the problem with no outside instruction

- Ask well-worded questions about the student’s strategies. This will help them become aware of their own mental processes and teach them how to monitor their own learning

- Discuss the student’s progress with their teacher to understand how the student has performed in the past

- Observe students attitude and contributions to the overall class enviroment

- Observe how the student interacts with their peers in a cooperative enviroment.

Strategies for Assisting Students

- Modeling can be helpful for understanding certain tasks. Have your student watch as you go through the sollution process step-by-step, while explaining the logical reasoning for these steps.

- Allow student to attempt work on their own, and be available for them to ask questions as they work

- Provide feedback that is immediate, clear and precise, and positive.

- Encourage students go to back over their work and find mistakes they may have made the first time.

- Before starting on an assignment make sure all instructions are clear to the student.

- Continue working on establishing a connection with your student

- If you need to explain or give directions make sure that you keep the student’s attention by asking questions every now and then within your explanation. Keep them engaged.

Ongoing Assessment

- work together with the classroom teacher to monitor student’s performances in class, and on quizzes and tests. This will be the easiest way to determine if the student is learning

- Provide the teacher with feedback on the students progression

- Provide the student with positive constructive feedback about the progress they are making

Resocializing students with Failure Syndrome

Brophy defines failure syndrome as a “student who approaches assignments with very low expectations of succeeding and who tend to give up at the first sign of difficulty.” (Brophy, 126) I see failure syndrom as a defense mechanism used  by the student inorder to avoid feeling like a failure. If the student goes into an assignment with an I don’t care attitude it does not feel as bad when they don’t succeed, because they can always tell themselves that they didn’t try or they just can’t do that kind of assignment. This type of attitude is classified under the entitity theory. This is the theory that learning is based soley on intellectual ability, either you know it or you don’t. When a student feels that all school is either black or white failure syndrome is more prevelant.

Brophy gave several outside causes that attribute to a child developing failure syndrome. The one that found most enlightening was that children develop failure syndrome from an overdependancy-related desires for attention from their teacher. On the other side of the spectrum children may develop failure syndrome from parents inability to reward children when they did well while encouarging their children when they failed. This concept seemed like a catch twenty-two. However as educators it’s important to note that we need to find the medium between these two ideas in order to avoid failure syndrome and encouarge strong motivational skills in our students.

In order to motivate students and move them away from failure syndrome we need to show the student that they can be and are successful. This can be done in several ways

1. showing appreciation for their progess

2. allow students to set their own goals; while using self-evaluation as a motivator

3. allow students to work in groups; this may allow students to be a leader while recieving positive feedback from their peers

4. talk with students to find what areas they feel comfortable in and which are anxiety provoking.

By allowing the students some atonomy towards changing their attitude towards school may give the students added confidence and while decreasing the notion that they can’t succeed.

coping comment

It was nice to read a blog about an idea that i dont think we really discussed in class before. The idea of coping as an indiactor of motivation has never crossed my mind. LIke you i always saw just coping with school and grades was a negative, until this article i never realized how important it was for a student to be able to handle failure inorder to increase motivation. I also like this blog because it pointed out that there are many players in a childs educational development. It is not only the job of the teacher but a network of adults all commited to the childs development.

Divesity in the classroom

Schools today are becoming increasingly more diverse. Due to this increase we, as educators need to be prepared and educated ourselves as to how best include all students. This week we read about the alienated apathetic student. Many times when a student feels like they are the minority they begin alienating themselves from learning and other aspects of the school experience. The article I read covered some important techniques that teachers can use to increase active learning from all students.

The first step educators can take to increase active learning is by recognizing biases or sterotypes that they themselves may have absorbed. They need to examine how these biases effect how they talk to different types of students. All students need to be treated as an individual, not as a part of a minority or majority group. An example of this would be teachers discouraging women from persuing math and science classes. Although many minority students tend to stay in groups it is important to realize that even within these groups each student learns and is motivated at different levels.

Teachers also need to include every student in changing the cultural climate in the classroom. It is important not to avoid talking about the differences that exsit in the classroom. Use lesson plans to examine these differences. More often than not, prejiduces stem from ignorance. When students are allowed to ask questions it opens up the lines of communication between students, increasing the understanding, and thus the unity in the classroom. One way to implement this concept is to introduce a lesson about Plessy vs. Ferguson or women’s sufferage. When students are educated about the history of diversity and what struggles each marginalized group has gone through to earn certain freedoms they have today, understanding and unity can begin to occur.

socializing alienated students

In the section about socializig apthetic students brophy talks about motivating student by connecting modeling, persuasion, and scafolding to emtiontional invovlement and commitment. He is quick to note that without the emtional attachment there is a high probablity that the apathtic child will still refuse to learn. There are ideas in this section that i agree with, however there is one huge concept in which i felt alienates the student the same if not more than if you just ignored them.

The parts i did agree on were ones that invloved forcing the child to make the connections along with your guidence. i think it is important for the child to deside why learning and education is important to them. Making connections with the childs outside intrests and what you are doing in the classroom is a great way to indirectly get the child excited about learing. as mentioned in an earlier article learning is not always about fun, while learning is not always about fun it is a good way to get the child excited. Once you get them in the mode of working actual unfun school work will seem more routine and now they have the motivation to learn regardless if this one task is exciting or not.

Throughout the article Brophy comes back to the idea of connecting “learning experiences with their self-concepts.” He claims that in doing this students will then see themselves as active open-minded learners. This idea is extremely important in preparing students for higher education. College bond studnets need to have this ingrained so that its involunary by the time they go off to college or they will crash and burn. I saw a lot of my friends their first year at college fall off the deep end when any of their classes required even the slightest anaylisis because they didn’t have the motiavtion and determination to suceed, school was just a way to get a job, there was no emtion or connection to it.

The part that i had a hard time connecting to myself was comparing what he labled closed minded learners to active or openminded learners. Here he used the example of individuals of talk shows to explain the what may happen to you if you dont take an active role in you learning. Putting others and their lifestyles down in order to motivate your students not to be that person seems like a very hypocritical view at looking at how to be openminded. You shouldn’t scare your students into thinking they might become “white trash” if they don’t straighten up. Mentioned above motivation needs to come from within, it needs to be self actuaized not scared into. Once you start labeling others students will see you as closedminded.

The main idea from this article that i felt was the most important in teacings kids self-actualization and making the shift from alienated to active learner is the idea that school is not about learning fact it is about realizing their human potential. It’s about finding how to balance, work with others, fail, and succeed.