Tutoring Course Reflection

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is seeking a Program Coordinator to assist in the coordination of academic support services at Rutgers School of Nursing.

September 29,2017: I was super nervous and excited today, this was the day that I had been long wait for. Today I went to go ask if I could do my student observation hours at Vermont. When I went I was confused because everyone in the office was telling me to go to different places and I was told to go and return the next day. I was told that the Vice Principal had to assign me a classroom and that she was not there today.

Since my time at Sparks Elementary I have only been able to observe two routines that my mentor teacher has done with the other 3rd grade teacher’s. To start off the morning, Mr.Locklear meets his class in the cafeteria to greet them before the day get’s started. The teachers then instruct the student’s to set their backpack’s in their designated area and take the materials needed for their first rotation of class. When the student’s have set there belonging’s down, the teacher’s line up the students in the middle of the common area, where the student’s will be lead to their special’s classes like Music, P.E and Art. While the student’s part take in special’s, Mr. Locklear takes care of any last minute assignment’s or note’s he need’s before he start’s teaching his first class. He also take’s part in a weekly meeting the 3rd grade teacher’s conduct to go over any announcement’s or strategies. Once the student’s come back from special’s, Mr.Locklear starts off his math lesson with Mrs. Sanchez classroom. As soon as the student’s enter the class, they are instructed to take out their journal’s and engage with what the teacher is teaching for the first 10 minutes of class. In those first few minutes of class Mr. Locklear introduces the topic or objective that the students will be learning and engages them to participate in the examples he places on the permithian board. He then has the student’s break up into group’s to do their daily math station’s. While some student’s do

For my service learning opportunity, I chose to help a nonprofit tutoring organization. I didn't tutor, but I did help format the website and used my English skills I've devolved from TOPS to make her message more clear to any viewers. I chose this opportunity because I know how many kids my age hate school and wish school didn't even exist, but I also know how badly kids in these third world countries dream of school. They dream of being able to know as much as we do even though we don't even know that much. They help the national communities of children between ages 3 - 19 to learn English, mathematics, science, and fine arts. They do this, yet they are a nonprofit organization, so they don't even make money off of this which I think is amazing.

Our group chose to research reading comprehension development and how to teach our young readers how to gain knowledge from text. We have observed our students relying on their background knowledge rather than acquiring meaning from the text. We would like to learn more about the resources that are available to help our students develop comprehension strategies.

‘Reflective teaching should be personally fulfilling for teachers, but also lead to a steady increase in the quality of the education provided for children.’ Pollard (2008, P.4) Here Pollard is suggesting that reflecting on our own teaching experiences is not only important for the standard of education we provide, but also for our own benefit as it can be rewarding and very worthwhile to reflect on our practices. By reflecting on my own practices in SE1, it will enable opportunities to analyse strengths and weakness and how to improve for future practice, which will allow me to develop more as both a reflective and a professional teacher. This idea of reflection stems from Dewey’s (1910) cited in McGregor and Cartwright (2011) ideas where he suggests that there are three attributes which enables us to be reflective, them being ‘open-mindedness’, ‘wholeheartedness’ and ‘responsibility’. By taking responsibility for our own teaching and reflecting upon our actions, it allows us to be open-minded about changing and adapting to new ideas from what we have concluded from our reflections, which then allows us to fully engage with these new thoughts.

It came to my attention a while ago that in applying to liberal arts colleges, I was not only applying for a world-class education, but I was also applying to be part of a small tight-knit community. That tight-knit community would be as diverse as it gets in terms of race, ethnicities, and ideas. Typically, a clash of ideas yields conflicts, but that is not what I have learned. From research and the extremely helpful DIVOH program, it seems that Amherst is a place where new families are made with students, teachers, and faculties. This is only possible because of the open-mindedness and “candor about the inevitable tension.” Any and all boundaries are crossed and meshed together artfully and splendidly.

Since then, I have tutored students of all ages, and I have also volunteered as a concierge with the UC San Diego Health System, run charity events for the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Dieguito through United Way, was president of Vista High School’s Visual Art Honor Society where I led community beautification projects, and volunteered at Scripps Memorial Hospital in Encinitas as the secretary’s assistant, while also participating in Scripps’ Young Leaders in Healthcare program for 3 years where I was exposed to prevalent healthcare issues and potential careers.

For the students who were on level and below I made sure that they had the instructional support that the needed to be successful. The first instructional support that was provided was the one on one meeting to discuss where their writing was going. Also, each day of the writing process they received feedback with their work. The second way I showed instructional support was with their letters and their writing abilities. Students had fewer purple words they were required to have in their writing. With this tier of students they were asked to write four sentences per paragraph. This was helpful in that they were less stressed about having to make up more sentences and able to focus on writing quality sentences.

Nowadays, outside-of-school tutoring classes are becoming more and more popular. Parents start to send their children to tutor classes seeking to improve their children’s marks. The increase in tutoring class demand indicates that there is an increasing number of students reporting extra help from tutorials. Tutoring classes are established to help students to improve their academic performances by helping them to understand course materials in school. Thus, if a student takes extra classes outside of school, then his/her performance in regular day school is likely to become better.

I am a member of Service Knights, we do community work. For example, we helped tutor elementary students with their homework every Monday and Tuesday for about a month and a half. Me tutoring elementary students required patience as some children were frustrated with their homework and expressed anger toward us tutors. We taught them patience and that It sometimes takes a while to fully understand the material but in the end, they would be able to learn it. Tutoring the elementary students allowed many of us tutors to be hands-on, so many elementary students needed help and there were not enough tutors to cover each student, so we had to work together and thoroughly explain what is the answer they needed help with Math or English, sometimes

I received tutoring for Intermediate Spanish 1 on November 2nd for thirty minutes. I learned about how to use the present subjunctive tense in Spanish. In addition, we discussed what days would be the best for regular tutoring sessions since our meeting was an introductory session. The most valuable takeaway from the session was getting another point of view of Spanish subjects in English. I discovered that I was struggling to grasp concepts in my Spanish class because my professor explains concepts only in Spanish. I understand that in order for me to become fluent in another language is to be fully immersed. Thus, my teacher only speaks to the class in Spanish and we respond in Spanish as well. Emily, my tutor, helped me understand that I just needed to hear the topic explain in the language I know best; English. No matter how much something is explained to me, I won’t actually get it unless it is put into the context of English. In addition, Emily made me feel welcomed in the space. I did not feel like I was being judged when she asked me to complete a few practice problems. The best part about the session is that she created her own set of questions based on what I was learning. After I

In December of 2014 I was given the opportunity to tutor second and third graders at Jonathan Elementary School. Once a week, for five weeks, I would assist Mrs. _?__ with her students in Math. Throughout tutoring, it was her goal for her students to meet the standards of the class and to catch up with the other students. This became my goal too, and I wanted to help her achieve this. Each week, Mrs ? would review the material with the students and afterwards split them into two groups. It was my responsibility to work with one of the groups by going in depth and providing example questions. Not only did I learn from her techniques, I also knew what her expectations were. It was challenging starting out since in other volunteer roles, my

The beginning of the term was really slow. For the first few weeks I didn’t have any students to tutor. So, I utilized this down time to observe the ways in which some of the graduate students’ tutor while in the writing lab. I primarily viewed Celeste and Christie’s sessions and while watching them tutor, I observed how they handled different situations and I took notes to keep track of what I learned. Some of the most common questions I noticed were about sentence structure, grammar, and how to create a thesis. And Celeste and Christie went about answering students’ questions in a very calm and calculated way. Seeing how other tutors operate served to be a productive method of learning back during fall term and it provided insight during

… This afternoon I spent about a half an hour on the phone with Mrs. Poirier discussing the details of my lecture that I will prepare for the freshman students for the Essentials of Dental Radiography didactic class. Students will be reading the chapter before the actual lecture so that they will be familiar with the subject. Mrs. Poirier asked to use the student's text book as a main source for the lecture and come up with some activity that actively engages the students during the lecture. She also suggested creating a short quiz that I can hand out to the students to assess their understanding of the lecture material. This quiz may be graded and used as one of their pop-quiz depending on Mrs. Poirier’s decision. The lecture time will be 30 minutes and ten minutes for class activity after the PowerPoint presentation.