Day eleven: April 16, 2015

9:15-10:40

15 hours and 35 minutes

      Today was my last and final day tutoring due to finals and many test coming up for me at University of Georgia. When I got there, many students were late for first period. There were only a couple of students in Mrs. Clarks Class not including James. This worried me because I knew that this was going to have to be my last day. I was chatting with Mrs. Clark while we waited for her classroom to fill up and she was talking to about how the End of Course Tests were coming up and how she was nervous for her students because this determined if they were going to be advancing to the next level. She told me that today was going to be the last day of regular class and that they were about to begin Test prep. 

     James did end up coming to school today and he actually wanted me to tutor him today so we made our way to the media center to get started on his work. He ended up having a quiz over reading comprehension. Before we started, I asked him if he was nervous about the tests coming up and he told me that he was because he wanted to make sure he was going to pass so he could start on his next level. I just told him that he would do fine if he paid attention during the test prep because it is usually the same types of questions and he just said okay and we started on his reading comprehension quiz. When working on his reading comprehension quiz, he didn't feel like reading so he kept trying to guess the answers without reading which he ended up getting wrong. So again I asked him to read the whole thing through and then summarize it to me. When he began doing that he started getting the answers right. When he realized that every question had a new passage that he had to read he started trying to skip to other questions to see if they didn't have passages but they all did so he asked me if he could go to the restroom so he went. There were only ten questions on this quiz but each one had about a three paragraph passage and two questions that went along with it. He got back about 10 minutes later and started to try and guess on the answers again. I told him that these questions were a lot like what was going to be on his End of Course test and for some reason this really frustrated him. He kept on trying to guess on his answers and about ten minutes before class let out he exited out of everything on the computer without finishing his quiz and told me he was going back to Mrs. Clarks class and walked out. After this, I went and talked to Mrs. Reed and she said that this wasn't that uncommon for him and that he had been doing this to tutors all week. She told me that she would talk to him and thanked me for my patience with him all semester.

      Overall, I really did enjoy tutoring James because it taught me how to be patient with someone who isn't really motivated to learn. Although, James and I never really formed a relationship I know that I did actually help him even if it was only pushing him from one question to the next to make sure that he got all his work done on time. I really did enjoy tutoring at Classic City and Mrs. Reed invited me to come back next semester so I will probably be doing that!

Day ten: April 9, 2015

9:15-10:40

14 hours and 10 minutes

       Today, James was in class but he refused on having a tutor. Mrs. Clark took him outside and talked to him and everything and he was just not having it at all. He just kept saying that he didn't feel well and he just wanted to do his work independently. This frustrated Mrs. Clark because she knows how much he actually needs a tutor to help motivate him to get his work done but she knew that if she did make him work with me he would have made my job even harder and refused to work so she let him stay in the class and just had me observe more to see how James is when he doesn't have a tutor and this was definitely interesting for me to be able to watch. Mrs. Clark was at the front the class going over some reading that the students were supposed to be doing on their own. Their assignment every day was to read ten pages from their book that they were reading as a class. When I heard this, I though for sure that everyone would be doing their assigned reading since it was only ten pages and she even gave them time in class to read as well but many of the students including James hadn't been doing their reading for weeks. In fact, James never even told me that they were supposed to be reading ten pages a day and I have been tutoring him since the beginning of the semester so he was very behind on his reading. After asking the students what page they were on in the book, Mrs. Clark decided to let the students have the rest of the class period to read so that they could catch because the students wouldn't have been able to do their assigned work without having done the reading. She told all the students to cut off their computers and focus on reading. She had to ask James and many of the other students multiple times to turn off their computers so that they could read. Finally, when she got all the students to turn off their computers some students began to read but some brought out their cell phones and were trying to hide them inside their books so they could surf the web or text their friends. Mrs. Clark was constantly walking around and had to talk to many of the students multiple times to get them back on task. Mrs. Clark was very frustrated because the students were supposed to have already read and now she was having to push back the lesson since none of the students had been reading the way that they were supposed to.

      It was very interesting to see how difficult it was to get the students to do something as simple as read ten pages a day and even then when they didn't do so it took copious amounts of effort for Mrs.Clark to be able to get them to read consistently throughout the rest of the class period. Seeing this made me realize that it doesn't matter how well a teacher can plan their lesson plan, if the students don't do their assigned work it can throw off the whole week. This also showed me how much James really did need the tutoring that he was getting simply because he needed that extra motivation so I definitely see what Mrs. Reed was talking about last week about how I was helping James more than I realized. 

Day nine: April 2, 2015

9:15-10:40

12 hours and 45 minutes

      Today, James was not in class. Throughout the semester, it's been pretty common for him to not be in class which is definitely causing him to get behind in class. I talked to Mrs. Clark about this and she said that he's not always absent the whole day, he just often misses first period and thats the period I always come and tutor. Today, Mrs. Clark gave me the option to either go home and still get hours or go across the hall and try and tutor there. Mrs. Clarks class was not very full and for the students that were there, they didn't need tutors and they were all just doing work independently. I decided to go across the hall to see if anyone needed me in Mrs. Rooks class and she told me that no one needed a tutor and that her attendance was low today as well but she said that I was more than welcome to observe her class.

     I observed her class but she was not up and teaching today. Everyone was working independently on their computers. She did tell the students that if they needed any help on their math that she would be coming around periodically to see what progress was being made. So I just sat in the corner of the room watching the students work. Mostly they were doing well and working diligently but every once in a while the students would begin talking about something other than their math and Mrs. Rooks would just get up and go ask them if they needed any help on their math and they would just say no and stop talking. She did end up having to move one student because she kept talking to her friend and when Mrs. Rooks moved her the whole class kind of laughed but they all calmed down shortly afterwards. Overall, the class itself went really smoothly and it was interesting to see how Mrs. Rooks kept her students under control. She was very good about keeping the classroom quiet since all the students were to be working independently. Instead of getting onto the students for talking, she would just walk over to their computers to let them know that she knew that they were getting off task and for the most part that made the students get back to work. I do wish that I would have been able to tutor today but it also was very insightful to be able to see how Mrs. Rooks ran her classroom when everyone was working independently.

Day eight: March 26, 2015

9:15-10:40

11 hours and 20 minutes

       Today, I was able to tutor James. Once again, Mrs. Clark had to talk him into having a tutor. She told me before he got there that he is a smart kid but he always has to be pushed to do his work. Whenever he is left to do his work independently, he just plays on the computer and doesn't complete the tasks that he is supposed to so she likes to put him with a tutor whenever she can. She sent us to the media center so we could complete some of his E20/20 work. This time when we were trying to get started, he told me that he didn't remember his log in for his computer. This made me a little skeptical considering they do work on the computer every day. So we went and got Mrs. Clark and she just said, "James, stop and log on to the computer. We are not doing this again today". So I'm guessing that he was trying to just not do school work hoping I wouldn't go and get Mrs. Clark. But right when we got back to the media center, he logged right on and went through all the stuff we could do that day. I just told him to choose from the tasks that were due tomorrow but he said he didn't want to because those ones were hard. Eventually I convinced him to do the tasks that are due tomorrow.
       In this task, there were a lot of reading comprehension tasks. James would somewhat skim through it and guess on the answer. I would always read over his shoulder and the answers were clearly stated in the paragraph but he would still answer wrong meaning that he just wasn't reading or at least wasn't reading as intently as he should have been. After answering about three answers incorrectly, I had him read the paragraph completely and I would talk to him about it so I would know if he read or not. After that, he was beginning to answer the questions correctly. Towards the end of the period, he began to get restless and started answering questions incorrectly so he could get through with the task on time. In the midst of his rush to finish his school work, he went to the bathroom and took about ten minutes so that by the time that he got back to the media center the period was already over.
      This somewhat upset me because I believe that he should value the time he gets to spend with a tutor when all he wanted to do was rush through his work and waste time in the bathroom. It has been pretty hard to form a relationship with James because he barely likes to talk to me and even when he kind of talks to me, its still like pulling teeth. After this session, I went and talked to Mrs. Reed and told her about how is was frustrating for me when James has no motivation and is wasting time and she just told me that James was one of the more difficult students in the school and that I didn't realize how much I was actually helping even if it didn't really feel like I was. So this definitely made me feel better and that I was actually making a difference for the students that I was tutoring.

Day seven: March 25, 2015

9:15-10:40

9 hours and 55 minutes

       Today, James wasn't there. Mrs. Clark told me that today was early release so she wasn't expecting the school to have good attendance and she was definitely right. She only had about 4 studetns in her class. Of the students that she did have in her class, all of them were working diligently and independently so they didn't need tutors so she sent me across the hall to Mrs. Rook's class. Mrs. Rook's class is a math class so I always get nervous when I have to go in there. Math has always been something that I struggle with. In Mrs. Rook's class, there was  a substitute teacher, Mr. Cherry. The students had never had him as a sub but they were definitely taking advantage of having a sub. Many of them were saying that they didn't have any assignments today or that they had already finished everything which is very far fetched considering most of their assignments are given in bulk so they can work as they go but the substitute didn't know this so he let them do as they pleased for the short class period.
      I was tutoring Amanda. She was working on a quiz online about circles and how to measure tangent lines to find the angel. She was pretty confused on how to do it and told me that she did not know the formulas in order to find the measurements. I asked her if she had watched the mini lesson before the quiz because the formulas would probably be on there and she said no and that she didn't want to. Eventually, I convinced her to watch the videos so she could improve her grade. She had already taken the quiz twice and failed it both times. In order to get the final grade, the three grades were averaged. So if she did well on the last one, it would at least bring up her final quiz grade a little bit more. After watching the videos, we knew the formulas so it was much easier to do the problems. Since it was just basic formulas, it was easy for me to help her. She was much more talkative than James is and seemed to enjoy having someone help walk her through the problems.She was actually trying really hard and spending a good amount of time on each problem. I don't if that's because I was sitting behind her watching her or if she always tried this hard but I'm glad that she was taking her time to write the problems down on paper and work them out. Out of all the students in the classroom, she was the only one that was really on task and we ended up finishing her quiz and she made an 80 which definitely helped pull up her quiz average.
      Having a tutor really made a difference for Amanda and it really kept her on task which made me very happy considering most students were having a very difficult time staying on task. She ended up staying with me for the second period of early release because she was behind in Math and they saw that she was responding well to the tutoring. Overall, today was a very good tutoring session and I really enjoyed getting to spend time with Amanda and help her out with her Math quiz and practice probelms.

Day six: March 19, 2015

9:15-10:40

8 hours and 30 minutes

       Today, I got to tutor James. Whenever I ask him why he wasn't in class the week before, he mumbles and brushes me off. Its been very hard to form a bond with him because he seems to have no interest in me or the help that I am attempting to give him. He did arrive late today but we still ended up having a good amount of time for tutoring. Mrs. Clark talked to James and at first he said he did not want a tutor but Mrs. Clark always has a way of convincing him because he really does need the one on one time. Mrs. Clark has us go to the media center to have one on one time so we wouldn't have any distractions from being in the classroom.
       James had an online quiz today. He was being more difficult than normal today. His online quiz was around 40-50 questions over the reading that the students have done in class. This was something that was hard for me to help him with since I had not read the book that the questions were over. When I asked him if the class had read the book;he told me no, which I found odd because its doubtful that a teacher would include questions on a quiz that they hadn't read. After pressing the issue, he told me that yes the class had read it but he didn't read and wasn't paying attention when they were going over it is class. We did the questions that supplied excerpts that we could read for the certain questions and he answered those to the best of his ability. The rest he decided to guess on, which I advised against but he did not agree with me  because the quiz was due at the end of the class period. 
       James ended up getting a 74% on the quiz which he was not happy about but I tried to explain to him the importance of reading the assigned reading because he would most likely be quizzed on it later. He mostly took that to heart and was realizing how his decisions to be lazy were directly affecting his grade. Overall, the tutoring session went well between he and I. He was asking for help more and for clarification when I was explaining a question or answer to him. I wish he could have gotten a better grade on the quiz but I believe he learned a valuable lesson seeing how much the quiz grade affected his overall grade.
       

Day five: February 27, 2015

Time: 9:15-10:40

7 hours and 5 minutes

       Today, James was not in class. Mrs. Clark is never surprised when this happens. She usually waits until about 15 minutes after first period is supposed to begin before actually starting class because students are often tardy to class. There were only about 7 people in class today which is relatively normal. Instead of staying in Mrs. Clark's room, she sent me across the hall because the students that she did have did not need tutors and were going to be working independently.
       In Mrs. Rook's class, she teaches math which immediately threw me off considering I'm an English major and Math has always been my weakest subject. She was going over some problems on the board rather than having all the students work independently on their computers because a lot of students were having some problems with the same questions. This was different for me because I am so used to the discussion driven classes in Mrs. Clark's class. Mostly, Mrs. Rook's was doing practice problems on the board step by step. Some students were paying attention but most were going about their online work normally. As a student myself, it always surprises me when students aren't paying attention to the teacher when they are standing up in front of the class teaching but in Classic City, it is normal because each student has their own plan of study and moves at their own pace.
       There were also a lot of tutors in class today which reminded of of the book that I read for my second book club, Americas Unseen kids:Teaching English/Language Arts in Today's Forgotten High Schools. I really enjoy seeing all of the tutors at Classic City like in the book I read but I wish that us tutors could work together to help out in classroom and possibly help teach but I understand that with the style of Classic City it would be difficult because each student is moving at their own pace so the lessons plans would not be beneficial to all the students.
       With James being absent as often as he is, it makes it very hard for me to strengthen the student tutor relationship but this experience has shown me how hard it is to help motivate students to want to come to school. It is also teaching me how to motivate students to do their work the best they can in order to create a better future for themselves.

Day four: February 19, 2015

9:15-10:40

5 hours and 40 minutes

      Today, when I went to tutoring it was about 12 degrees outside; one of the coldest days of the year. Knowing that attendance is already an issue at Classic City High School, I wasn't expecting many students to be there. When I got to the school, it looked like school wasn't even is session. When I got to Mrs. Clarks room, there were no students in the classroom and no students even in the hallway. Mrs. Clark had a sub that day so he wasn't sure what to tell me but said I could observe the students work. Mrs. Reed came by and said that there probably wouldn't be anyone I would be able to tutor since it was so cold but she told me that I was more than welcome to observe class. I stayed to observe Mrs. Clarks class but since there was a sub, there wasn't any lecturing so I just walked around the class keeping students on task while they were doing their online quizzes and answered questions if any of the few students there needed help.
      I can understand why there was very low attendance today was so low considering that attendance in an every day issue at Classic City but it was still disappointing that I wasn't able to tutor anyone. This reminded me of one of the books that I had to read for my book club for class Americas Unseen kids:Teaching English/Language Arts in Today's Forgotten High Schools. In this book, tutors go to an at risk high school every day to try and make the students more excited about learning and give them some guidance when learning in the everyday classroom. At their high school, they often had attendance issues as well considering students cannot learn if they do not come to school. In this book, the tutors tried to make learning more exciting and fun in order to make the students want to come to school; they also had a token economy program where they would be rewarded for coming to school every week day. This is something that Mrs. Reed does as well. The students are rewarded tickets for coming to school every week day and also for academic achievements. I can see how this works because if the students work with a tutor, they will get a ticket; so when we walk in and the teachers ask who wants a tutor, many students will say yes. This is extremely beneficial because even if they are just working with a tutor to get a ticket, they are still getting one on one time instruction so they are free to ask as many questions as they want. Although I didn't get to tutor today, I was shown what the reality of the classroom really is and how even if not all the students are there, the teachers and students have to improvise in order to make the day a successful school day. 

Day three: January 29, 2015

Time: 9:15-10:40

4 hours and 25 minutes

    Today when I arrived to the school, Mrs. Clark was a little off put because there were very few students in her class. She thought that maybe the buses were late but it turns out not many people came to school today. At first, James had decided that he didn't want a tutor today so Mrs. Clark directed me to a class across the hall but soon after she came over and got me saying James now wanted a tutor. This was nice because it showed me that James actually wanted to work with me and needed my help, so this made me feel like he's enjoying having me as a tutor. 

    Today, we were working on some online quizzes again. They consisted of finding the subject and verbs in sentences along with identifying dependent and independent clauses. James did fine with the first three quizzes we did but when it came to the last one he told me he didn't want to do it. We still had twenty minutes left in class so I told him we had to do something so he needed to find something else. In the end, he ended up clicking on the quiz and saw the first question which had something to do with prepositional phrases and he quickly closed out of it again. This raised a flag for me because in Bright not Broken, it talks about how students will come up with excuses when they don't understand something because they are embarrassed at not knowing how to do it. I told him to open it back up again and we worked on it together and eventually got through the entire quiz. These questions were a little bit more difficult and included a little bit more explanation in order for him to understand it all fully but in the end, he got it. These type of phrases and clauses are something that I want to focus on with him a little bit more because he did struggle with it next week when I go. 

    As time goes on, the tutoring sessions are going smoother and smoother. Its becoming a bit of a routine. I always go on Thursday mornings so James knows to expect me. At first, when he said that he didn't want a tutor today it kind of hurt my feelings because it made me feel like he wasn't enjoying or learning from our tutoring sessions. Then when he decided that he did want me, it made me feel like our relationship was growing. James is not much of a talker; he doesn't really care to talk about himself or anything that is not school related and this is fine as long as he enjoys the tutoring sessions and that we get the work done that was assigned. Overall, I would say today was a great tutoring session.

Day two: January 22, 2015

Time: 9:15-10:40 first period 

2 hours and 25 minutes

    Today, I only tutored James. We got a little bit of a late start due to his being tardy and me not being able to find anyone to unlock the room we were to be working in. Mrs. Clark told me that he has been doing better about coming to school everyday but still is usually a bit tardy but he is making progress.

    Today, we worked on some online quizzes on sentence structure. We got significantly more done than we did last time. We worked on two of the quizzes with 50 questions on each one. He was much more willing to do this rather than read like the assignment was last week. The questions consisted of making sentences parallel and subject verb agreement. James seemed to understand this easily and only needed some help and introductory explanation on how to make parallel sentences and what made subjects and verbs agree but he got it only after a few questions. He was better about asking for help this time if he didn't understand the question. I learned that if I read the sentences to him out loud, he can hear what makes the sentence sound right rather than just reading to himself and he began reading them out loud on his own eventually.

   The next assignment was how to properly use colons. We were running out of time when we got to this assignment but we went over the first ten questions pretty quickly and he understood the basis of how to use colons correctly and said he would finish the assignment at home once we ran out of time. 

    Overall, today was much better than the last tutoring session. He seemed to understand the material much better and I think he was more comfortable since it was just me and him,one on one, versus having another student in there with us. It made me feel like I was a better tutor because the session went by much smoother which made me not frustrated like I was last time. The type of exercise we were working on today is something that I personally thrive in so with James doing well in it too it made the tutoring session easy and effortless because we both were working together to get the assignment completed. I would say that my expectations going into the classroom were very low because I expected today to be as difficult as last time but I was pleasantly surprised because there was a vast difference in James. I think that maybe last time he was having a bad day or was just very tired so he wasn't nearly as motivated last time but today he was ready to go and reviewed a good amount. I'm very happy with today's session and am glad that James is trying harder to do his work in a timely manner. Hopefully next week will be just as promising.

Day one: January 15, 2015

Time: 1st period 9:15-10:40

1 hour and 25 minutes

    Today, I was tutoring in Mrs. Clark's English class. Once I got there, I was assigned to Amber who is 16 years old and would like to eventually become a Nurse. Mrs. Clark asked us to go to another room as to have some one on one time with Amber to help complete the assignment. Once we got into the classroom, Mrs. Clark brought in another student, James, who is 17, so I could help both of them with the same assignment. 

    Today, their assignment was to read a passage from The Outliers by Malcom Gladwell then answer ten questions about the reading and post it into a google doc and share it with Mrs. Clark. Amber read the passage in about thirty minutes and then started to read through the questions. She asked me to clarify the questions for her to help her better understand. She did need a little guidance in finding some of the answers in the passage and overall seemed pretty determined to do the assignment to her best ability.

    James took about twenty minutes just to sign onto the computer and stated that he didn't want to do the assignment because it was a lot of reading. Every time I walked away from his computer to help Amber he would navigate to another page to entertain himself instead of actually doing the reading. I had to be on top of him every ten minute to assure that he was staying on task. He ended up taking almost the entire period to do his reading and then only answered one of the ten questions after I read some of the passages to him. James did not seem the slightest bit motivated and it was very frustrating to have to check up on him multiple times within minutes because he was trying to do everything but the assignment. I do not know if James has a disability with paying attention or if he is just not motivated to do his school work. Reading may be hard for him and that may be why he put it off the entire period because when I actually read the passage to him he seemed to understand it better. In Bright not Broken, it talks about how everyone learns differently and James may be more of an auditory learner versus a visual learner. This is something that I will keep in mind when I go back next week. 

    I would say that today confirmed that not all people can learn like I do. This is the type of assignment that I would thrive in because it was reading comprehension and that is something that comes very easy to me. I now know that I need to be more assertive when it comes to time management because neither Amber nor James completed the assignment after an hour and twenty five minutes. 

    I expected it to be challenging to tutor these students but I did not expect them to just flat out tell me they did not want to do the assignment. It was also hard for me to explain things that were very simple to me but were challenging to them. 

    Overall, today was a good experience because it taught me what I should and should not do while trying to tutor. I've had a taste of the difficulty that I will experience on my journey as a tutor and there are many things that I already know that I can improve on in order to be a better tutor for Amber and James. For example, I may have them take turns reading portions of the reading aloud in order to manage time better and ensure that both of them have read in full and understand what is going on in the passage so they can answer their questions correctly. 

    I'm excited to go next week to see how much better I can do if I apply all that I have learned from this first tutoring session.