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.