Blog 4

I have just begun to get into reading my teacher story book over fall break and I can already relate to the experiences from my service learning. I am reading Holler if you Hear Me by Gregory Michie and I can specifically relate to his experiences of classroom control. In the chapter Terrible No Good Very Bad, Michie relates an experience where he has no control over his class and the students get out of control. I had a similar experience when I did my service learning. First most of the students at the school had a soccer game that afternoon that was one of the after school programs that they were in, so none of them could focus on any school work. Then they had to read a lot and get through two chapters of a story. I worked with about half of the class in the lobby of the school while the teacher worked with the half in the classroom. We did popcorn reading and literally every time someone walked by their attention was completely distracted and then two of the boys started messing with each other. I need to work on taking control of a class otherwise these students are going to figure out that I am “soft on crime” and then I will never be able to regain control.

I need to work on “reflection in action” to adjust the way I am tutoring because situations may change. For example a student that I may be tutoring might not be understanding so I need to be able to switch and identify the best way of working with the student.

But the best part about service learning so far has been working with one student who has a hard time focusing and is probably the lowest performer in the class. He was learning the metric system and was not getting it. On a quick aside this student is in a fifth grade class and I didn't learn the metric system and conversions until 7^th grade so I think its perfectly reasonable to not understand fifth graders. So we worked through a few problems and I taught him one of the tricks that I used last year on the Advanced Placement to remember the metric system and he got it. It was amazing to see him finally understand what he was unable to understand it, his face just lit up and he had a huge smile. That was probably the best part of service learning that I have had so far.

I also tutor 8^th graders in math at Windlake. I have been helping them correct problems on their tests and mainly force them to do the work. I was going to give my email address to them if they had any questions about Algebra homework that I could answer over email, because I am away from my phone a lot. I was very surprised about their response. Most of them said that they didn't have computers at home. I was astonished. I had grown up my whole life around computers (mostly because my dad is a nerd who works for HP) and I don't know how it is possible to do homework without one. I think that over the years education will be heavily impacted by the advancement of technology. But we must remember to make sure all schools have technology or we risk creating greater disparities in education than those that exist today.