Prompt #7

Now that my tutoring experience in Ms. Mara's classroom has come to an end, I can sit back and reflect on what transpired over the course of the semester.

I participated in Kahne & Westheimer's "Charity" model of service learning projects, but in doing so, I have become more enlightened about how to be a teacher who participates in the "Change" model, someone who truly gives her students the tools they need to succeed in their education and their lives.

Ms. Mara is a teacher that pushes her students to do their best. She wants all of them to achieve an A in her classroom and she clearly sets the expectations for her students, so much so that she had one class perform skits about the four cardinal rules the middle school has posted in every classroom throughtout; attend school, be prepared and ready to learn, respect yourself, others, and property, and finally, do your best to avoid conflict and help others to do the same. Through these skits, the cardinal rules were reinforced in a creative and meaningful way for the students, instead of just being repeated over and over and memorized just for the sake of memorization.

She expects students to come prepared to class; if they don't have the required list of materials, they lose points for the day's grade, and fellow classmates remind them that they need to be prepared for every class.

Ms. Mara is a teacher who commands authority, but not in an over-the-top authoritative way until it is necessary. She usually lets students run warm-ups, a routine they are accustomed to because she does it the same way every single day. They take comfort in routine, but also in creativity.

Ms. Mara never yells at a student, ever. She may raise her voice, but it is only to be heard over the twenty others in the classroom to restore order until she lets them disperse into their performance groups. With the right look and posture, however, she can convey to the students non-verbally that she means business and won't deal with anything out of line.

When I think of Ms. Mara's classroom, I think of learning, of concepts, of big ideas, and of skills that the students can take with them throughout their lives, but they don't come forsaking creativity and fun, being silly, being serious, being exploratory. They don't come forsaking self-discovery, ignoring friendships, inhibiting new alliances between students in a school system that may not be able to provide all the necessities that they may need to succeed educationally. In her classroom, the students learn to improvise with what props they may have, or to do without. They forge a community, one that's a safe-haven for them all, so that they feel comfortable in their own skins while trying on the skins of others, and qualities they don't necessarily possess. They discover themselves while discovering the characters they portray, much like I did during my experience with them.

I've discovered that I would love to be a great teacher like Ms. Mara is, one who can teach her students without having to resort to yelling or rewards in order to get good behavior (she does give out Dragon Bucks, but very infrequently). The students behave well because they just instinctively know that it leads to her being happier in the classroom, which they benefit from because there's no hostility in the atmosphere; it's a non-toxic learning environment for them.

I want to be a teacher that her students feel comfortable coming to with stories, questions, and problems that they need help with, a teacher whose door is always open to her students, who genuinely cares for them and their well-being, knowing that they may not have an environment like that outside of her own classroom. I want to be a teacher that students come back to see after they've graduated, who gets emails from students letting her know of their journeys, their lives, and what they are up to at that point.

I want to be a teacher that students will miss when the year is over.

On my last day, the class I helped out with the most this semester watched a portion of their performance of "Snow White & Rose Red" that they had an elementary school nearby come to see. I hadn't been able to attend because the first show date was postponed due to weather (the elementary children were supposed to walk over but it was much too cold for them), and the second date was pushed up a day when it was found out that the weather would be nicer the day before the rescheduled date. We were watching the performance and two of the girls came over to me with a card and a gift bag. The students had all signed the card inside the bag, Ms. Mara had bought me a candle as a thank you gift, and I couldn't stop thinking that I was going to have a very big hole in my heart as soon as I left the confines of the classroom walls.

Three hours later, I was crying over my card because the hole was bigger than I ever thought it could be.

I want to be the teacher that, even though when the students leave, I feel a little piece of me has been removed, I know that they are better for it because they have taken a piece of me with them and will remember it forever.

Prompt #2

All of my students that I have tutored are of a different socioeconomic status than my own. I live in a better-than-average urban neighborhood, while the students I help live in an urban setting that looks vastly different than the one I am accustomed to. Mine consists of trees and hills, and backyards fraught with swimming pools (my house is one of few in my neighborhood that does not have one), while their community consists of nail salons and convenience stores, and torn up asphalt roads outside the crowded apartment buildings in which they live.

As well as belonging to a different socioeconomic status, all my students are of different racial and ethnic backgrounds, and each student holds a certain "cultural capital" that they bring to the classroom each day they walk through the door.

I believe one student I have gotten to know especially well, Charlotte, has extreme potential to succeed in any endeavor she may choose. She is a vibrant child, always talkative, but she knows when it is appropriate to be so. She is friendly, and she speaks fluent Spanish; I've heard her converse with classmates numerous times in the language that I am sure she primarily speaks at home with her family. I believe she is a student who, given the right opportunities and coming across the right circumstances, could become a very enlightened individual and someone who cares deeply about the well-being of others. She's inquisitive and is always asking, "Why?" She could easily become someone of importance in her working-class community, as well as any other she may become a part of during the course of her life.

She reminds me quite a bit of the working-class individuals discussed in Brown's "In the Bad or Good of Girlhood." She has an extremely strong front put up in the classroom group setting, as if she would hate for anyone to thnk she was anything less than strong. But when talking to her singly, although her voice is still strong, one can see her insecurities a little more defined.

Charlotte, nonetheless, is a natural born leader, itching to be at the front of the line, to take attendance when Ms. Mara needs to attend to other things, and just being the center of attention amongst friends, speaking in rapid-paced Spanish. With a good education and perseverance on her part, Charlotte will be an excellent student and citizen in society, able to think for herself as well as others, assess situations put before her, and choose which action to take wisely.

Prompt #4

First Day of Tutoring Checklist

Purse? Check.
Wallet? Keys? Pen? Checkity check check.
Notebook and tracking sheet? Check twice over.
Personal history/bias? Big check.

Walking into the classroom on Day One, I wasn't walking in empty handed by any means. I had taken the race test which showed I had a moderate preference for European-Americans. I had previous tutoring experience within the school district, and I had my experience in an urban education system for the duration of my K-12 schooling.

Since I started school in kindergarten, I was exposed to a multicultural and diverse classroom setting. I lived right down the street from "the projects", and my school's section of city contained a few different neighborhoods; mine, which was mostly apartment buildings, "the projects", and beyond both of those was an area of single family homes. This resulted in students from different socioeconomic statuses.

I knew all the racial slurs (save for a few) by the time I was eight years old, and even called one classmate a derogatory term for someone who is homosexual, even though I didn't have a clue what it meant; I just knew that everyone else called him that. I was eight and wanted to be just like everyone else.

I am not saying all of this to say that urban schooling is dirty, or inattentive to issues going on within the classroom. I was disciplined for the homosexual slur as soon as he told the teacher. Rather, I am considering this as my personal history. I have experience in a multicultural classroom as a student and after this semester, as a teacher and mentor to the children of my class.

I cam into this tutoring position consciously trying to eliminate any bias I could; Hispanics are loud and obnoxious, African-Americans are lazy and never work hard to achieve something, and Asians are extremely smart (just a few of many). I wanted to come into the classroom with no expectations other than the best of every student. Every student is their own individual self and does not represent the whole of the group to which they belong.

One of the major challenges I will face as a teacher is communication with my students and whoever is there for the students' support systems at home. I have already addressed this in a previous prompt, but I will stress again that communication with a students and their parent/guardian/main support system is crucial in their schooling and success.

I believe that with my experience in a multicultural urban school district as a child, I will be able to address the needs of students in such a system, should I decide to teach in one, better than someone who only experienced a mostly homogeneous school setting because I will be able to draw on actual situations that I have been on the opposite side of (aka being the student as opposed to being the teacher). I will be able to ask the student who calls another "faggot" if he/she knows what the term actually implies and whether he/she thinks the other student felt good when they were called a derogatory name.

If I had come from a school system that was not diverse or multicultural, I think I could have possibly come across the same situations that I did, but the chances I would have would have been much slimmer, and I don't think I would feel as comfortable on the "teacher side" of the situation because I probably wouldn't have ever been on the "student side" of the situation.

Prompt #5

In order to answer this particular prompt, I must start
off by saying that in the classroom I have spent
the most time tutoring in (I've tutored several due to
my varying work schedule on Thursdays), there are no Caucasian
students. With that said, anyone can deduce that all the
students in the classroom (as well as in all the
others I tutored in, if I remember correctly) are of
a different ethnic and racial background than me. Ms. Mara
herself is African-American, so that makes me the only
Caucasian that the students encounter in this particular setting.

During my high school education, I took three years of Spanish. Both years I went to URI, I took a semester of Spanish. I'm mildly capable of picking out words and phrases from conversations I overhear at work and on the street and I am able to form basic sentences using the vocabulary I have learned, but after that, my multilingualism ends (aside from counting to ten in French, saying "hello" in Japanese, and various other one word quips in German and Polish).

Knowing this, I'm a bit apprehensive of teaching a diverse classroom because eventually, it will be parent-teacher conference night and I will be faced with the question, "Will I be able to communicate with my students' parents/guardians?" More than likely, this is an unfounded fear because I will somehow find a way to get my point across if they are not fluent in English. But, on the off- chance that I am unable to communicate with a student's parent/guardian, I will have to have some sort of backup plan. I may have to have their son or daughter translate, or have someone else who speaks both English and whatever language the conversation needs to be translated into translate for me.

I know that communication is a necessary part of the education of a student, and in the interaction between parents and the teacher. In my classroom, I will not let a student or their parent or guardian become a victim of the "silenced dialogue" described in Lisa Delpit's article. I will not just sit idly by and nod my head while pretending to listen to what my students and students' parents have to say. I will actively engage in conversations, whether
it be in my native language, or some combination of theirs and mine through a translator. Parents are an integral part of the education system because without their support, children have a tougher time at succeeding in school. Parents need to be involved in their children's education; they need to know what the students are learning about so that they, if possible, can help the student study outside of the classroom, engage them in conversations that make them think critically about things around them and situations that arise in their daily lives at home. Only by communicating with teachers can parents truly understand the help they can provide to their children's educations by being supportive. And that communication with teachers can never be a one-sided dialogue; the word "dialogue" itself denotes a two-way discussion.

Prompt #1

Thursday the 24th was my first day helping out in Ms. Mara’s classroom. She wanted me to be there for nine so that we could talk for a few minutes before her students came to class. I got lost on the way (Providence is not the best when it comes to signs and lane markings), but I called to let the school know I would only be a few minutes late.

When I was almost there, I noticed that so many of the signs for businesses were in different languages (not just Spanish, either). The neighborhood was pretty run-down; some of the apartment buildings around it were boarded up and many others had unkempt yards.

When I walked in, there were murals on almost every inch of the hallways, along with papers saying positive things that people had noticed about the students’ behavior. I still got to Ms. Mara’s class before her students because first period hadn’t ended yet. I separated some rubrics for the day’s activity while Ms. Mara went out to gather her students.

I worked with two classes of seventh and eighth grade students for two hours and a sixth grade class for a half hour before lunch. The assignment was to finish their scripts for the fairy tales they had been assigned to perform. Before they started, Ms. Mara went over the agenda written on the board and she finished up the lecture from the day before about the idea of “confidence”. Then, all the classes, Ms. Mara, and I did warm-ups to get loose. They broke up into smaller groups to work on their performances. I walked around and asked which fairy tales they were performing and helped out with some ideas for what they could do to pantomime different actions. When all the groups were ready (some actually weren’t completely finished), Ms. Mara said it was performance time. Students sat on the desks (shaped in a U within the class) to watch the shows. The students were graded on a few different things: believability (being serious about the role, not laughing during the performance unless called for), motivation (clearly conveying actions through pantomiming), emotion, and the overall quality of the show.

A few students had trouble remembering that they need to always (in some way) face the audience and some had trouble with pantomiming effectively, but overall the presentations were very good. The second class of the day that I tutored, after their performances were finished, got so excited about their shows that they wanted to perform for the elementary school across the street. Since my first visit, they have started plans for a rendition of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves”, but they have to change the character names so as not to infringe on copyrights.

Ms. Mara and I walked the sixth graders down to the cafeteria when it was time for lunch and then we went back to the classroom to talk about various things. She really seemed to want to help me get the most out of this tutoring experience. I’m really glad I was placed with Ms. Mara because she genuinely appreciates the help I can give to her students.

I feel that this school values good behavior, but this school is different than others because the staff lets the kids know when they are doing good things instead of just scolding them when they misbehave. Ms. Mara is very strict on punctuality. If a student is late for class, they automatically receive detention and must stay that afternoon unless there is a conflict. I know for a fact that Ms. Mara values creativity. I don’t know of very many teachers, especially in an urban public school, who would deviate from the curriculum they had already planned out in order to foster an idea the students had.

I am so excited to be tutoring for Ms. Mara and her students. They are all very bright and I feel very welcome in the classroom.

Saw This Today

Just now, I was reading the October issue of Reader's Digest and in the Quotes section, they were all about education and one really stuck out because it really fits with everything that we're striving to understand in this class.



"Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance"



Thought I should share that as food for thought.

Just wanted to share my excitement...

So we got our tutoring assignments today. Somehow I had enough good karma stored up & wound up with a theatre class again. I can't wait to meet my kids! :D