Observation #4

In today's observation the student was from English 101and he came with a revision that's due tomorrow. The tutor reads the paper to himself first to get an idea of what the essay was about. He realize the student paper really needs to be organized and that's what the comment that the professor left on the student paper. The tutor dealt with the structure of his paper first. The paper wasn't a research paper and he did a little bit of research by adding a definition to a word and the professor doesn't want that. The professor rather he write his own opinion to what he believe the word is.  His paragraphs were all over the place so the tutor told him to make sure each paragraph stuck to the thesis, make a connection, always relate back to the thesis. The tutor wrote down a brief description on how the student should structure his essays with intro, body,body, body and then conclusion. The tutor also explain to him when he is going from paragraph to paragraph to make sure the topic sentence relate to the thesis. The student didn't quite know how to write a topic sentence so the tutor showed him. As he showed him this he also showed him how to rearrange his paper rather then writing thewhole thing over again.  When the tutor was confused he asked the student questions to understand what he was trying to say in the paper. The student didn't talk much it seemed as if he was confused so he wouldn't ask anything the tutor did most of the asking questions. As they went through the essay he helped him a little bit with grammar. The tutor had to help the student clarify what was in his own papaer and told him he was to broad rather then just sticking to the topic and talking about exactly what the paper ask for. The tutor told him he needs to be more specific and add more details and explanation. They went through the whole paper and fixed everything the professor asked for. The tutor gives him ideas on what to add towards the end if his essay and how to open a paragraph. The tutor told the student in his intro there should be main response, answering questions, examples and then in the body paragraphs is suppose to be each example from the intro. Wile this is going on the student phone went off and he was focused on his phone for a little while then put it away.  The student had another paper to go over but there was only 15minutes left but they went over it anyways. The tutor skimmed through it first and relaxed its the same problem as the firs paper the student needs to reorganize his paper. Once again the tutor explains how to organize the paper though examples. I felt as if the tutor was repeating himself nonstop.  Also showed him again how to summarize and add more detail and where to add the details towards. T me the student didn't seem to care or wasn't quite getting what the tutor was saying because everything the tutor said he just agreed with and nod his head. The session went over time and instead of going over what they discussed they continued to talk about what they were talking about, the student need to lay out examples in the introduction so that the audience know what he is talking about. The student needed more time so he went and ask could he have more time. This session was mostly teacher student based because the student barley talked and he wanted the tutor to write down everything he said as if the tutor was going to fast for him. This is one experience I never experienced before and won't forget.

Observation #3

In today's observation the tutor had two students she had to work with. The first student wanted help with a take home test and she told him she can't help him with that. So he asked her to help him with grammar, simple progressives and past tense. This student is the same student that was in my first observation. He asks a lot of questions and the tutor answer them to the best of her abilities. While she is helping this student the other was just sitting there she never told the other student to reread his paper or anything but he started to do that anyways after a while. Student #1 and the tutor was still going on with their grammar lesson and she showed him examples on where to put period and comas.  The student didn't seem to quite understand what the tutor was saying so he would ask more questions and the tutor would still try her best to answer them and show more examples. Next they moved onto a homework assignment that the student had that he needed help with his grammar. In the homework she helped him with subject, verb and action verb and also commas and periods. While there doing that the other student is still patiently waitin ton his turn as he is waiting he decided he was going t go to the bathroom. Student #1 and the tutor continued to work on the assignment and he also had another problem with who's and what's with finding the subject. As they go through the assignment he tries to correct it before she does and when he is wrong she would correct him. After about 30minutes with student #1 they finally finished and she started to work with student #2. This student had a revision he wanted to work on. He pointed out also grammar and one paragraph that the professor was confused about that he wanted help with. She reads the paper to herself rather then reading it out loud. She starts off discussing a paragraph that wasn't quite clear so she asked him what does he mean. She told him he needs more detail or evidence to clear up the confusion. To show her where he got his information from he pulls out his laptop and show her. She reads the article and translate it for him so he can have a better understanding. After reading that she shows him where he can put more detail in his essay. The student wasn't quite being specific with things thought his essay so she told him he need to able be able to be specific and don't have the audience asking questions. The student took a quote from the source online and she told him he can take but then explain what it says, analyze the quote. He didn't know what else to say so she told him what to say but she also helped him fix it. She asked questions he answered, he asked questions and she answered. They were well communicating but they didn't get to finish fixing the grammar and the conclusion which was also quite confusing for the professor. Throughout this session I saw that she apwas more focused on student #1 and bately payed student #2 any mind. She basically made him wait till it was his turn. She was both student teacher learning and teacher student learning, with student #1 she focused on him and with student #2 she focused on what she wanted him to say. She showed me the pros and cons to a tutoring session even though she did help each student she didn't balance her time wisely.

My Reflection on School Prison Pipeline

My opinion on the video's that I watched in class on the school system and the school prison pipeline was real disturbing. I personal think that seeing what the officers are doing to these students are going to make things worst. In the video that I watched one officer arrested a student that had a illness because he had a loud out burst on the school bus. I just don't see the point in that for one he is ill two he could of had a very good excuse on having this out burst, maybe he needed help and that was his way of getting someone's attention. These officers target minorities which is really sad. The students that are being targeted have a future and watching this video shows me that. When the student explain the reasons on why they were arrested are really dumb. They could of gotten any other punishment being talked to for example getting counseling and see why they did what they did. Putting them in a jail for a few days or months is nothing. That's temporarily punishment that they can just brush of when they get out and continue to do whatever they want to do and never learn from their mistakes. These students already have it tough coming from a low income family and having to deal with school work and personal problems they don't need prison as another stressful problem. People say kids are the future but I don't see how kids are the future and officers keep putting them into jail instead of finding some other punishment that will brighten their future or help them to not make the same mistakes. Seeing that this type of behavior is going on really shows me why im going into this field of education in the first place. I want to help make a difference and show these students that going to jail is not the only way of learning their lesson. Show them that not everyone is against them and that there is more to the school system and the world then harsh behavior and unnecessary punishment.       

Observation #2

In today's observation it was quite different then my first observation. This student came with a revised essay. The first thing the tutor did was read the revised essay to herself. Then she pointed out the LOC's. She pointed out the font size was to small it need to be 12 font instead of 10.5. She also discussed his headline like it said eng101 without a space she says that needed a space between eng and 101. The student had a period between his first and last name and she told him to remove the period from his name. She was very funny though she said it very nicely. She reads the paper to herself and when she sees something wrong or don't understand she points it out and ask the student questions. She tells him what to use and what not to use in his paper. When she saw a sentence she didn't quite understand she asked the student to read it out loud to see what was wrong. She looks back and fourth at the graded paper and the revised paper to compare and to see what the teacher told him to fix. As they went along through the paper together she showed him grammar problems. She politely excuse herself from the table to get her asthma pump since she kept cough and fanning herself. But when she got back it was back to business. When correcting sentences she asked the student if this is what he meant and for him to explain it to her. He explained it better to her then when he wrote it on the paper. She also told him say what you mean to say don't sugar coat it. She did drift off topic to the students culture but then went back to the paper. She did give him credit on the paper and how he revised it. The student kept doubting himself and she kept telling him he was fine and he fixed everything. She told him when he gets home he can read it out loud and see for himself that everything was good. Also if anything retype it with the corrections they made today and come back to the writing center. She did mostly teacher centered tutoring. I consider this session to be what you do not do at a tutoring session.  She was very nice and did her job even though she did mostly teacher centered. She told us she been tutoring for a while so she knows what she is doing. After the session she pulled me and one of the students from the class aside since we observed her together and she gave us some advice which was to pay attention to everything no matter what. She also asked us if we had any questions and what we learned or what we liked from the session. I mainly liked how concerned she was of the student and how she kept telling him he was doing fine even though he kept doubting himself. She was a good tutor I learned a lot of do's and don'ts on what to do when I tutor.

Observation #1

In today's observation the student came in for grammar help. The tutor had this student plenty of time before so he knew what to expect from the student. The student showed the tutor a worksheet that he needed help with. The tutor asked the student multiple questions that the student had to answer with more then a yes or no to see what the student understood and what the student didn't understand. The tutor started of with showing him ways to remember the seven cordonats and dependent causes. Since this relates to subordants the tutor got a worksheet that might help the student understand subordants better. The student had an example but couldn't understand the word so the tutor asked him if he had an dictionary so he could look up the word. I was surprised to see that the student actually had a dictionary. The student still had a hard time figuring out the understanding of the subordants so the tutor gave him real life situations and examples for the student to understand and it worked. To make sure the student got it the tutor asked the student to write an example and break down the example for him in the best way possible. When the student wrote down the example the tutor saw what the student was doing wrong and was capable of correcting him right away. The student also had questions on coma split and run on's the tutor showed examples and asked questions and so did the student. The tutor showed the student how to break it down. He wrote two run on sentences in one sentence it was a run on sentence and in the other he used a coma plit and semi colon. Tutor showed student right from wrong when using a semi colon, coma's and joint sentences. Towards the end of the session he told the student to practice sentence combing the tutor realized that's one of his problems also so he gave him a worksheet on that so he can practice.  The student told the tutor he had a test later on that day and the tutor then told him to brush up on accents and keep coming to the writing center. The overall experience was very good. The tutor seems to know everything everytime the student had an question he had an answer. He communicated with the student very well, I like the chemistry they had amongst one another. I learned a lot from this tutoring session, mostly the do's on what to do during a tutoring session.

My Tutoring Session

Today I tutored with two students from an English 101 class that will remain name less. I started off with one student and he knew what the professor was asking for but he didn't start to write  down anything or gather his ideas. We started of with reading the assignment together out loud (we took turns). After we did that he told me he was for bi cultural and wanted to write about how students benefit from other cultures at school. We took notes as he was reading the assignment I made a check list and then we went through that. Started off with him having ideas on what he wanted his thesis to be and he wrote that down. Then asking him were he was going to get evidence from and all he could think of was the school website I suggested books, surveys asking friends and family, readings from the book in class and he wrote that down. We even talked about topic sentenced and I had to explain what that was and how it has to relate back to his thesis which he understood. His main problem he said was the sources i told him were he can go to get a guideline on how to write sources and he wrote that down.

After a while another student joined our group and I told student one to write down some ideas that could help him write a thesis. While he was doing that I helped student number 2. He came in with a paragraph and I asked him to read that paragraph to me which he did. Then we read the assignment paper over to get a brief idea of what the professor wanted. I did the same steps with him that i did with student number 1. This student knew he was for the bi cultural and that's what he wanted in his thesis. I asked him where does he plan on getting evidence he said the website and that's it. I suggest the readings they have done in class and he said he might do that because he don't have time to read any books or anything else. I also explained he had to have his thesis relate to his topic sentences and he laughed and said I don't usually do that I just write. We went off topic and I asked him what does he usually do when he writes a paper and he said I just write a first draft and type it and that's it.  He likes to get straight to the point which I understand but I told him the more details you have the better the paper will be and the higher grade you get. He said OK but I don't think he really cared.

Both of the students were two different individuals. Student number one was very calm and went with the flow he gave his input and I gave mines. He took notes he wrote down what he wanted he even started to write his thesis and he broke it down were he could have all of his body throughout his thesis (3 examples in the thesis which he will explain through the essay). He made me very proud I hope he does well he was a very nice student. Student number 2 was a totally different person was very loud and happy and funny and sarcastic. He was a chill student he really didn't care and he told me that he just writes and hand his paper in and that's it and that usually work for him he gets 85. He was interesting he came in with a paragraph but refuse to write a thesis if he didn't know the actually definition of bi cultural so i gave him that as a homework to do that was number one to look up the definition of any word he wants to know before he start writing his draft and to work on his thesis and get some evidence. Student number one I told him to get evidence do a lot of research to bring out his essay. Overall the session was very good I had two different experience at once, I learned a lot from both of the students and I hope they learn a lot from me to.             

What is pedagogy?

Hi my name is Shanaè and I'm a student taking an English class called English 220. I recently watched two videos on what pedagogy is. Pedagogy is from Greek roots, the art of teaching. The process of learning and the context presented leaning strategies. Pedagogy describes learning as a step to step procedure that I do to believe is true. Everyone has their own pedagogy way of teaching, everyone is learning different things in different ways. Teachers everyday teach different techniques to get children to get a better understanding of what's being taught. Taking the pedagogy path and using different context and incorporating different ideas to teach to different students is the step to step procedure and learning strategy that pedagogy is referring to. It's basically a plan and that's why teachers write lesson plans before going in front of the classroom and teaching. They want to make sure their using the pedagogy technique and making sure their lesson plan involves every single student.

I watched a video were Sirkin Robinson discuss education and learning. Sirkin Robinson believes creativity is important as literacy and kids aren't scared to be wrong. That's how people learn but once a child turns into an adult they are scared to make mistakes. He also feels that's what's wrong with the school system. A child grows up being creative but eventually grows out of it because of school system not allowing them to be themselves. Every school had the basic when it comes onto learning math being at the top of the list and humanities being at the bottom to produce education progressive but schools won't value art, music or dance. Sirkin Robinson thinks the three keys to intelligence is diversity (thinking different), dynamic (interactive) and distinct (discovering your talent). Some children move a lot they can't keep still so in that case their parents put them in dancing schools. School have less programs in school that offer children to be themselves. Instead schools just focus on the subjects and learning structure.

These are the the links to the videos that I mentioned: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkoRR670fj8
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html