This past Friday, I arrived for my sixth tutoring session.  Mrs. Smith asked me to work with the class as a whole, answering any questions that may arise as the students worked on solve for the variable questions.  One student, Gregory* seemed like a simple case with an easy answer, but due to mismanagement on my part, it became an educational experience for me.

Gregory called me over, and asked me a question.  I asked him what he thought the answer was, and he responded correctly.  It was off to a good start.  Instead of merely answering with an affirmative, I asked why he thought that.  In doing so, I hoped to probe his understanding of the mathematic problems.  He took this, however, to mean that he was wrong, and became defensive over his answer.  After I acknowledged my mistake, I corrected it, although by the end, he merely stated, “Man, that’s all you had to say.”

In my time here at this school, I have had several interesting experiences, although this shows a very significant lack in my ability to relate to a student.  Although my intention is decent, my execution does seem to be lacking.  The obvious preventive answer to the situation that I just described would be to directly answer the question before moving onto a more probing question.  This is not just a question of this however.  I need to, for lack of a better term, ‘Dumb down’ my speech.  I constantly use longer words when shorter, ‘easier’ words will work just as well.  I believe this will allow my thoughts to be transferred to the student more easily.  Another way to connect to the students is to use the same terminology throughout the class.  I have thought about this many times as I was either taught another way, or think about it another way than Mrs. Smith has taught the students.  This created a huge gap that I had to bridge in order to connect to the student in order to answer the question posed.

Finally, I would like to return to Gregory as a prime example of what could happen if a teacher fails in connecting with a student.  After solving the problem, he seemed disparaged and I could tell that his confidence in my ability to assist him.  If I were the only teacher of the class and this happened, I seriously doubt that I would be able to continue to motivate the student to learn the subject that I was teaching.  The student would either refuse to learn the information taught, or turn to other sources, thus damaging any reputation I might have inspired.

Overall, I think that Friday was an incredibly educational encounter that shed a great deal of light on how my teaching style is forming and what critical weaknesses that it may entail.

*Pseudonym used

Today, in Mrs. Smith’s class, I was allowed to roam free among the students, as it was material they had already covered, and no student was seriously behind.  Although the students had a few questions, one student, Freddie*, was an interesting episode.

Freddie did absolutely no work during the time that Mrs. Smith had allowed for the class to do so, despite prompts from myself and others.  He spent the time socializing with friends and avoiding the teacher’s attention.  In the last 5 minutes before the class ends, he hurriedly opened his book and called me over to explain how to do the problems.

At first he claimed not to understand how to do it, but after some prompting, Freddie remembered and completed his first problem with considerable ease.  I would like to focus on possible reasons why he would need my assistance even though it is evident that he did not.

The first answer is that actually needed my assistance in figuring out the question, and his reason for asking me questions is legitimate.  Assuming this, it would not explain why he figured out the answer so quickly.  It does, however, answer why he asked me the question to begin with.

The second answer is that he didn’t need the assistance, but could have figured it out entirely on his own.  This explains how he figured out what the answers were so quickly.  But it does not answer why he asked me.  One reason why he asked me was due to the prompting that I gave him that caused his memory of the lessons.

The third reason, I believe answers both of the questions, and is actually a synthesis of the two.  He wanted assistance finishing one of the problems because then he would know how to answer the others.  He needed my assistance because he couldn’t remember how to do the questions in their entirety.  This would insinuate that he was lazy however, as he did not accomplish any of the work during the assigned times.  From my personal analysis, I would garner that he isn’t lazy at all.  In truth, I find Freddie to be incredibly smart but rather not motivated to do the work while surrounded by other students who might judge him by his otherwise studious nature.

Regardless, I find this to be an incredibly puzzling issue.  If school is a place to learn, why would some students waste their time socializing rather than learning as much as they have the ability to.  I am not sure at this time, but welcome any possible answer to this puzzling question.

*Pseudonym used

This past week, I was given a choice between tutoring two sets of students.  One pair asked to work with me.  The other pair I was asked to work with.  I chose to work with this second pair, despite their lack of apparent lack of motivation, due to their need for supervision with the material.

While working with these two students Leonardo (whom I have worked with before), and Tom*, I had an important lesson in time management and organization.  There were two pages to this particular assignment, and I allowed them to start on separate pages.  This, I realized about 30 minutes into the class, was a major organizational mistake.  While answering Tom’s question on the first page, Leonardo was stuck on a question on the second page.  Since Leonardo has troubles concentrating, this created some havoc as he would turn around in his seat and talk with other students, disrupting both myself and the other students.  One possible solution would have been to focus more attention on Leonardo, to keep him focused on the task at hand, and attempt to teach him methods of figuring out how to answer the questions properly.  This would have been detrimental to Tom, who would have suffered from this attempt of pushing Leonardo to perform to his maximum potential.

A better option, in my opinion, would have been to structure our group better.  Instead of letting the students begin on different problems, I should have started them on the same page.  This would have allowed me to show Tom and Leonardo how to figure out the problems and kept the situation more under control.  This would have reduced the stress on me, especially when another pair of students joined us later in the class and I was forced to answer the same basic questions that I had answered for Leonardo and Tom.

Although it seems to be a fundamental idea, and one that is very easy to grasp, I failed to understand how significant the tactic of starting everyone on the same page.  This caused both stress on myself, and the classroom as a whole as I was forced to constantly switch gears and still maintain some discipline with the students surrounding me.

*Pseudonym used

Today, I went to help tutor during 5^th hour in Mrs. Smith’s 8^th grade Algebra class.  Mrs. Smith put me with two female students, Erin* and J*, and our assignment was on finding slope.  During our time together, the two girls, who were apparently friends, got out of hand.  To calm them down, and redirect their attention to the task at hand, I addressed them as “Guys”.  J then turned to me and responded “We aren’t guys, we are girls.”  I quickly recovered myself by stating that I was using the term “guys” in the neutered fashion, and I didn’t mean anything by it. I would like to think about my usage of that particular term for a bit, where it came from, and how it might affect me.

As far as I can tell, I pick up on the term during my time in my High School, and have kept it ever since.  In general it seems to be socially acceptable to call a group of people “guys” instead of a more formal greeting.  While this is appropriate for more informal speak, I wonder why it that term was chosen instead of “ladies”, “girls”, or some other similar feminine plural term.  I would assume that it would be because, generally speaking, socially unacceptable for men to be called a feminine term.  This view would be supported by mass media, as it is an insult to soldiers to be called ‘ladies’ by their drill instructor, however, no similar circumstance exists when the sex of the addressee is changed.  Another explanation would be that the term, originally inspired by groups of men, thus the term, it spread to slowly spread to groups of mixed company.  If forced to come to a final conclusion, I would say that is a combination of the two.  The reason why females did not object, en masse, to the term being applied to the groups of mixed company is because they did not perceive it as an insult.

So, now the question becomes, how will this affect me as a teacher.  I perceive that, aside from the occasional strident feminist student that will object to that term, I will not get in trouble for calling my classroom, “guys”.  However, do I really want to send the message of familiarity to the students?  I would see positives and negatives to this.  By calling my classroom, ‘guys’, I will be breaking down the wall between the students and I.  This would be good, because it might cause students to become more comfortable with me and create a better learning environment.  However, this might also allow them to become comfortable enough with me that they will begin to see me as merely a big student, or just a friend, which would cause them to stop listening to me as anything but those things they see me as.  But I suppose the latter would be more of an extreme case.  Another positive thing is the relative shortness of “guys” versus the more formal, “Ladies and Gentlemen.”

I suppose my main preoccupation with this is finding the balance between establishing a comfortable environment for my students and maintaining a professional attitude that will afford me the respect in the classroom that allows me to teach the students.  From these thoughts alone, I would imagine that the best way to start formal, to establish the difference between the students and me, and then slowly allow myself to lapse into the more familiar phrases that are shortcuts.

*Pseudonym used

Again I went into Mrs. Smith’s 8^th grade Algebra class.  Today Mr. Johnson*, the intern teacher, was in charge of the class as he had students correct homework and then assigned a new homework.  The students were allowed to work in pairs, as I walked around the room to answer any questions.  Although I was not able to construct any meaningful dialog between the students and me, I do have some comments on time management in the class.

When class began, Mr. Johnson told the students to get their homework from yesterday out and he proceeded to go around the classroom and sign each student’s homework with the number of problems completed.  He then went through the answers orally, answering the student’s questions as they came up.  By the end the process took 30-35 minutes, more than half of the time allotted for the class.  Mr. Johnson also had many discipline problems, even going so far as to kick one student out of class for a short time.

This method, obviously, seems to be problematic at best, but there must be some logic behind it.  First, this allows the student to check his or her work and get immediate feedback.  This is also good to make students mindful of their mistakes, as they are allowed to use their notes on the tests.  Second, this method of orally checking the work keeps a majority of the students engaged with the material.  The discipline problems were only focused on a few students.

There are problems however.  First off, there were a few students who seemed to drift off, or even go so far to go to sleep.  I would suppose, from speaking with a few students, that the reason they drifted off is the lack of homework completed.  I would suppose that if Mr. Johnson gave those students who did not complete the homework a problem that they were required to answer aloud, the students would be more active in the class.

Secondly, it took a majority of the class period.  Although I accept the defense that there really was no major idea being taught today, I would hope that it could be done more quickly if there was another concept to be taught that day.  I would suggest that either the homework be handed in for correction by the teacher, or a quicker way be devised.  Since I am not a major proponent of the teacher correcting homework when the students will gain from it more if they corrected it themselves, I would suggest that another way be found.  I would suggest that each student be assigned a problem to answer aloud in the proper place.  This would integrate the students more fully into the correction process, and the answers would come more quickly.  Then I would suggest that Mr. Johnson answer any questions and then move on.

Perhaps I am still impressed by my own algebra teacher’s method of managing this routine.  This might blind me of other bonuses that might be evident to Mr. Johnson and Mrs. Smith.  But, overall, I would still be in support of my Algebra teacher’s method.

*Name has been changed

Today, I went to help tutor during 5^th hour in Mrs. Smith’s* 8^th grade Algebra class.  However, her class was taking a test on probability.  I was still of use, as I took a student, Leonardo*, out of the classroom in order for him to take the test.  Leonardo has Attention Deficit Disorder and thus it is easier for him to take a test when it is quiet.  While I was doing little more than ‘babysitting,’ I had time to try to think about how having a student with ADD would affect my perception of him or her, and how it would affect the student.

Although I would like to think that I approach each student with an open mind and a positive demeanor, I also know that I tend to develop opinions that tend to quickly become strong.  During my previous visit to Mrs. Smith’s room last week, I had met Leonardo and noted that he did seem quite antsy and had difficulties focusing on his work.  Three years ago, I would have allocated that to a problem with his mental capacity or ability.  Now I attempt to identify what it is that causes that, the change might come from experience, perhaps from maturity.  Either way, today, when I was observing him take a test, I took a look at his notes (they are allowed to use previous homework as guides on their tests), and noticed that Leonardo is actually quite smart, just disorganized.

From this line of thought, I continued to think ‘if this was how I could have misjudged him, then how would having ADD affect him?’  Since I have few problems focusing on a subject or work, I can only theorize.  My first thought was that it would be frustrating, always being distracted easily.  This frustration would be compounded if the student realized that other ‘normal’ students seem not to have this problem (which, by this age is probable).

Continuing along this line of thought, what would this do to the student?  My first thought would be that the student would be discouraged and lose his or her motivation to learn things.  I believe this would one of the many reasons why a student might misbehave.

So, how, as a teacher, might I re-motivate such a student?  My initial answer would be to use more hands on activities, which would at least re-engage the student in the class and assure that the student learns while in school.  However, would this actually re-motivate them?  I would have to answer negatively.  While the student would be motivated, as soon as the lesson is over, the student would probably return to his or her original behavior patterns.  A second idea would be to ‘force’ the student to participate, via notes to parents or paper contracts.  While this would work, it could also backfire, causing the student to become even less motivated due to the forced nature of his or her participation.  The only idea that I would see as flawless, although it might not always work, would be to find out what the student enjoys doing and relate the subject material to his or her interests and possibly find an important figure in the field they are interested in with ADD.  Overall I would find this more motivating, recognizing the fact that even with his or her condition, s/he could still achieve a prominent place in society, including wealth, popularity, or affluence.

* the name has been changed.