[Note, names have been changed and details have been left out to protect student privacy. For my last log see this link.]
I made a 90 degree turn in my tutoring plans this week. Trying to tutor a student from inside a fourth grade classroom was a bad idea. There was no way to actually get any one-on-one time without pulling him away from class, and that seemed like a poor way to be helping him out. I had a conversation with the principal about alternatives, and she suggested that I participate in the STAR after school tutoring program. This would mean changing students and doubling up some weeks to get in my ten sessions, but I didn't really see that I had a choice. I only wish I had known about this after school program in the first place - I could have been on this track from day one and carried out my assignment over the full ten weeks rather than cramming it into seven or eight weeks.
Well, at least I got to find out what a
fourth grade class is like (at least from the perspective of an adult)
- so I'm trying to be positive about the extra time I spent going down
the wrong path.
Anyway, this STAR after school program is going to work out pretty well for my needs. I talked to the woman in charge of the program, and she set me up with an English as a Second Language (ESL) student that I could work with every week. I will talk about him later. First, here are some overall impressions of the STAR program:
STAR stands for Standardized
Testing and Reporting, and the STAR test is part of the California
implementation of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) act. I got
the impression that this after school program is aimed at kids who
don't pass the STAR test, although I was a little unclear on the
details. Most of the students who were there appeared to be
ESL kids.
The students meet in the multi-purpose room immediately after school gets out. There seemed to be about 40 kids there (give or take). Most of the time there were only 2 adults doing most of the supervision. One of the adults was a young AmeriCorps volunteer. I've never seen the AmeriCorps in action, so I'm looking forward to chatting with her sometime to see what it is like. Of course, her time is pretty heavily divided among the students so it might be tough to find time to talk.
The age span for the STAR students ranges from second to sixth grade. They were energetic and anxious for attention, but they were also fairly well behaved. The kids start the after school program by getting a snack (one day it was pretzels and bananas, the next day it was crackers and orange slices). I think they take turns between homework and play time, and there were also some activities going on up on stage behind the curtain but I haven't gotten a glimpse of that yet. I also think the kids get some time in the computer lab, but again I haven't seen this part yet. [It is intersting that writing this log gives me so many good ideas about things to do next time.]
On my first day in the STAR
program I got to meet up with Juan, the student I was going to
tutor. Juan is in second grade, and seemed pretty mature for a 7
or 8 year old,
although he is obviously behind in class. He was also very
cooperative about doing what I asked - which is why the coordinator
suggested him as someone I could tutor. He seemed to have a
fair grasp on conversational English (playground English).
However, it didn't take too long to see that his vocabulary was pretty
shallow, and he seemed fairly far behind on his reading
skills. I would say overall he was maybe a level 2 English
learner - which is perfect for my class assignment. His
native language is Spanish, but he told me that he doesn't know much
Spanish. I guess this is a pretty good example of how ESL
kids tend to get caught between languages - without the conversational
background needed to do well academically in English, and without any
academic training to maintain their skill in Spanish.
As soon as snack time was over (3 o'clock), I got to work with him right away on some of his homework. I started by explaining to him that he was helping me with my homework, since I need to tutor someone for one of my courses. I did this because I didn't want him to feel to singled out and because it would help explain to other kids why I'm only helping Juan.
We started off on some math homework, which is right
up my alley. I had Juan read aloud everything on the assignment
to give him reading practice. Reading was a challenge for him
(he got maybe every other word wrong), but he was surprisingly
cooperative about doing it anyway. I tried not to correct him
on every single mispronunciation, but focused on the meaning of key
words so as to not overwhelm him with data. The first assignment
involved making some flash
cards and randomly picking 2 of them at a time to add
together. We had a pretty
fun time going through the exercise. Well, I had fun - I
think Juan thought it was hard work.
About this time Juan's friend Daniel wanted to join in. Daniel was a bit of a pest and not quite as easy to work with as Juan, but by this time I had already had some one on one time with Juan and I thought helping Daniel at the same time was a good way to help the program. So, I worked with the two of them for a while on a math assignment having to do with picking coins out of a bag and marking down the results (I guess they are introducing probability stuff pretty early these days). I had Juan and Daniel trade off on reading and picking out the coins. Daniel was a better reader than Juan, but he was much more reluctant to read when asked and rather inclined to hurry through mistakes rather than give me time to help him out. I guess like a lot of kids he didn't want to look like he wasn't good at something.
Anyway, that finished off my first day working with Juan in the after school program.