[Note, names have been changed and details have been left out to protect student privacy. For my last log see this link.]
My fifth session with Juan was a bit of a bust. It was a big state testing week at the school that week so Juan didn't really have any homework. It seems like all this testing has a pretty big impact on schooling if the kids lose most of a week to it. Anyway, instead of tutoring Juan last week I tutored some fifth grade girls on their math. I think some of them were ESL students, if that counts towards my class requirement (if not - oh well). I helped them to find the area on some semi-rectangular figures, and I quizzed them a little bit on their multiplication tables.
Working with three or four fifth grade girls was kind of an interesting experience in itself. One of the girls wasn't very good at multiplication (in fact, she was amazingly bad at it), and the other girls teased her about it. This in spite of the fact that these girls seem to be her friends. I can't imagine how fifth grade girls treat someone they don't like. I guess I could have been more assertive in telling them to be nice to each other, but I'm new enough at this that I tend to just kind of watch in surprise at how kids act towards each other. I made up for it by trying my best to help the girl who was having problems and ignoring the ones who were being obnoxious. Looking back on it, this seemed to damp down the teasing after a while (or they just got bored) so maybe passive ignoring is not such a bad strategy.
I also spent a few minutes
talking to the Americorps volunteer about
her job. I found out that they get a small stipend to pay for
living expenses and they get money towards college. It
doesn't
sound like a great career booster (you might do better financially
spending a year working at McDonald's), but I was intrigued enough to
make a quick visit to the Americorps website (link).
At some point I
would like to do some "adventure teaching", somewhere overseas or in a
new part of the country, so I want to keep an eye on these kinds of
programs.