et502's blog

On Tuesday, I worked with Erica again on both reading and homework. “Work with me, work with me,” she asked, so I agreed to come upstairs and work with her. After 20 minutes of reading, we switched to work on homework.

Looking back over my notes, I was surprised by the number of distractions we had. While we were reading, a tutor and a student came upstairs and started reading out loud too; another student had a tantrum in the corner and the director, Mariah, and 2 other tutors were talking to him for 5-10 minutes to get him to settle down. Erica was, for the most part, able to stay focused during that time. However, when we were doing homework, she was more prone to distraction – both of her own making, and others.

Erica had one double-sided worksheet of math problems. She wanted to work upstairs instead of downstairs, where students usually do homework – I assumed this was because it was a little quieter and less hectic upstairs. We sat down on a couch, and Erica took out two whiteboards, and put her paper on top of them. She also got a sharpened pencil and a dry-erase marker.

I'm confused about how discipline/management of student energy should be happening at my placement. A few weeks ago, Mariah, the programming director, briefly told us that Wordsmiths uses a point system. Today, she handed out printouts to each of the kids when they came in - Erica got 75% positive points yesterday, so the circle showed up 75% green. Another student only had 42% positive points. 

However, to my knowledge, none of the tutors have learned about this system or how to implement it. I didn't even know some of the rules until today (kids aren't allowed to go upstairs without an adult, students have to ask for permission to go outside, we don't use the "shut up" phrase, we don't use cuss words, no food from outside of Wordsmiths - especially candy). 

So I was outside with some of the kids for recess and I saw Bianca was talking with a friend. A few minutes later, I noticed that she was chewing something. Typically, the students are not supposed to have snacks of any kind until after recess when they go back inside (Wordsmiths provides fruit and yogurt). I asked her what she was eating. She said, "Nothing!" and backed away from me. She put one hand behind her back. Erica told her she better finish it quick. 

1. and 2.: Collect stories/What happened? – Miranda helped Omar do his math homework

Once again, we had more volunteers than students at tutoring. Mariah – the director of Wordsmiths – asked Miranda and I to work with Omar. He had not been in school that day, so he needed to do both his schoolwork and some homework, which had been compiled into a packet. Since Miranda had worked with him before, I let her lead; so, for the most part, I just watched. Omar said he already knew how to do this, and that they didn’t need to work on it today. Miranda said that he needed to finish as much as possible, since there wouldn’t be tutoring tomorrow or the next day. She repeated that he had to do it today.

Omar started with the first page, which was 3 columns of basic addition (ex: 1 +2 = ?; 3 +7 = ?). For the first few questions on the first column, Omar used one of two strategies: he wrote tally marks for each number and counted up the total (ex: I II = 3; III IIIIIII = 7), or he used his fingers and counted from left to right (ex: 1 finger on one hand next to 2 fingers on the other hand). When the numbers were too big to fit on one hand (ex: 7), he used tallies. Miranda and I both watched him. For some of the equations that Omar was going to use fingers for, Miranda held up her own fingers and told Omar to look up. He counted her fingers and used that number. He said the answer out loud before writing it; when the answer was wrong, Miranda asked, “Are you sure?” or said, “Check that again.”

Here are some ideas that Nicole and I discussed today in class - comment if you want to add/change these goals!

Goals for Field notes /posting:

1. make our notes more accessible - focus on specific moments or interactions, highlight/bold the sections that you want us to focus on
2. respond to at least one person’s notes with a question (or bring a question to class)

Goals for conversations in class:

1. bring advice/suggestions
2. hold people accountable – ask them to explain their statements
3. I (or someone else?) will scan and post my notes from our conversation – this could be a good way to bridge/connect our conversations over time
4. Ask each person, “What are you looking for in your next visit?” - if we don't get to each person in the group, then we can at least go back to this question on Serendip

The book that Erica was reading, titled “Smile,” is a graphic novel. It is set in San Francisco. The main character is a white, brown haired girl. She wears her hair in a ponytail, and has to get “on again off again” braces. This girl is in middle school – by around page 60, she has transitioned into 7^th grade and is worried about what other students will think about her braces and pimples.

Mariah, the director, went upstairs to check whether Erica had a tutor with her. Since Erica was on her own, I offered to go sit with her. Erica is 11 years old, and in 5th grade. She is black, and appears to be tall for her age. She was wearing a school uniform - a maroon, short sleeved polo shirt and khaki pants. 

When I got upstairs, Erica had her legs stretched across the couch. I asked her if she wanted to read out loud with me, but she shook her head from side to side. I went to the bookshelf and found a book that I had already read – The truth about forever, by Sarah Dessen. I went back to the couch and asked her to move so that I could sit on the couch too. I got two rectangular ottomans for us to put our feet on.

“This is one of my favorites,” I told Erica. “Do you know Sarah Dessen?”

“Who?”

“Sarah Dessen – she’s the author of this book.”

Initial Findings: Before visiting Wordsmiths’ physical site, I was able to access a great deal of information about the organization through other sources. My initial research about the organization was online. Wordsmiths has a stable online presence– a quick Google search brings up their Facebook page, LinkedIn, Twitter, Wikipedia page, and Vimeo site. To me, their constant output of information suggests an air of both transparency and playfulness. The organization is constantly sharing its goings-on with the online community. For example, a tweet from February 12 reads, “Dorsey Dog visited tutoring today, but despite Erica’s very enthusiastic urging, he did not eat anyone’s homework.” Further, this statement provides a glimpse of the kinds of relationships that are possible within this organization – good-natured, sometimes silly, and friendly. On the Facebook page, photos of daily activities or events, invitations to workshops, and many paragraph-long excerpts of students’ writing, are posted every 2-4 days. Wordsmiths’ website also includes students’ writing, with “Student Work” as the first tabbed section on the website; this page contains stories, magazines, and other projects that have been published/formatted online through sites like Scribd. 

Reading Pedagogy of The Oppressed is making me question my own status: am I oppressed or oppressor? Could I be neither? Being an American, I think, sets me up as a colonizer/oppressor/privileged person… so I thought, perhaps I might be an ally, joining in solidarity with the oppressed. But that role is questionable too. It could easily (unintentionally) posit the oppressed as "victims" and myself as a kind of "savior." I see this all the time with nonprofit organizations, youth groups, missions projects, etc. What entitles westerners to conceive of themselves as capable of changing the world, one person at a time? I think Friere would tell them that individuals can only change themselves: "Attempting to liberate the oppressed without their reflective participation in the act of liberation is to treat them as objects with must be saved from a burning building" (47). Further, "it is only the oppressed who, by freeing themselves, can free their oppressors" (38). So maybe there's more to be explored in the the "with, not for" (30) concept: the savior/victim mentality is just as oppressive as the oppressed- or oppressor- status. 

This makes me question the notion of "empowerment": What is the act of empowerment? Who can empower? By empowering someone else, are you actually treating them as less than human? 

In-Class activity: Writing reflections about a group project

Last year, I observed a class taught by two teachers. Teacher M was the primary teacher for this 6^th grade class, and Teacher L was a support for students with language learning needs. Just to preface this excerpt – the students had just finished working on a multi-day group project, and the teachers were explaining their expectations for the reflections.

I was struck by this lesson, because I think it clearly demonstrated the focus of the school, and the values that teachers intentionally incorporate into their actions and expectations every day. I was really impressed that teachers could work together this efficiently, without a weird power hierarchy. Also, students, at least by this point in the year, seemed to be very responsive to the high standards and methods used for self-reflection.

For our final teach-in, I played Blue Mind, by Alexi Murdoch. Rather than focussing specifically on the content that interested me in this course, I wanted to demonstrate how my own learning process has developed.

I think the lyrics of this song compliment my personal trajectory  really well. The first stanza is somewhat vague - what does it mean? no time? sleeping? I feel some confusion (though calm) when thinking about these lyrics. At the start of the semester, it seemed as though we were trying out a lot of different things, and just getting immersed in the content. I struggled with that immersion. 

In the second stanza ("go free of time") - This represents the moments in class when I started to let go, let learning happen or not happen. I had to hibernate, gel, that sort of thing - I had to stop trying to control the outcome, something that I am still struggling with. 

The chorus, "slowly slowly I am drifting," keeps coming back to me. In class, I felt as though I was drifting at times, and I could do this either by choice or by need. I want to choose to drift, especially if it's going to happen anyway. This feels a lot like "wandering" to me -