Final Exam

Jamie Payano

Final Exam

Used the Text

            Tutoring in the educational development should allow students to guide their own work and obtain the same opportunities to succeed in the educational system. I believe that students from low budget neighborhoods don’t have the same privileges in education as students from high budget neighborhoods; which limits the opportunity of success for the students from the low budget schools. Allowing students to talk about their thoughts gives them an opportunity to speak their minds. Students from low budget schools are deprived from their education as they are “minorities” and because of this they are left with the shorter end of the stick when it comes to education. There are some schools that done allow students to obtain the same education as high-income students so they get the bare minimum when it comes to education. Tutoring will allow students to gain skills that were not provided to them in the education system today. Tutors are here to help guide students and to teach students the skills and knowledge that they did not obtain in school. Tutoring is essential for the students who are in low budget schools due to the fact that they do not have the assurance of gaining equal education in schools, tutors help provide those skills that schools deprive low-income students from getting.  

Children have no choice in what school they will attend nor what neighborhood they will live in, “we are of the class that our parents occupy, born into it just as we were born into a nation and thrown into its culture,” thus emphasizing that children should all obtain the same opportunity in education, since they are born into their parents social class by default (Gabryena 1).  Kozol explains the unprivileged schools that students from low budget schools have. Kozol argues that students from low budget schools do not obtain the equal education rights as students from high budget schools. “Keep them where they are but keep it equal” shows the inequality between high budget schools and the low budget schools (Kozol 86).  Kozol shows the inequality between the two different levels of schools (low versus high budget) when he quotes a young student, “I asked the student what they learned about the civil rights campaign … and a young black girl says this: Every year in February we are told to read the same old speech of Martin Luther King Jr. We read it every year.” The educational system believes that they are teaching these students about the civil rights by just reentering Martin Luther King’s speech every year. The civil rights movement was not just based on the speech and this system is depriving these students to learn about the cruelty and the inequality that occurred before their time and which is occurring today (Kozol 84).   

The wealthier people in the world are dehumanizing students from low budget schools. These students are oppressed as they get the shorter end of the stick when it comes to equality in education. Hearing people say “how would it benefit me?” if low budget students were to transfer to high budget schools or if taxes from high income families were to be used to help the conditions of the low budget schools, really annoys me because I believe that everyone should have the same opportunity to get the same education as everyone else regardless of how much money they can bring to their homes. Society wants us to believe that all schools are equal when in reality it is not. I believe tutoring in these low budget schools can help these students obtain the correct skills that the educational system is depriving them from. By re-teaching Martin Luther King’s speech, the education system believes that they have done what is required to teach students about the civil rights movement. Which is the same thing Freir speaks about, the wealthy people believe that if they take one low-income person from a low-income school and they succeed, they believe they have done what is required for that neighborhood. Freir argues that once one low-income person has succeeded then they must come back and help the rest succeed and not forget about them (Freir 40). I think that the school system do the bare minimum to say “they tried to do something” when in reality they did not try anything but do the bare minimum.

Becoming a tutor and a teacher will allow me to help these students leave high school with a better education then they are getting now. Schools today don’t tech students to think on their own because they deprive them from the opportunity to think outside the box. Freir believes that when people that are oppressed value the liberation they obtained, they should go back to their neighborhoods and help the oppressed become liberated as well, (49). As we are born into our social class, we fall into these social classes that takes control of what kind of education we are getting or what kind of life we will have (Gabyrena 3). Tutoring can break through these norms and change how social classes define ones faith. Tutoring can change the school system to be better as we include equal education among students from different income neighborhoods (Kozol 85). If we were to give all students the same opportunity to get the same education we will be liberating the oppressed students, redefining social class with the education system and providing better tools for better learning in low budget schools. Tutoring allows students to think and talk about their thoughts and help produce better writing. My philosophy of tutoring is to always let the students talk, they will always have something to say and as tutors we should always listen and never say they’re wrong.

Video Project Reflection

     Our group decided to focus on the thin line between therapist and tutor, which was a don't in the Tutoring Writing book. This was a fun topic to do and the video, in my opinion was funny and entertaining. All though we had some issues during the set of our placement, our setting looked really good and it looked legit, believe it or not it was in a hallway, literally. The setting and the props we brought made it look so realistic I was actually impressed with the outline. I think we managed to get the message across, that a tutor should not get trapped in a tutee's personal life nor should a tutor try to be the tutee's friend at any time during the session. There are some scenarios where the tutee wants the tutor to do the paper for them and we wanted our students to understand that, that is not what a tutor is for. A tutor is to help the tutee better their paper and writing and not to give them the answer. I think our audience will understand our message and see the hard work we put into making this video as outstanding as possible despite the noises from the elevators, the guy packing out chips, the fire alarms and the annoying lady who was being rude and annoying after we told her that it was a class project. Anyways even with all those issues in our way, I think we made an awesome video and we managed to get our message across. I think this project was effective because I was able to act in a scene where I lost the focus of the main issue which was the paper, I better understand how a tutor can control an issue that got off track. 

Response to School to Prison Pipeline

I knew that students were being punished for nonsense crimes and majority of the students that were being punished came from schools that were located in low-income neighborhoods. The documentary shows these crimes that these students were getting arrested for. Shooting that occur in the school have traumatized the school systems to become more aware of suspicious weapons to protect our students and teachers. Tragedies like school shootings are unpredictable and is not easily preventable, so arresting students for ridiculous crimes will not help the school system get better but it deprive these students to even want to go to school. The students that do these crimes just need the correct guidance and should not be arrested at such a young age.The youth of today are intimidating but the students from the low income schools are the ones who are lucked out. They are the ones who are always looked at as the bad students. There are more cops in the low budget schools than there are in high budge schools, and yet most of the shootings occur in the high budget schools. I highly disagree with the rules of arresting students for stealing gum, having a toy etc. I think officers should be looking at all the schools not just the low budget schools and personally they should be investigating actual crimes rather than these ridiculous so-called "crimes." 

Fourth/Last Observations

  This tutor began with two tutees and he let one tutee leave 15 minutes into the session! I was shocked, it made me think of the thin line between therapist and tutor because this girl came to the session talking so much and explaining all these ideas on a research topic and he was like "you have great ideas you just need to narrow it down to one and start on that since it's due Wednesday." So she shows him this paper that was based on Edgar Allen Poo and she said she wants to find research on his poems in connection to his life and he said "I think that's a good idea you have a lot of good ideas in the paper already just find research that help you connect the poem with his life," she said "Okay thanks a lot and left." If I were the tutor I would have sent her to the lab that is in the writing center have her find at least one article and then have her write one paragraph showing how she would connect the poems with Poo's life, this guy just let her leave. I had to look at my watch to see how quick that session was and we started that session at 11:50am she was gone by 12:15-12:20pm, max.
  Then he moved on to the second tutee, I thought the writing center was to help students with their paper structure. This tutor became a grammar expert. He began reading her paper out loud and he would point out every little grammar error this student had. First of all, you can clearly tell that she was not an English native speaker so her writing was not academically correct, but she was there because she needed help with her research paper not with her grammar.
  While he was pointing out every grammar issue in her paper, I guess he got angry and literally stopped reading her paper to discipline her about articles. He got a blank sheet of paper and explained the difference between "the" and "a." He said "if I say I went to A store in Manhattan, I am speaking about one store out of the many stores in Manhattan, but if I say I went to THE store in Manhattan, I am referring to one specific store, so I would write, I went to THE store on 34 street in Manhattan." First of all, that was so random, second what does that have to do with her paper or her structure of the paper? Again, this guy shocked me.
  He continues reading her paper out loud and the only time he gave good advised was when he said "you need to some how connect this to the topic sentence because you are getting off topic." The rest of the session he just pointed out grammar issues as if grammar issues was one of his pet-peeves.
  The session was 20 minutes before finishing and he went to the office and got this poor girl grammar worksheets. SERIOUSLY? It's summer, it's bad that she has to do a research paper during the summer, It's even worse that she is taking summer classes and you're giving her grammar homework???
   Then we left 15 minutes before the session was even over.

Third Observations

   So last week I was undercover, I went in a session as a tutee rather than an observer. That day the tutor that was helping me on my research paper was being observed by one of his peers, so my tutor was being observed by two different people at the same time.
  I want to start off by saying he has the knowledge and I think he helped the second tutee and I with our paper, but he lacked on time management. He spent so much time on the second tutee I began counting the boxes on the ceiling. I don't know if he was nervous because his peer was observing him but you can feel his nervousness through his actions. He would look at the clock continuously, shake his leg, tap his fingers it was obvious he was nervous.
  While he was helping the tutee with her paper, I couldn't help but notice how quickly he let her go. He said everything was fine and everything made sense. He then began pointing out some of her grammatical errors that she had in her paper. I know that's a no-no from this class, but if you are getting observed by a senior tutor from the writing center, shouldn't that be the number one thing to avoid during that session?
   He began reading my Moffett paper, he said everything was correct and what ever my professor wrote is what I am missing. I replied saying "Yeah, I know that...how can I include my thoughts in this paper without sounding repetitive or without making this paper sound like an autobiography?" I think that intimidated him because he was like "I'm sorry if that was not what you wanted to hear..." It really wasn't what I wanted to hear because I can clearly read that through the comments on my paper. Anyways, so I took control sort of and I said "I guess I'll write a paragraph that is my thoughts and stick it in the first paragraph and you can check if it makes sense or if I'm getting off topic?" and so he went on to the second tutor and helped her with more grammatical errors, then she left. So here I am writing and my tutor is drinking soda and playing with his pen because he let his second tutee leave so early.
  I write my paragraph and then he said "this is perfect it has some of your thoughts and your connect it back to Moffett's theory which makes sense, how about you write another paragraph for individualism?" At that point I knew he was using me to fulfill the hour session and for his observer to keep note of that.
  I wrote the paragraph and he just complimented the paragraph saying that it makes sense then he gave me some ideas to go home with saying that my thoughts can be based on education in general and/or my own personal experience in an urban public school. That sort of helped me at the end because when I was revising my paper I was able to explain how my education in an urban public school would have been different if I was taught the three I's.
  I didn't like that he was just restating what my teacher had already wrote on the paper, I feel like rather than just restating that and giving me the ideas ahead of time I could have wrote a paragraph comparing my own public school experience and Moffett's three I's theory, but he waited till the end to tell me that so I had to work on that on my own.

Second Observations

    I got a different tutor this time and she recently took this course. She was a hundred times better. She read the paper out loud and she helped the student construct a better paper. She asked the tutee questions that helped the student generate a different ideas that helped her in her paper. The tutee wanted to go over some grammar issues that she was having and the tutor told her to make a mark where she felt she needed grammar help and when they got a chance at the end of the hour she would go over it.
    The tutee had a good paper it was just that her ideas were scattered all around. So the tutor got a worksheet that helped the student structure her paragraphs correctly. In the worksheet there were boxes and the first line said topic sentence and then in the lines after, it is for the student to write all of the evidence to support that topic sentence. I though that was a good idea because the student was able to to take out her own ideas from the draft and then put it in the worksheet, for example if the topic sentence was for setting then the evidence would be all the sentences in her paper that referred to the setting in the text. It was helpful for the student. she got a lot done and the thesis changed in order to make the paper flow correctly.
   This tutor was good at helping the student, she didn't tell her that the student's work was wrong or that that paper made no sense she was able to help the student think of her own ideas and come up with better explanation and she even help the student organize her own paper correctly by using the worksheet.

Tutoring Reflection

     Today, during my first tutoring session my tutees were pretty cool. I had to help two students who were doing two different arguments about biculturalism. I asked them to define it and they looked at me as if I had five heads. One girl, DeeDee, kept talking about how she was going to write her paper, so I assumed she was going to do an outline, well I was wrong. She was writing like irrelevant stuff like "don't forget to show evidence...check grammar" and she really thought she had something going. So I was like "Hey that's pretty good, but lets try finding evidence from the text since you don't have research now."That's when I knew she did not read the text.
     Moving on to the second tutee, CeeCee, she was really good she knew the story like the back of her hand, she was able to tell me what she wanted to write about and she was telling me how she was going to prove it, the only thing that she wasn't doing was writing it down. So I was like "Hey that's an awesome idea, you should write that down before you forget it and then you're going to be like oh no what did I tell Jamie!" so she wrote it down.
     Then  I moved on to DeeDee, she was still writing nonsense, she was just telling me "you really helped me out" and I was like "I tried, so what do you have so far?" and she was like beating around the bush not saying anything. I told her that maybe she should write her first paragraph on how the Chinese girl helps her mom translate and how that is strength because she is bilingual, and she wrote that down so then I was like okay so start from there what can you research that will help prove that biculturalism is a strength rather than a confusion. She began to write, finally.
      CeeCee had her 3 body paragraphs and her conclusion set up she just needed her intro and her thesis. It was time for us to leave so I tried listening to her thoughts and at the end she told me her thesis, I don't know if she wrote it down though, I really hope she did. She told me she was going to define biculturalism in her own words by explaining how it is a confusion for college students, and her definition would be her thesis. I thought that was a interesting way for her to start her paper, hopefully the professor is cool with that.
       DeeDee finished her outline and then I asked her about her intro and thesis and she said, "I'm going to define biculturalism but as a strength," she copied CeeCee's idea, but I guess they worked off of each other.
      It was pretty fun though, we didn't have any downtime. They were talking, reading and writing the whole time, pretty proud of myself.