Book Club Inspirations

     Throughout the semester the various books that I have read for book club have really helped me to consider my future in education.  The first book that my group read, A Generation at Risk, taught me that you can not always believe what you read.  In the future, I hope to inspire my students to always question what they read and what they are told.  Many students go through school simply accepting what their teachers tell them as fact.  Though this acceptance might make it a little easier for me as a teacher, it will not serve my students in the long run.  I am a big believer of inspiring critical thinking in students.  While reading A Generation at Risk, I was amazed at the racism and sexism involved within the conclusions of the authors.  Though this was a book that was reviewed by scholars and it could certainly be read as objective fact, it was filled with prejudiced assumptions.  It is very important to be critical when reading and learning.
        The second book that my book club read was Queer Youth Culture.  This book covered many aspects of the lives of people who identify as queer.  This book was quite informative and inspiring.  I think it is very important to learn as much as you can as an educator about those who have a different background than your own.  This book helped me to realize how much our world is dominated by heterosexuality.  I hope to use my insights from this book to shape my future classes.  I will try my best not to assume that everyone is heterosexual and I will try to incorporate some works of literature that involve homosexuality as well as heterosexuality.  In this way, I hope to continue to work towards total representation within my classes.
       The final book that my group read was Colormute.  This book discussed the ways in which we discuss or refrain from discussing race.  One of the things I found most interesting about this book was the idea that though students at Columbus High School had quite diverse backgrounds, they were forced to check their heritage at the door of the classroom.  The forms that students are required to fill out simplify and categorize "race."  Students are forced to fit their diverse heritage in a checkbox.  This book really helped me to think about my own diverse heritage.  I often feel intimidated when faced with the racial check boxes of tests.  I feel forced to check the box next to white even though I am Irish, Scottish, French, Dutch, Cherokee, and much more.  I hope to never force my students into a check box.  This book really helped me to think about race and its place in the classroom and in life.

Conclusions

    I have had a wonderful time here at Classic City High.  I have learned a lot about myself and about the students that I have worked with.  I have learned that though I may disagree with teaching policies, I can mold them to work for me.  I have always been considered a rebel of sorts.  If I disagree with something, I usually let it be known.  Though I didn't like the E2020 program, I made it work for me.  I got students to read stories by reading every other paragraph for them and summarizing each paragraph as we read it.  I also got students to really think about which answer they should pick.  I was able to make it through my twenty two hours without criticizing the program inside of the school building.  I was happy to discover that I was able to adapt to the school's policies without completely losing my mind or my teaching methods.
    Last semester my intended major was middle school education and I decided to volunteer at a local elementary school.  I left the school thinking that I had just babysat a room full of sixty kids. Though the kids were great and I did feel like I was able to help them in their studies, I never felt that I was really teaching what I loved.  I love literature.  I love the unsure, changing, tumultuous years of high school.  I love having the opportunity to guide students as they are exiting high school and making plans for the future.  These experiences have reassured my desires to teach high school literature.  I was a little unsure of myself after my experiences of last semester.  I was also often advised to stay out of English Education. Basically, I was told that I wasn't needed.  My experiences in Classic City High have shown me that I really can make an effect on my students' lives.  Even if they don't really get to know me or don't appreciate the help that I give them I still make an impact on them just as they impact me.

Sleepy Studies

   I decided to do a double shift again today because I will not be able to volunteer next week due to the fact that I will be attending my older sister's honor's day.  Everyone, including myself, was very tired today.  I first worked with Aron who was very frustrated today and complained that he was very tired.  One of the stories that we focused on today was "The Masque of The Red Death."  Aron and I read through the entire story but I could tell that Mr. Poe's word choices were bogging Aron down.  I made sure to summarize each paragraph with modern language after we had read it.  As he began to get into the story, Aron got less and less frustrated.
    Aron began to get frustrated again when we returned to the questions.  At the beginning of the class he was very frustrated when I wouldn't give him the answer.  I dealt with this by narrowing the answers to give him a fifty-fifty chance of getting the question correct.  This seemed to help though I always worry that I give students too much too easily.  This is the constant struggle that I have in Classic City High School.
    I feel that I was really able to help Aron with his work.  At the end of the class, we thanked each other and he seemed truly sincere.  It is so great to see that I am helping people in the Athens community.
    In the second class, the one that I usually work with, John was not in class.  I decided to work with John's friend, Tandra.  The first thing out of Tandra's mouth was that she was tired.  This was out of the ordinary because Tandra doesn't usually complain about anything.  This was so out of character that the teacher actually commented on how strange it was to hear her complain.
   Tandra is doing very well in the class and is ahead in her progress.  She is working with Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet."  She has had the book for a while and has been given time to read it but she has not been able to complete it.  Instead of taking her class time to read through the play, Tandra goes through and guesses on different questions.  This was difficult for me because I have never read the play myself and I can't help but think that her time would have been more productively spent by reading the play that she was questioned over.  I think that the PLC or at least the teacher that I am working with pushes progress too much.  There is such a focus on how much a student has done that day and what they have done already.  THere is almost no focus on literature.  There is only focus on headway.
  The fact that I have not had the pleasure to read the play myself made it very difficult for me to help Tandra to narrow her guesses.  Towards the middle of the class, the teacher asked Tandra to pull up the play online for a certain question.  From then on, I encouraged Tandra to look up the sections that the questions were over.  Tandra was very willing to read the sections once I asked her to and she did very well when she took her time.  She is a very good student when asked to be.

Distractions

    John was a little tired today so I tried to take it easy with him.  Though I did coerce John into reading at least the majority of stories, I didn't push it when he began to get frustrated.  Because of the "experiment," students are forced to sit through hours of multiple choice questions.  The readings provided a break in this constant questioning.  I tried to further this break by actually discussing the readings.  I tried to bring out things that I thought were interesting or funny and I asked questions about these things.  I think that this really helped John to get through the entire class period.  Constant questioning is a good way to loose a student's attention and temper.
     After finishing a quiz, John will always ask the teacher to check his quiz. At one point, the teacher was working with another student and asked John to wait for her to finish.  While waiting, John went to online Athens and read some news stories.  When the teacher noticed this, she got on to him about wasting my time and said that he should have submitted the quiz even though he was asked to wait.  I personally have no problem with a student reading the news while waiting for a teacher's help.  I feel that it is a very productive past time.
    John was very distracted by one of his friends who sat next to him today.  They continually distracted each other but he distracted her a bit more than she distracted him.  She also had a tutor and completely ignored her and would lookk over to John in the middle of a lesson.  I'm not sure exactly how to alleviate the distractions.  Maybe something will come to me before next week.

Futures

     This Wednesday was a little different for me.  I decided to do two sessions of tutoring to both catch up on some lost hours and to observe the classroom dynamics among a different set of students.  When I got to the school I found that the doors were locked because the school was on lock down for the Hood hunt.  A student let me in and I then signed in as usual.  I then discovered that the inner doors were also locked without students standing nearby to open them for anyone so I decided to sit in the lobby until a student came along to open up the doors.  While there, many different students came to the front doors and tried to get in.  They were frustrated just as I was especially when discovering that the second set of doors were also locked.  I don't really understand the tactics for this lock down.  It is locking the students, who have a personal class schedule out of the school and is keeping them out in the open in this dangerous time.  I also do not see how locked doors would keep the fugitive out of the school.  These doors are made out of glass.  What is to keep Mr. Hood from shooting the windows out or in fact shooting the student that is waiting to let others in?
    The class that meets before the class that I usually work with is larger and the students seem to be more independent.  It is difficult to find someone who will accept a tutor but I was able to work with a student who had just joined the program named Aron.  Aron is outgoing and will actually laugh at my jokes.  He wants to go to barber school to become a barber after he graduates.
    The air conditioning in the classroom was struggling and the room became very hot which agitated the students and made it very difficult for both them and myself to concentrate.  The heat continued to get worse until at one point, in the middle of our reading, the power went out.  All of the computers shut down, there was no air, and there was no lighting.  The students were very angry about this.  They continually said things to the effect of "I could get more work done at home" and "If I have to be here, I should be able to work."  The heat, the dark, and these feelings of frustration along with the teacher's slack attitude led to a break down in discipline.  Though the school was on lock-down, she allowed one of her students to dress up in a old prom dress and run around to different classrooms.  This comic relief did help to alleviate some of the frustrations in the classroom.
     When the power came back on it was a little difficult to get students to return to their work but not exceedingly so.  There is a lot more talking in this class than in the one that I usually tutor in.  Today, all of the discussion was focused on the police shooting and the suspect in particular.  Some of the students know the suspect and his history and I learned a lot about it from them.  According to the students the suspect's brother was shot and killed by the police in the past and that is the reason behind the shooting.  Though they all agreed that it was a stupid thing to do to shoot a police officer, they definitely sympathized and related to Mr. Hood where as most others see him as a inhumane monster.  I do not know where I stand because I do not know Mr. Hood but it was interesting and valuable to hear another perspective.
      During the second session the shooting came up once again.  John had been stopped by the police on the way here to have his car searched and also to be questioned about whether or not he was skipping school.  He continually told the police that he did not have class until 12:15 but the officers would not believe him and continually told him that he was lying to them and that he was skipping class.  He said that he wasn't skipping class but their stopping him was going to make him late.
      As you can probably imagine, John was not in a very good mood.  Because of this, I decided not to push him too far.  We did not read too much and I tried to include a little more conversation as opposed to just focusing on the task at hand.
     One thing that I saw which really bothered me was that the "experiment" from before spring break seems to have become a permanent installation within the class.  The students no longer have any lectures and they are not presented with any of the reading material.  This makes the class more about completeness and less about the material.
    One good thing that came out of this meeting is that John and I actually discussed what he wants to do when he graduates.  John would like to be a plumber.  We were able to discuss what would be required for this career path.  I was really happy that we could talk about such a personal subject.  John seemed really excited and I was so happy to be able to help him.

Quick and Easy

    The teacher of the class that I work in is scrambling to get everyone's grade and progress levels up before progress reports.  To do this, she is allowing her students to move on to different lessons if they pass the pretests with no lessons, homework, or study materials.  This would seem to be a good idea because the students should be allowed to move on if they already know the material. This is not, however, what happens.
    The majority of the questions have only two answer options.  This makes it very easy to simply guess a correct answer.  Because of this, John was able to pass many pretests that covered material that he did not understand.  It also made it very difficult for me to help him because as soon as I would ask him about an answer, he would immediately change it.
     The new way of doing things was also detrimental to John's learning and efforts in learning because he was not forced to read the story that he was questioned over.  When we got to the questions about "The Masque of the Red Death," he wanted to continue on without reading the story at all, but I asked him to pull up the story on the internet.  Once he did and he realized how long it was he did not want to read it at all.  I went through and helped to summarize the story for him but he did not want to be in class any longer.  He was done and even told me that he had a headache because he had been reading and thinking to long.  This new way of learning, taking tests continually for two hours, had drained him of all effort and drive.
    John was able to get through a lot of quizzes because of this new policy and began to become restless and frustrated.  When a question had more than two answers he would sometimes just go through the letters, "a, c, b, d," wanting me to give him the answer.    This is very frustrating for me.  I just want to help John to do his best.  I became more and more frustrated until I realized that perhaps I was.  John has no plans for after graduation.  He is now working and will probably continue to work for the rest of his life.  For this life, he probably doesn't need to know the symbolism within "The Masque of Red Death."  For this life, he only needs to hurry through his 10th grade literature class to get his diploma.  But I believe in giving people options.  If I can help him to develop a sense of exploration in literature that may affect the way in which he views the world that surrounds him.  Who knows? Maybe one day he'll discover an improved way of doing business and be promoted because of the ways in which I have helped him to view problems and stories.  Or maybe he will choose to go on to college and use these skills in a future English class.  Whatever the future is, I will continue to try to help him in his learning.
    Though John probably got through more lessons than he ever had before and his average went up by about ten or fifteen points, I believe that he learned the least that he ever has.  The teacher was very happy with his progress but I did not feel that he progressed much at all.  I have found that the teacher and myself have very different views when it comes to teaching tactics.  She goes for quantity and I go for quality.

Getting to Know You

   John and I got to know each other a little better today.  I opened by asking him about his weekend.  He didn't say much which is how he often responds.  I decided to go on to tell him about my weekend in North Carolina to which he responded that he often visited North Carolina.  After this conversation, John seemed to be much more relaxed and started to open up.
    We started with a few quizzes and activities which he did very well with and moved on to reading Amy Tan's "Two Kinds."  During the lessons today John took out his cellphone for the first time.  I was hesitant to mention it because I felt that we had really made some progress today and he was actually doing better on the assignments than usual.  I decided not to mention the cell phone because it was not excessive and it wasn't impairing his learning.
     The e-reader was not working on Amy Tan's story so we had to read the story out loud.  John was very hesitant to do this.  I think that this is because he had trouble pronouncing and understanding many of the words.  I believe that John's first language is not English even though he speaks it fluently.  He types as if he is typing a text: spelling things in text speech and not capitalizing anything.  This is the only first hand experience that I have had with the effects that texting has had on the written language.
    Before we were finished reading the story, the website signed John out and we had to go back into the site.  John decided not to finish the story and went on to the lesson and the quizzes.  The school and the systems in place encourage students to worry only about the quick and easy answer to questions.  Students are sometimes encouraged to not read stories and often choose not to.  The summaries that the teacher gives them is adequate to answer questions immediately after it is given but students are not able to answer questions about the story later on.  I think that the PLC is a wonderful resource but the teaching methods that I have seen in this particular classroom are deplorable.  They aren't really teaching methods at all but cheating methods.

Too many futures to count

    John was not in school today so I worked with a girl named Christy for the first part of my tutoring session.  Christy was a little quiet and shy but very nice.  She was a little distracted because her father was in the hospital.  We worked on some quizes and activities dealing with Microsoft office.  It did not give Christy a tutorial on Office but expected her to know complicated names for things and different functions of the program.  I was not able to help her much because I don't know much about Microsoft Office.  I was able to help her by insisting that she think each question through.  She had an especially hard time with true/false questions.  She would read the question through once and choose the wrong answer but as soon as I asked her to reread it she understood the answer and the statement.
      Christy left early to visit her father in the hospital.  At this point the number of tutors in the classroom outnumbered the number of students so I went across the hall to Mr. Dana's classroom.  There I worked with a girl named Alex.  I asked my opening question which is "what do you want to do after you graduate?"  Alex is the only person that has had an answer to this question so far.  Alexa wants to go to school to become a psychologist though she worries about having to get her doctorial degree.  I was immediately able to connect with Alex because my fiance is a psychology major.  We discussed it and I talked to her about the possibility of being a psychologist with merely a masters degree which is the path that my fiance is considering.  From this point we began the lessons.  Alex did not like the E2020 program at all.  She complained that they gave the same lessons over and over again and that the teacher was very annoying.  All of her complaints were legitimate.  Information is repeated and the teacher is extremely distracting because of the way in which he presents himself.
      Alex asked me about my college experience and my hopes for the future.  She is nervous about going to college because she has a short attention span and gets distracted very easily (her words, not mine).  She gave me the example of the way in which she cleans.  She doesn't clean or do dishes unless she just can't stand the mess and then she just can't stop cleaning until it's done.  I told her that I am the same way and that if she can find the same drive that she gets for cleaning she won't stop until she's succeeded in college also.  We're all a little reluctant and nervous about our future paths.  I wonder if I'll be a good teacher or if teaching is right for me but at some point you have to move past the doubts and just work towards your goals until you have achieved them.  I hope that I will be able to see Alex again.  I made a real connection with her and I hope that my words have helped her in some way.

Mood: Frustrated

    I felt more confident coming into the Classic City High School for the second time.  John was here again which was wonderful.  He was also more open with me during this session.  Because I was feeling more confident, I became more involved with his activities.  He tends to try to take the easy way out of assignments.  Instead of trying to understand what the question is asking, he just guesses what the answer is.  This makes it very difficult for me to not just give him the answer because as soon as I mention a specific answer he selects it and then asks me if it is correct.  How can I respond to that?  I respond by reading through each answer in relation to the question.
    The test that John completed today was the longest that he had ever completed.  It took even longer because I was rereading the answers in an attempt to not give him the answers to the questions.  John got very frustrated and began to give up.  Luckily the test ended shortly after he began to give up and we were able to move on to different lessons.
   There were many mistakes and typos within the lessons.  If what they're being taught is incorrect, what hope do they have of getting questions right.  I think that these mistakes are also frustrating to the students.  It also undermines the authority of the lessons.
    At the end of the day Jon and I got through the frustration of the many lessons and assignments of the day.  Hopefully our relationship will only grow from here.

First Impressions

     Going to Classic City High School for the first time was very intimidating.  Entering the school, I was already flustered and nervous because my bus had been late.  I was greeted by Mimi Middendorf who took me on a quick tour along with my classmate Erin.  The school is very welcoming and I felt much more at home.  The student that I was assigned to work with is named John.  I had been thinking for weeks of how I would connect to the student and here was my big moment.  The computer program made it almost impossible for me to make a connection with John.  He has to stare at the screen and put in his earphones.  I felt that if I interrupted to ask about his future then I would be impeding his education.
     For the first lesson, I merely watched as John listened to his lesson.  I tried to read a little so that I would have some context to help with the quiz afterward.  When I came to the quiz, however, John did not know any of the answers.  He had not listened to the lesson much at all which was a little frustrating for me.  I did not understand why he would have just ignored the lesson.  I soon discovered why when I listened to the second lesson.  The teaching video of the program addressed students as if they were much younger than they actually were.  The lessons only gave one opinion about literary works and presented that opinion as fact.  The lesson that I listened to dealt with both the voice and the purpose of the author.  They used William Carlos Williams' "This is Just to Say" to show examples of the voice and purpose of the work.  I had read this poem in my English 2340 class last semester and we had also discussed the author's voice and purpose so I thought that I would be very familiar with the views of the lesson.  To my surprise the video began to present a voice and purpose of the poem completely opposite from those that I and many of my classmates had come up with.  I have always believed that there are multiple ways of reading literary works so I was not surprised to find that they had a different opinion from mine.  What I was surprised to find was that they were presenting their opinion as the only viable opinion.  To them the voice and purpose of the poem were obvious and absolute.  This lesson just took away the opportunity to instill the value of individual thought and reasoning skills that are so vital to life and schooling in particular.  I now understood why John did not take the lessons seriously.  These lessons treated him like a small child and gave him the supposedly definitive answers to all of the questions that were asked of him.  Why should he try if he is going to be talked down to and if his opinions be dismissed in favor of the "obviously" correct ones.
       After this dismal lesson I was able to help John with another testing activity.  In this test I felt more confident in requiring him to really search for the correct answer because I was able to read the material that the questions were covering.  It was very difficult to find the line between helping and just giving John the answer.  I wondered if I was being to helpful but I was able to get John through the test with a nine out of ten score.
      John had to leave early so I helped with a girl next.  I wasn't able to give her much help because she had to leave shortly also but I was able to connect more than I had with John because she was very outgoing and talkative.  She is from California and went to a performing arts high school there.  Her school was not accredited though and she lost all of her credits when she came to Georgia.  She was also co-captain of the team to raise money for relay for life.  After the period I stayed after for  a little while to help come up with fundraising ideas.
      I really enjoyed working at Classic City High.  I truly felt like I was making a difference which helps me to feel as if I have a purpose here at UGA.  Coming from a small high school where academic success is not a common goal it is hard to come to a big school like UGA.  I often feel like I'm lost in a sea of academia, void of all personality and importance.  I feel as if I'm just floating through school to move onto the next path in my life.  I hope that this experience at Classic City High will help me to expand my effect on those around me and that I will start to feel as if I matter again as an individual.  I got a taste of that today and I can't wait until next Wednesday.