Returning to ENG101

It was very exciting to return to Prof. H’s ENG 101.  This session I worked with a young student who had nothing with him, no draft, and no sense of what topics option were, not even a pen and paper.  All he knew at that point was that he was behind every stage of his essay.

I knew first he needed to find a topic to write on.  There were a variety of topics on social justice issues.  I asked him if any of these topics interested him.  He looked on a list that I printed out from the class blog (thanks to prof.) But it looked like he had never seen one before.  He ended up picking the “stop & frisk” topic to my surprise.  Trying to be funny to break his passive attitude, I said to him, “You look pretty White to me”.  I always thought this appeared to be a racial issue, and he was on another track.  And he said, “yes…in these days the police officer like to pull the White guys over…”. I adopted the technique of “Twenty Questions” and that felt like he was being interviewed.  Little by little, I instructed him to write down the entire “interview”, which indeed documented his personal experiences (including get arrested, attending courts).  And the funny part was that he knew how to get around judges (regardless what ethical background) and had succeeded to escape all convictions by wearing nice attire and exhibiting a decent demeanor.  However, this does not work the same way with the police officers.  He said that most officers summoned him happened to be White.  Is this interesting?  At least to me! 

As the session went well, I kept telling him this is a great staring point, and he should continue to develop the body of his essay based on his view and thought of “stop & frisk”.  I also urged him to start his research on the topic, through the internet search engines, library, course materials, newspapers and so on.  I told him it will be a really interesting paper if he can put his thoughts on paper decently.  However, we did not have enough time to organize it as an outline.  I gave him the Writing Center’s schedule that I always carry and encouraged him to pay visits along his writing process starting from scratch to final polish.

Since the tutee response to my questions was much better than the first two tutoring sessions, this time I am able to adopt the Collaborative tutoring, which the tutor will initiate the move to a new phase and who usually identifies the problem area on which to focus.  It seemed to work well on this tutee.

Tutoring experience - ENG 099

It was very excited to put on the use  the tutoring theories and strategies we have been learning for this class-ENG 099.  The student I worked with was freshly from high school and a well off family.  She does not have any work experience.  Her mother is a full time mom and her father is the bread winner.  She had a a short page's draft and came with a full page of comments from her professor.  Like other young adult students, who lack life and work experience, her writing is trapped by the face value of the article.  I knew we had about 40 mins to work with so I initialed the session by going through the article.  I stopped at where I would like her attention (toward the end) and skimmed through other parts.  I guided her to the part that contained the main ideas of the article.  I adopted the Social Constructionism theory and acted as a coach to enable the tutee to take a step forward and explore a new picture of the article.  After a few discussion about the author's ideas, she actually discard her old version of writing and incorporated a new idea into her new draft as a result of the dialogue.  She has a little problem understanding the conflicting nature between employers and employees.  Lots of things seem as new concepts to her.  For this type of young adult, and the time constraints, I spent a good amount of time discussing the concepts that are new to her.  I also made time discussing the structure of her writing and the contextual evidence she may have to develop in order to support her claim.

I knew it is unpopular to adopt the Teacher-centered tutoring,  but in fact, it helps to deal with some less motivated young students with the time constraints involved.  It allows the tutor get to the point before the clock stops.

I have heard from time to time that foundations have been making donations to support charter schools.  My perception links this kind of behavior the same way like the sponsorship that the big banks or corporations made to performance arts, theaters, etc. for the communities or special interest groups to promote their business’ images as well as generating a tax deduction.  Now more information unfolds, the corporation interest in charter schools seem to be a different story.

I do not agree with the idea of privatizing the public schools.  I think public schools, charter schools and private schools should be interplay in the education system so that parents have more options for their children’s education and ideally a real healthy competition. Corporations who want to privatize public schools should back off from the education field, in my opinion.