KK Blog Post #5
Today was my first day of volunteering and meeting the students at EMK. I've had experience tutoring younger children and I would say that I was pretty good at it, it was easy to build relationships, and I enjoyed it a lot. When I first heard about this service learning opportunity I just assumed I'd be working with younger students like freshmen or younger. When I found out I would be working with mainly high school seniors I was a bit taken aback. I found myself very nervous because we are so close in age and I didn't think I could be of much help since I don't know much more than them, if anything at all. Still, I told myself to let go of any of those thoughts and to go into today with an open mind.
I will say it was very different from my past experiences with tutoring and had its own set of difficulties. With younger children I found that difficulty lies in finding a balance between taking energy expelling breaks and focusing on the task at hand. I remember when I was teaching a first-grader violin, he was having a hard time standing still and taking in my advice and overall lesson that day so I had to change my perspective from an "authoritative and teacher figure" and just understand that he is a seven year old boy who just went through an entire day of school and now he's having a violin lesson on a Friday afternoon. Once I thought about it that way, I decided that the best thing to do was grab his soccer ball, go outside, and just spend ten minutes playing soccer with him and allow him to get out some of that energy. It ended up being very fun for both him and I, he really appreciated it and when we got back to violin I could tell he was ready to be attentive and work.
With the students I worked with today at EMK, I had a hard time knowing when to interject especially when they started getting distracted by their phones. I was grouped with this one boy who seemed really disinterested in what he was meant to be doing and at one point he got up to use the bathroom but didn't come back for around fifteen minutes. When he got back he kind of just stared off, checked his phone, or bothered thew friend sitting next to him. At first, I didn't know what to do and I could also tell that he was put off by my presence so I really didn't want to seem like I was overstepping in any way. Eventually I started to just ask him questions about what direction he wanted to take the essay and what interested him so that he could form the draft of his thesis. With the girl I worked with it was a bit easier for her to stay on task and get work done, however, knowing if she needed help or not was hard to figure out because she mainly kept to herself.
I think towards the end I got more comfortable with checking in on where they were in the writing process and asking if they need any help. Also, I think they became more comfortable talking a bit more. I look forward to continue working with that class and working on my communication and interpersonal skills.
I will say it was very different from my past experiences with tutoring and had its own set of difficulties. With younger children I found that difficulty lies in finding a balance between taking energy expelling breaks and focusing on the task at hand. I remember when I was teaching a first-grader violin, he was having a hard time standing still and taking in my advice and overall lesson that day so I had to change my perspective from an "authoritative and teacher figure" and just understand that he is a seven year old boy who just went through an entire day of school and now he's having a violin lesson on a Friday afternoon. Once I thought about it that way, I decided that the best thing to do was grab his soccer ball, go outside, and just spend ten minutes playing soccer with him and allow him to get out some of that energy. It ended up being very fun for both him and I, he really appreciated it and when we got back to violin I could tell he was ready to be attentive and work.
With the students I worked with today at EMK, I had a hard time knowing when to interject especially when they started getting distracted by their phones. I was grouped with this one boy who seemed really disinterested in what he was meant to be doing and at one point he got up to use the bathroom but didn't come back for around fifteen minutes. When he got back he kind of just stared off, checked his phone, or bothered thew friend sitting next to him. At first, I didn't know what to do and I could also tell that he was put off by my presence so I really didn't want to seem like I was overstepping in any way. Eventually I started to just ask him questions about what direction he wanted to take the essay and what interested him so that he could form the draft of his thesis. With the girl I worked with it was a bit easier for her to stay on task and get work done, however, knowing if she needed help or not was hard to figure out because she mainly kept to herself.
I think towards the end I got more comfortable with checking in on where they were in the writing process and asking if they need any help. Also, I think they became more comfortable talking a bit more. I look forward to continue working with that class and working on my communication and interpersonal skills.
Comments
Post a Comment