Reflection Paper Professor Eastman Education Psychology Sarah Bose
Throughout the semester I participated in the tutoring program at Laketon Elementary School. During these sessions I would help the students finish their homework, check it, and help them study for tests. By the end of the semester I had three students, Cassie, Cheyenne, and Shiloh. All three were on different levels of learning and needed help in different areas. Cassie is very bright and rarely needed help at all. I would check her homework for her and help her study for tests when she had them. Cassie receives mainly A s, and occasionally a B in school. Since Cassie does well in school, my goal with her was to challenge her a little bit more when she studied. For an example, instead of just writing out her spelling words, I also had her say them out loud to get extra practice with them. By having her do this, she knew the words a lot better and did very well on her spelling tests. Cheyenne, the other sixth grader I had, struggled in a little bit of everything. After the first session, I had set some goals for her such as slowing down and taking her time, thinking about the question, and finding solutions for the answer. Throughout the tutoring, Cheyenne always had a positive attitude, even when she did not understand everything and kept trying. She began to improve in her homework and understand a lot more when she slowed down and thought about what she was trying to answer. The third student I had was a fifth grader named Shiloh. Shiloh was a little fireball who had a lot of energy and constantly had to be doing something or talking. Since she liked to talk, one thing that seemed to help a lot was when she would talk out loud when doing her homework. I had her read her questions out loud, and then answer them out loud before she wrote them down. This really helped her pay attention more and she began to do a lot better. She also struggled and math, so one way to help is I had her write her problems out on the chalkboard. By doing this she would think for a little bit longer, and if she did not really understand she would then ask me questions about it. I
found that she began to understand a lot more when she would ask questions. Shiloh made great improvements form the beginning of the tutoring sessions to the end, as well as the others. After summarizing my experience tutoring, it is easy for me to relate my work to theorists that we talked about in class. The first theorist I thought related to my tutoring experience was Gardener and his theory on multiple intelligences. He describes it as eight separate types of intelligences (109). These types are logical-mathematical, linguistic, musical, spatial, bodilykinesthetic, interpersonal, and naturalist. After tutoring Cassie, I found that she could fall under naturalist. She can easily recognize and classify numerous plants and animals of one s environment and their relationships on a logical, justifiable basis (110). Cassie also excels well with problem solving. To go along with this, the multiple intelligence theory also says that some children learn best when it is presented in a particular format or emphasizes a particular type of ability (112). I found this to be true when tutoring Shiloh. She learns best when things are drawn out for her, meaning she is a hands on learner. Shiloh actually has to see someone do it, and then try it herself in order for her to fully understand. The second theorist that I believe relates to my students is Piaget. Piaget s formal operational is being able to deal with abstractions, form hypotheses, solve problems systematically, and engage in mental manipulations (36). All three of my girls were able to do this. They all can recognize what the problem is and set up ideas of how to solve the particular problem at hand. Another thing that Piaget said was that cognitive development is strongly influenced by peers more so than adults (40). I was able to see this on more than one occasion. Sometimes when Cheyenne or Shiloh needed help on something, and I was already working with one, they would ask Cassie. The two of them would then sit there and talk out what would be the best so-
lution. After they decided what their answer was, they would then ask me. More times than not, they were right. The third theorist I thought also went with my tutoring was Maslow. Maslow s humanistic approach was to pay attention to the role of noncognitive variables in learning, specifically, students needs, emotions, values, and self-perceptions (370). I found this to be completely true when I was helping Shiloh. Sometimes when teaching her, I would have to relate it to something that was going on around her. A lot of times I would relate it to Exchange City since this is all they had been preparing for, for most of the semester. By doing this, Shiloh became more engaged and interested in what she was learning and being taught. For Cheyenne, I would relate a lot of things to soccer because she loved to play and would talk about it all the time. By relating her schoolwork to it, it made it more interesting for her. It also made it to where she would want to actually figure out how to do it the right way. Overall, this was a very positive learning experience for me. While being in the tutoring program I have learned how to instruct, apply myself in new and different ways, and how to have patience. Learning to instruct someone can be very difficult and frustrating sometimes. It can take several different ways until the students actually grasp the concept and understand what it is that is being taught to them. I also learned that I have to take different approaches at things sometimes with different students. If the student gets frustrated I need to reassure them that they are doing a great job and to keep trying. This also means that sometimes I need to have the student attack the problem in a different way and a better way that they understand. I cannot be afraid to try new things when others do not work. The last thing that I thought was important that I learned was patience. Sometimes I thought that the students should be able to understand how to do things the first time that I said them, but that was definitely not the case. I had to take
deep breaths and explain things two or three times before they would really actually grasp the concept. I feel all of these things I will need and be able to take to be a successful educator. There were many things that I learned throughout this tutoring experience and there will be many more in the future to help me learn to be an educator.
Works Cited Biehler, S. Psychology Applied to Teaching. (2006) MA: Houghton Mifflin Company.