My name is BBB and I am attending
LaGuardia Community College. I am
currently majoring in Secondary Education with a
concentration in English. I am enrolled in Dr.
Justin Rogers-Copper’s Seminar in Teaching Writing course.
During this semester, I have been
exposed to various tutoring and writing techniques. In the
past, I have had an experience as a
teacher’s aide as well as interning high schools for
previous courses taken at LaGuardia
Community College. I believe that my teaching ideas and
pedagogy continuously changes as I
observe different practices in classroom settings. After
this course, I have discovered that my
whole idea on education and teaching is all about having a
Collaborative, Feminist and Student-
Centered approach. Based on James Moffett’s Active Voice text, Donald McAndrew’s Tutoring
Writing text, Author
and Educator’s Ken Robinson’s TED conference and some of my tutoring
experiences, these approaches are an essential aspect of
teaching and tutoring students. I have
evaluated that the most important role of being an educator
is to take on a role of allowing
students to take on an opportunity of striving to be
creative. In this present time,
students are
often deprived of their own creativity. This restriction
will have a negative impact on students’
ability to learn and express themselves in assignments.
Based off of my
tutoring and observation sessions, I have established that Collaborative
Tutoring and Student-Centered Tutoring not only goes hand
and hand with one another but they
are most effective in sessions. Student-Centered Tutoring is
what allows students to do the most
talking and work (McAndrew and Reigstad 25). According to
McAndrew and Reigstad, it is the
tutee that has the power in which direction session will be
going. The tutor is there to listen, ask
questions and contribute their suggestions to the about the
writer’s piece. Furthermore, the tutor
relies on conversational strategies such as open-ended
questions which will allow the writer to
brainstorm. Whereas, the writer starts up the discussion
about their ideas and concerns regarding
their writing piece.
On the other
hand, Collaborative Tutoring allows the writer and tutor to come together and
equivalently share their ideas by conversing several times
during the session. This style of
tutoring is what promotes decision making and problem
solving in the writer’s piece. Both
Collaborative and Student-Centered tutoring was what I
observed taking place during my
Writing Center observation earlier in the semester and I
acknowledged that of these tutoring
styles was effective in the session. During my last day of
observing in the Writing Center, I
learned a lot from this one tutor who had two students at
once. The tutor had two students that
needed to revise their paper. Coincidentally, both students
had to revise their paper for an ENG
101 class, since both students were revising their work for
their English class, the tutor asked
both students what their concerns are about their paper. The
tutor proceeds by engaging in a
conversation with both tutees about what should be
rearranged as well as the tutees making
suggestions about what they felt would be beneficial to
their papers. Furthermore, I was able to
recognize that Collaborative and Student-Centered Tutoring
was a good choice of tutoring styles
to apply in my own sessions as a tutor. Due to all four of
my tutoring sessions being somewhat
similar, I would like to present only two sessions that I found
to be significant experiences. My
third tutoring session went better than I thought it would.
I had the opportunity of tutoring in an
ENG 101 class, the tutee I had was writing about
discriminating against homosexuals. The tutee
didn’t have a paper ready due to her having a difficult time
starting off her paper. Since she
already had previous work where she had to do research on
her topic and answer questions
regarding her topic on discrimination against homosexuals, I
was able to show her how she can
use the text that she used to answer her questions as her
first source. I asked her what was her
biggest concerns about starting her paper and the tutee
explained to me that her biggest concern
was how to set up her paper. After the tutee expressed her
concern to me and then managed to
write out an outline for her that she could use as guidance.
She then started to make suggestions
about the outline and how she wanted to rearrange what would
go into her body paragraph for
her introduction. At that point in the session, I believe it
was Student-Centered tutoring because
the tutee was taking control of the session by “initiating
the discussion” and I, the tutor made
sure to ask open-ended questions (McAndrew &Reigstad
26). As the session continued, I believe
that it shifted from being Student-Centered Tutoring to
Collaborative Tutoring because she
wanted to get her point across that discrimination against
homosexuals is wrong and she wanted
to provide to the readers how it still exist in this world.
So I asked her how exactly was she
trying to go about doing so, she suggested to me that she
wanted to discuss how it is displayed in
music that we listen to today. Because she was from Jamaica,
I know that some reggae music has
a lot of homosexual discrimination in it so I suggested that
she should write about a specific song
that targets homosexuals and since the song was in Patois,
she can translate it for the readers so
they know what exactly the words are in the song. As
McAndrew and Reigstad states,
Collaborative Tutoring is taking place when the tutee is
“engaging” in the conversation with the
tutor which a lot of this took place during my session as
well as myself as the tutor asking a lot
of open-ended questions. I believe that this assignment
allowed the students to not only present
facts about their topic but it also gave them the ability to
write about what they know and be
creative about it. For an example, when the writer had
mentioned that she wanted to provide in
her writing piece that discrimination against homosexuals still
exists especially in music, it was
liberating for her as a writer because she was thinking
“outside of the box” and being creative in
a sense that she was doing what she wanted to do as a writer
as well learning about her topic in
the process.
My final
tutoring session went wonderful to me and I believe I did a good job. I went
back to
the ENG 101 class that I went to the previous session and I
would call this session to be a follow
up on what the students have developed from the last
session. This time I had to take two
students at once which I always found to be difficult but
this time I believed I managed my time
well with both students. One student wrote about weight
discrimination which I found to be very
interesting and different because it is a very common issue
that is dealt with today but no one
really acknowledges it to be an issue. The student had
already completed her paper and had
minor spelling mistakes therefore I asked her what exactly
were her concerns about the paper
and what she would like to change about her work. She
suggested that she wanted to change her
conclusion and didn’t want the “basic” conclusion as of
summarizing the piece but she wanted to
keep the reader interested even after the paper was over. In
that moment, I took on the Student-
Centered tutoring strategy, I wanted the student to answer
her own questions because it seemed
like she already knew which direction she wanted to take
with her paper but she was hesitant.
Since the tutee already had her paper done, I wanted her to
be one to determine what she felt
could be the best idea to conclude her paper which she was
able to do at the end. Instead of her
simply restating what her introduction states, she chose to
conclude her paper with asking if
weight discrimination will ever end.
The other tutee
that I worked with during this session wrote about discrimination against
disability. Her paper was completed but disorganized so I
knew I would have to help rearrange
her paper. For this student, I chose the Collaborative
Tutoring strategy because she already had a
full paper with a good amount of information in her paper,
it was the just not structured properly.
I read the paper with her and asked how she would go about
moving certain paragraphs around
such as moving her body paragraph to the introduction and
some of her body paragraph to her
conclusion. The tutee also made some suggestions as to where
she felt she could’ve expanded
some of her claims in her paper. This strategy went well
because I feel that we both were
learning from one another as well making suggestions so that
way it wasn’t one-sided effort
taking place.
Another issue that
prohibits students from being creative which is currently taking place in the
school system is that students are currently being “banked”.
Due to some teachers’ lack of
communication and their unconscious roles of dictatorship,
students are only being transmitted
information which students are then forced to memorize that
information and the cycle continues
to repeat itself. According to Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Freire uses
the “banking
education” concept to analyze and criticize the traditional
education system. The banking
education systems refers to students being used as passive
learners where they are used to
deposit information and knowledge into (Freire 83). The
banking education system is what
prohibits students to be creative because they are being
used as machines to transport
information to therefore it limits the learning process for
students.
The banking
concept is what reinforces the whole idea of oppression for students because
students aren’t experiencing engagement with learning as
well as cognitive development due to
the lack of conversation and dialogue with other
students. James Moffett’s Active Voice
emphasizes his ideas on
a student-centered curriculum which involved students to participate
and be accountable for their own educational growth. Moffett
was adamant about presenting how
important it is for educators to allow students to become more
in touch with their inner selves as
writers. Some of Moffett’s ideas consisted of being able to
assess a student’s progress without
using standardized exams to do so and instead by using other
alternatives such as having students
present projects and portfolios which can be used to determine
their progress. His ideas focused
more on a student-centered curriculum which involved
students to participate and be accountable
for their own educational growth. One of many Moffett’s
ideas was that he suggested should be
used in classrooms was the “Duologue” assignment. The
duologue assignment would be
allowing students to pair with one another and allow each
student to produce a conversation
between two people by jotting down what each speaker should
say by taking turns (Moffett 50).
The duologue can be used to help the writers’ with their
metacognitive skills because it allows
the writer to build up creativity and to allow them build on
their writing skills. In Sir Ken
Robinson’s remarkable TED Conference video, he discusses
that as educators we should
recognize students’ talents and allow them to embrace it and
talent stems from creativity. As Ken
Robinson states, “we grow out of creativity” he is referring
to if we don’t allow students to be
creative and have fun with learning then as they grow up,
they will become robots that is only
able to obtain information or as Freire would say they will
only be good for “depositing”
information. As the generation continues this will later
turn into an issue because people will
only be used as program robots that only see everything
one-sided and will never think out of the
box.
Education should
be Student-Centered based as well as Collaborative because the combination
of the two is what is needed to enhance a student’s
cognitive skills which will promote the
individual’s capability of thinking and writing. I believe
that creativity stems from Student-
Centered and Collaborative learning and in order for the
learning process to take place, students
must be able to interact with another and express
themselves. My pedagogy on education is that
as a future educator, I will make sure that my students are
able to express themselves through
their work.
Work Cited
1.
Moffett, James. Active Voice: A Writing
program Across Curriculum.
2nd Edition
Boynton/Cook Publishers. Portsmouth,NH.(1992)
2.
Donald A. McAndrew & Thomas J. Reigstad.
Tutoring Writing: A Practical Guide for Conferences. Boynton/Cook
Publishers. Portsmouth, NH (2001)
3.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed.
30th Anniversary Edition Bloomsbury Publishers, New York: Continum
(1968)
No comments:
Post a Comment