Concluding Thoughts- Participating in a Performance Learning Center

I once completed an apprenticeship at the middle school in my home county. During the time I spent teaching, shadowing, and reading up on EPSY know-how, I was introduced to the concept of a Philosophy of Education. The idea fascinated me—that every teacher keeps an evolving, written record of how he or she approaches teaching. I was allowed to read the Philosophy of a teacher or two, and it seemed so formal, so learned. Theirs were polished. They had jumped through the hoops of k-12 life for so many years that everything they had to say seemed so sagely. As I wrote my first edition, I couldn't help but wonder how long it would take for me to reflect the same wisdom my favorite teachers did. My initial Philosophy of Education had blanket statements in it, such as “I will strive to meet each of my students where they stand,” but I never knew all of what that involved. Now, with two years of college down, I have words such as “the Zone of Proximal Development” and “scaffolding” to further describe my intentions.

But it has been the process of putting my toes in the water that has changed the way I think of teaching. My time at Classic City was a fantastic opportunity for me to realize that there's more than one model of today's high school, and there's more than one way of reaching people. It also preached the diversity that can exist in a generation of students. The students that I had a chance to encounter were radically different from each other. One had a can-do attitude, another claimed he wanted to be left alone. One would ask me questions, another would try to rush through things she didn't have complete mastery of.

A part of me wishes that I could have spent all of my time catering to one student's needs. I would have loved to help a single person grow and feel that they had a true friend in me as opposed to leaving a series of students with the notion that I was there for a rainy day—to usher them through the last chapter of ENGL2020 or to function as a quick fix for a low grade or lagging percentage-complete. I also realized that I would never be satisfied as a teacher in a PLC-modeled school. I crave those interactions with students where talking it out leads them to epiphanies, and learning carries a Socratic give-and-take. I hate to see the student who may not feel that school is a comfortable arena for them faced with nothing but more questions that equate the value of knowledge with a quiz score.

This experience has reassured me that I am on the right track. I want to be an English Education major. I want to teach high school kids who are right at that threshold where they are still able to be convinced that their efforts can build something. They are still able to realize that through reading others' words and producing their own, they can feel like a part of something. I want to teach them that communicating will not always have a numerical score attached to it, and stories can be good for something other than inspiring multiple choice questions. But when there are tests to be had, my time at PLC has taught me how I can inspire students to stick with it. They can arrive at the right answer on their own with a bit of critical thinking.

I found it best to approach students with the attitude that I know they are capable of great things as opposed to challenging them to prove themselves to me. As one of our books mentioned, “All students want to be loved and accepted by their teacher.” And while I was only a tutor, my students exemplified a need to simply be encouraged to take pride in their work and develop a consistent rhythm to get it done. PLC opened my eyes to the fact that education always has its rewards, but so much of it comes from a feeling of empowerment that is only present when teachers and tutors make it their mission to create it.

Session 9- "Yo, Can I Get a Check?"

In class, we've often joked about getting to PLC on time as a sort of race. Get there, and you get the kid of your choice. Arrive a few minutes late and they've likely been snatched up by some other tutor-happy menace. It engenders in us a sense of friendly competition, and most definitely a sense of pride in working with the same student to the point you are able to see progress. For me, as I drove toward PLC this morning, I hoped that I would be able to see Alana again. I enjoyed working with her, and she seemed to want to work with me just as much. When I ran into the lobby of PLC, one quick look told me that none of my classmates were filing in behind me. This could be a good sign; maybe they were running late. Maybe, just maybe, I'd break my record of working with a student twice in a row.

No such luck! Mrs. Green walked across the hall and reported that Alana had been placed with someone else. Elijah was around, but he had (happily) finished English and was onto Spanish, a subject that I have no experience in. Justin was missing, as well. This left me with one option: Kassandra. I'll admit it—I was a little nervous to get back with her. She radiated “leave me alone” beams, crouched closely to her computer. But when Mrs. Green asked “Do you want to try it with Kassandra again?” of course I said yes.

I went over to Kassandra and grabbed a seat beside her. “Hey, how's it going?” I asked.

“Oh, y'know, good. Just don't wanna do this shit” she mumbled.

“I know it can be a downer. But hey, tell you what—let's power through it.” I responded.

And that is what we did. Kassandra had lots of questions for me, which was a good sign. And what was even better was that, after she and I would finish a quiz, she would ask Mrs. Green for a “check.” In PLC lingo, asking for a check means the teacher looks at the students' quiz results before they submit for a grade so that they have a chance to score higher. The teacher will respond by giving the student a post-it note with a list of questions to go back and review. Kassandra had less than gentle ways of asking, and had absolutely no qualms about interrupting Mrs. Green when she was talking with another student, but apparently this was still a good development. When working with herself, I learned, she was less likely to ask if her answers were correct. With me there, it looked like she was determined to get her quiz grades as high as she could.

This time, I noticed something about Kassandra that I do, as well. When I am very high-strung and want to work faster than I seem capable, I have the tendency to mark time with my feet. It almost looks like a football drill when I get restless enough. Kassandra was doing the same thing. She would often take leaps of faith and randomly select answers after reading a fragment of the question, and I would respond by asking her to slow down for a second and “Does that make sense?” We spent the period on this foot-on-the-gas/break-hitting way. At the end of the class Kassandra's grade was up to a B+! It had been a C before we had begun. She had increased by a huge percentage. Mrs. Green came over and said something to the tune of “See what you can do when you apply yourself? I am so proud of you.”

Kassandra writhed under the compliment. She blushed and said “Thaaaanks.”

Somehow working with Kassandra again today made me confident that she will finish the program. It might take a little longer than projected earlier, but she has the drive nonetheless. She may get distracted and she may have priorities that eclipse school at some points, but she hasn't stopped showing up, and that says something.

Sessions 7 & 8- Alana's "Sound of Silence"

All of the students I had worked with previously had been vocal in some sense. They all seemed like they had something to say or something they wanted to be passively known about themselves. Even Curry, who was pretty quiet, expressed that he wanted to be seen in a certain light. But this time, I was again jumping around. I changed rooms for the first time, as well, and was met with new walls filled with new inspirational posters and bits of student work hanging on the wall. My favorite was a poster of Muhammad Ali which refused to be ignored, hanging above the computer that I would call home for the next two sessions.

The girl I was paired with was named Alana. Alana seemed to be in both personality and and appearance, short, sweet, and to the point. Much like I had in high school, she wore a roomy hoodie and a hat slouched back over her hair. She was African American and spoke in a crisp whisper. She was also very polite and would laugh nervously at points when the going got tough. But another thing that I picked up on about Alana is that she would often recede into a state of Academic paralysis. We would read a question and the answers, and then she'd just sit there, staring at the screen, humming thoughtfully but not wanting to say anything else until provoked.

“Which one are you thinking about?” I'd say.

“Ummmm, I don't know, really. I don't think it's D.” She would then float her mouse over A through C.

I told her that she should have the confidence to know when she was right, and that often times, it was her first instinct that she should've gone with. But something to be said for Alana is that she is extraordinarily studious. She listens to the lectures hosted by ENGL 2020, boring though she says they are, and she diligently takes notes on what they have to say. That's why when we got to the lessons and she acted as if she didn't know the answers, I had to call her on her timidness. “I think you know what the answer is,” I'd say, and laugh. And she'd laugh, too, and ultimately click on an answer. Alana was religious about keeping her grade up as high as possible, and she certainly was succeeding. Although progress was slow, she had a B+. I promised her that her average would not go down if we upped our pace.

When working with Alana, it occurred to me that I truly know very little about the backgrounds of any of the students I've worked with. That is not to say that I am not curious about where they've come from, but rather that the opportunity never came up for me to ask in a way that didn't seem like I was prying. Kassandra and I had gotten the closest to that—I had told her about my sister, too—but as for everyone else, I only knew how they were doing in school, and as much as we talk about how a students' external environment affects the way they feel toward school, I wanted to see what progress I could make in truly getting to know who I was working with. As for Alana, she mentioned that outside school, she usually stays home and reads. She likes fiction of any sort, really, but liked the shorter books because they are easier to get through.

It never gets more in-depth than that, and perhaps it shouldn't. Only visiting the school once a week for a semester doesn't necessarily entitle me to know the behind-the-scenes details of students' lives. The books my group decided to choose for the semester preached the importance of knowing the very things I couldn't know. We read Hopeful Girls, Troubled Boys and White Teachers, Diverse Classrooms,both of which had to do with reaching out and adapting to your students as opposed to waiting for them to catch up with you. As part of that, you had to be respectful of where they'd come from...acquaint yourself with other cultures, so to speak. And when you are as flatly Caucasian as I am, that is a welcome experience! But if the student does not offer up that sort of information voluntarily, trying to unveil those personal details may cause undue stress to the student. Still, it makes me feel good that I am in a position to experience first-hand what teaching in a classroom so different from any I had been a student in myself was like. White Teachers, Diverse Classrooms stressed the point that performing service learning in a range of educational spaces should be required for student-teachers, and I'm on my way.

But back to Alana. I may not know her too well as a person, but she and I definitely had what we've discussed in class as the Flow experience. We climbed to such a good pace while working that when the time came for me to leave the first time, it hardly felt like we had been going for as long as we truly had. She was the first student I had met who preferred to read to herself, except for when it came to poetry. She preferred for me to read poems aloud because the alliterative phrasing and often old English accents was a little confusing to her. We would often stop and dissect the stanzas to make sure she knew what was going on in the poem. I worked with her on my next visit, as well, but our time was cut short because she was called away to attend an advisement session to talk about keeping her on track for a timely graduation. Our that second session, our exploration of poetry continued. Alana had to figure out the differences between Odes, Ballads, Lyrical Poetry, and Narrative. Repetition helped her as did finding examples of each poem so she could get a sense of what it “sounded” like.

Working with someone for two times in a row has been very nice. You are able to put aside the “getting to know you” portion of the class period and jump on in. Maybe I'll see Alana next week, too.

Session 6- Elijah's Sprint Through "The Ides of March"

Another session, another student. Justin was nowhere to be seen, and Kassandra did not feel like working with a tutor today. So, today, I was paired with another student from the quiet sector of the class, Elijah. Elijah looked a lot like Justin, actually, but without the scars. He had the same coke bottle glasses, and also seemed to have a predilection for reading. But instead of books or stories, he was a fan of reading shocker news articles online and evaluating movie trailers on youtube.

I was told that he was a special case this week; Elijah was close to finishing his English program! It had been a long journey for him, and he was ready to get it done. He only had a few days worth of work left, but it was causing him to trip up because the subject was Shakespeare. Old English is hard for anyone to wrap their minds around, so Elijah had been using a “No Fear” copy that offers modern-day translations. I am a fan of Shakespeare, so I was pretty excited, until I realized his Shakespeare standard was being satisfied by a play I had never read, Julius Caesar. This would certainly be interesting. It was the first occasion in which I would be working with a student on something I was relatively unfamiliar with. I mean, I knew the gist, and that proved useful, but I did not know the specifics.

This was an interesting session mostly for the fact that due to my lack of experience with Caesar, I could only help Elijah to think through the questions. He told me he often hated how the questions were worded in ENGL 2020, and that many of them seemed like people were intended to trip over them. I could definitely see what he was saying, but I also saw in Elijah a tendency to never want to be wrong. Even when he had gotten the wrong answer and had figured out that it was wrong, he would still continually try to justify it to either himself or me. I made sure to not just tell Elijah I understood why he chose the answers he did, but also to explain to him why the right answers were so. As we've discussed in my Education classes so far, it is easy for students to fall into a trap of wanting to succeed only to impress others rather than success for the sake of mastery; this made me want to erase any sense of shame Elijah might find in being wrong. I stressed to him that a school setting is the safest place to be wrong, as long as you are open to trying again. It's okay to pursue the right answer and trip a few times along the way! That's how you learn.

But I came to find that Elijah had not read the entirely of Julius Caesar. He said that would be boring, and instead had looked up the movie adaptation of it, which (no surprise there), did not seem to include the script in its entirety. I had to ask Elijah to tell me what he knew about certain characters so he could deduce which answer was most likely on the quizzes. I told him I knew he wanted to get done, but we were probably taking unnecessary time to fill in the blanks because he had not done a thorough reading the first time.

These short cuts were common know-how at PLC. From my experience, it is difficult to convince students that this quick, “utilitarian” approach isn't doing them any justice. It's like one of my professors says: “If you can't talk in specifics about something you've said, you just wind up looking like a a damned fool. You have to remind yourself why you read it in the first place—or, hell, if you actually read it—when you're sitting there trying to talk about 'that one story with that guy in the place.'” I wouldn't want to waste my time doing things at half-capacity, and I doubt Elijah wants to, either. He just has to learn there's another way that he can realistically get things done.

Session 5- Kassandra's "Blah de Blah English Blah"

Today, I returned to PLC, albeit a good ten minutes late. Curry was gone, Justin was working with a tutor who had arrived on time, and where was Kassandra? I spent ten minutes sitting in a stray chair at Mrs. Green's room as she ducked in and out to ask the other students if they had a student who would like to work with someone, and just then was when Kassandra sauntered into the room. Late. Mrs. Green had again kept me updated and told me that Kassandra was often late. When she came to class, it didn't seem like she was actually there.

And there she went, to a computer where she put on earphones and quickly disengaged. Mrs. Green approached her and asked if she'd want to work with me. She said sure. This time, my experience with Kassandra was very different. Through much of the session, she mumbled to herself things that insinuated she could not breeze through it fast enough. “Uh, voice is...ugh, not that. Whatever, B.” I saw a girl who was not focused and who did not see to react when her quiz grades were less than spectacular. She did not try to ask for feedback, but instead, I'd say something like “Hey, let's go back to that last one.”

I asked her if anything was wrong, and I got the cliché response- “I'm just tired.”

But nonetheless, we managed to get a lot of work done. On occasion, I would have to help her eliminate the multiple choice answers and then ask her to choose between a few. That seemed more manageable to her, but on the whole, she did not want to tackle work that involved much reading or critical thinking. It was hard to see the change in her.

At the end of the class, Mrs. Green called me over to her desk and said that she wanted to make sure that I was having a good experience. She said she knew that as much as we are in PLC to help the students, it's very meaningful to us to feel that we are helping a particular student and are able to see the progress. So, she hit me with a question. “Chelsea, I know you've worked with several students now. So, let's make this better for you. Which student would you prefer to work with?”

It came down to a difference between Justin, who I had worked with once, and Kassandra, who I had worked with three times. It was difficult for me to think of rationally instead of emotionally, but I knew that that's what I should do. I thought of Kassandra, who said that she had an exact goal in mind. She wanted to graduate and make her sister proud. But now, she seemed so unreceptive to any sort of help. Still, I wanted to be there for her if she needed me or changed her mind. I knew it was possible that maybe she really just was looking for a feeling of belonging and her grades would begin to stabilize once she got used to the transition. What she was going through again made me think of the book my group and I read, Jocks and Burnouts. It focused heavily on this family-like, peer-focused mentality the “burnouts” foster, and how their grades quickly become of secondary thought. They consider their social experiences to be more realistic than anything school could offer....And when it comes to English 2020, there isn't too much of a counter argument.

Justin, however, seemed that he would honestly welcome my help. He had accomplished a lot in the time that we had worked together, and he seemed eager to work with me again. I did not want the basis of our interactions to be in our shared issues with anxiety, but I remember that when I was in high school, the teachers I appreciated the most were ones that were able to sympathize with and help to alleviate the stress that we incurred as students. And I knew that in a school environment that could only be so personal, it might be good for Justin to be able to interact with someone. I felt that he would feel comfortable enough around me to continue to raise his own questions and tell me what he needed help with.

“I guess...I should go with whomever wants my help. But I enjoy working with both of them for their own reasons. Maybe it would be possible for me to ask them? But I don't want to make them feel like they have to answer to me, like, I'm their second teacher. Should I just work with either of them at their own availability, or?”

“I'll give you time to figure that out,” Mrs. Green responded, “But if you choose, either one of them is going to be very lucky.”

Session 4- Justin's Paxil and Procrastination

I am a fan of new things. And meeting new people isn't too bad, either; but at PLC, not having a student to call your own feels like failure. So, when I walked through the door and didn't see either Kassandra or Curry, I wasn't in the best mood. Kassandra had been simply missing in action for a few days. Curry's story, however, was something Mrs. Green hadn't predicted either. He had apparently put in an application to the Work Corps two months ago and hadn't gone through the trouble of telling anyone. The thing about Work Corp is, there's no G.E.D. necessary. Simply endure a few weeks of vocational training boot camp, then show up and work a job that pays a small piece above minimum wage.

Again, the teacher/savior complex was kicking in full force....I only got to work with him for a DAY. A day. What if all Curry needed was someone to tell him he wasn't too far away from catching up? Or maybe he knew that if he were to tell Mrs. Green about what he was thinking of doing, she would never let him hear the end of it, and he just didn't want to have the spotlight on him in that way. But if he had entirely given up school, why did he let me force him to jump through so many hoops?

This time, I was placed in the quiet sector of the classroom, where the three white students wearing black were typically whispering among themselves. Today, one was missing, and the other two sat with a seat between them. Mrs. Green introduced me to Justin, who sat closest to her desk. As Justin and I shook hands, I noticed that his right arm was coated with red, horizontal lines; he was a cutter. He also had a stooped posture and hair that hung in his eyes. I wouldn't guess he was the sort that would want the attention of a tutor; most students seem to feel that if identified as a good candidate for receiving a tutor, they've been singled out in some negative way. So, I tried to keep the mood light.

I found out he was working on some Gothic Romanticism, and couldn't hold back. “Oh, Poe does some great stuff to his readers. All those ironic ends. It's pretty sick stuff. What do you think?”

Justin lit up “I love dark stuff. Like, it ends and it just feels right. Especially when the crappy people get what's coming to them.”

And then, Justin began to explain to me what his favorite sort of books were. I actively listened, asked some questions, and soon we traced it back to his quizzes on ENGL 2020. When he first pulled up his account, I realized that Justin's course completion was far behind everyone else. His progress was in the early 20%. I asked him if he had been struggling, and he explained that it was not that he had issues answering most of the questions, it was just that he was not easily motivated and that, as Curry had mentioned, these short stories he had to read were not necessarily “short.” I soon found Justin's attention span to be very short. He would sidetrack and ask me questions concerning if I had heard of his favorite bands etc. But I also discovered that he had a fear of failure. He told me that he has panic disorder, and it makes him really work-avoidant at times. Though usually a personal subject, I felt that it was a good time to self-disclose. I, too, have panic disorder, and was able to sympathize with him. I told him that although it may put off anxiety to procrastinate, the moment you are hit with the weight of all the things you haven't done, it's all the worse. So, it's better to do it in small doses.

I would gently remind him “Alright, we've got work to do.” or “Let's talk after we ace this quiz.” And very soon, it seemed to work. He would say “Okay, okay,” give his head a shake, and go on. Something I appreciated about Justin was his honesty when he was faced with something he did not know. He would tell me he had never heard of something and ask me what it was, or would head straight to the internet to look up a tricky word. At one point, I challenged him, and asked him to take a guess at what an allegory was without looking. “Uh, well, I've heard of people making allegations. I don't know if that's linked, but that's like, when the facts are fuzzy on something. So, maybe an allegory is a story you can apply to lots of things. Is that Latin, or something?” And from there, he managed to guess the correct answer from a list of multiple choices. In this way, we created a system of relating things and looking for familiar root words. I encouraged Justin to verbalize his thought process; it seemed to keep him focused.

Justin saw the progress he was making and got excited. The next story we got to, he got restless and just wanted to bolt through it. It was one of my personal favorites, “The City of Omelas.” I promised him that because we were running out of time at this point, I would show him the paragraphs where he could find the answers for his quiz as long as if when we got to the end of the quiz, he would explain to me what the “take-away” was supposed to be. We both kept our ends of the bargain.

An interesting conversation was had when Justin had an issue figuring out what the difference between a theme and moral was. So, I asked him what his favorite movie is. “Fight Club. Definitely Fight Club.”

“Okay, so what is a thing that happens over and over in that movie that sort of sticks with you?”

“Um, well, they don't like establishments that much. So, it's like, man vs. society, right?”

“Yeah! Good one. You could say good vs. evil....Or, uh, evil vs. evil, considering.”

And for our discussion of moral lessons, we deferred to other movies.

The class period flew by, and at the end of it, Mrs. Green gasped when she saw Justin's progress. He had leapt from the 20's into 42%. She told him he should be immensely proud of himself, and she later told me what she had never seen him stay on task for that long at once since she had known him. We were able to relate even his small, side-tracked thoughts into the bigger picture to keep him moving. She also said it was impressive that I was able to link all the distinctly Englishy lessons back to things that already caught his interest. Through Justin and I's discussion, too, I found out that he really wanted to move on to college. He asked me if I would recommend UGA. I told him that I would love to see him there and that I was sure he could get to college if he could only stay focused. Justin thanked me profusely, and I told him that I would be around if ever he wanted to work together again.

Session 3- Curry's "Hood" Meets Checkov

Today when I arrived at the PLC, Mrs. Green waved me over to her desk. We exchanged morning niceties, and then she hit me with the point: “Chelsea, don't be offended if Kassandra doesn't want to work with you today.”

Offended? Try confused. Guilty, even. I felt my knees tremble. I knew that I had pushed her a lot over the past two sessions, but I did so because I knew she could handle it. This was a girl who had a goal for herself, and I thought that maybe I could be of help by showing her how much she could do. So, she's in a school that operates on “performance (just do it and we'll get you out the door).” She wanted to graduate to make her sister proud and be one of the firsts in her family to complete high school. That's ambition enough, but I wanted to see her make the best grades possible so she could be proud of herself, too. But maybe that was none of my business. Maybe I should have given her more space. Had I gone too far? The idea that I may have made “the new kid” uncomfortable made me feel awful.

“Oh,” I managed, “Did she mention something went wrong?”

Mrs. Green leaned toward me in confidence and dropped her voice to a whisper. “She's doing the teenage thing and getting in with her peers, I think. She hasn't been doing much work lately.”

Sure enough, when Kassandra walked in the door, she took a seat between two of her friends. They automatically started cutting up, nudging each other and snickering over some inside joke. Her posture had changed. She slumped back instead of leaning toward her computer, and man, she was avoiding looking at me at all costs. I didn't know what to think; in part, I was happy for her that after a month, she was finally feeling welcome....but I hoped she wouldn't let anything overshadow the reason she was truly at PLC. The very possibility reminded me of my freshman year at college. I had always been studious, always had my eye on the desire to become a damned good teacher, but when new experiences and new friends promised me a rush of adrenaline and a feeling of belonging, I cashed in the rain check I had taken for high school senioritis. I was a burnout, doing my assignments as late as possible, accepting B minuses with a shrug. But when I reached the end of the year, I felt hollow. I wasn't proud of myself, and I desperately wished I could go back and try harder. It's not just that I was disappointed by my mediocre grades, but that I felt like less of a person. I hadn't been engaging in school, so I just felt blank. Uninteresting.

But I shoved away these thoughts. Maybe Kassandra had just realized what I had seen the first time I worked with her—She didn't need a tutor. I told Mrs. Green that I thought it best to offer my help to someone else for the day, and that's how I was paired with Curry. Curry was a man of unidentifiable age. He stood at six foot three or so, a tower in comparison to my five foot six. I remembered him, as well, from the table talk I had observed on my first visit. He had been wearing all black and a gold chain with the word “Hood” hanging from it. Instead of intimidating me, this intrigued me. Curry flaunted a tough guy persona, but for whatever reason, he had come back to school on his own volition. And on my first trip when Mrs. Green had introduced me to the table, I even overheard him say that he would voluntarily work with me. I guess that was a good sign....Unless he was one of those guys that assumed “tutor” meant “answer-giver,” in which case, this was going to be a fun day.

I walked over to Curry and shook his hand. “Hey, how's it going?”

He mumbled an answer. Funny how much less loquacious he was the moment I walked up. As I had done with Kassandra, I avoided automatically talking about work. I asked him how he was doing (“Tired”), what sort of music he was listening to (“Rap and shit”). The two of us wound up going to an otherwise vacant classroom full of computers to get things done. In the minutes it took for the computer to boot up, there was dead silence, accept for the chips he had brought with him from lunch cracking between his teeth.

When ENGL 2020 decided to grace us with its presence, we found out pretty quickly that the day would be reading-intensive. Anton Checkov's story, “The Problem,”--paragraph after paragraph of dense Realism popped up on the screen, causing Curry to grumble “This ain't no short story.” I had to agree. It was a long piece, and Curry was not a fan of reading aloud. I asked him if he'd prefer for the computer to read it to him, but he asked me to do it instead. After each paragraph or two, I would pause and ask him about what was happening in the story. His responses were, at first, vague at best.

“That guy that's talking is pissed at the other guy.”

“Yeah, definitely. Why is he pissed?”

“I dunno. He did something bad or something.”

In that way, I discovered that asking leading questions was more likely to illicit a response. “So, this teenager is outside the door, and his family members are in the library talking about how he stole money from the family. Do you think the boy feels remorseful?”

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“'Cause he knows they pissed.”

We went in circles in this way for a while, but all of a sudden, it seemed to sink in. “He greedy,” Curry said, “And he only watchin' out for hisself, but they're trying to take care of him anyway.”

I told Curry just how right he was, and then we started talking about the story. We talked about the difference between static and dynamic characters, which led us into he and I talking about if we were static or dynamic people. Out came a full conversation, and by the end of it, the long-short story didn't seem so long. When we got to the questions, I again read the question, then the answers. It seemed to help Curry when I echoed the most important parts of the question after reading it. “Which one is not something helpful in identifying theme? Not helpful.” He would hover his mouse over what he thought the answer was until I nodded.

On occasion, Curry would insist he didn't know the answer to something, but I would grow silent until he at least guessed, and then we would narrow it down from there. At the end of the first quiz, it became apparent he actually wanted to do more than pass. When he saw that he had gotten a question or two wrong, and his brow furrowed in frustration. He clicked to the quiz review to see which ones had gotten him. As I explained the answers were wrong, he made eye contact with me, and would then say something like “Oh, that's confusing. Those two answers' the same.” And on the next quiz when some of those missed questions were posed again, he got them right!

But the biggest moment with Curry happened when we got to an essay quiz. Much like Kassandra, he tried to tell me that completing them was not necessary. “Why you wanna do these? I tellin' you I don't have to.”

“Ummm. Because you can? Just one. Come on. You know this story better than most college kids.”

And though he grumbled, Curry placated me by wading through an essay question. I typed out what he dictated to me. What he had to say may have been simply put, but it was definitely correct. The question asked for Curry to explain the evolution of the boy in “A Problem,” and the way we are ultimately supposed to feel toward him as readers. Curry told me that the boy did not care about people around him, and that he wasn't going to ever change himself for the better; that was apparent in the last sentence of the story when he proclaims “Now I see that I am a criminal. Yes, I am a criminal.”

“I know 'cause I feel that way sometimes,” Curry muttered. His ability to sympathize with the character gave me shivers.

At the end of the session, I told Curry that I thought he was a whole lot smarter than he realized and he just had to have the confidence to speak up. He told me matter-of-factly that Mrs. Green thought that he was stupid, and I said that I knew that couldn't be true or she wouldn't be pushing him to keep working, and she certainly wouldn't waste the time of a tutor with him.

“You should tell her you know I'm smart,” he said, and smiled.

My experience with Curry broke down to the basic ideas of education: All students want to feel heard and respected. They do not want to be talked down to, only met at the place where they stand. And from there, if you keep coaxing them forward, they can do awesome things. Curry could explain to you the central themes and ironic end of “A Problem.” How cool is that? And I don't care if he didn't want to write that essay. We submitted it, and it was the first essay he'd ever done at PLC.

Session 2- Kassandra's Two Types of Ink

On my second trip to PLC, I arrived caffeinated and ready to go. My last session had gone better than I could have hoped. I had established what seemed to be a great working relationship with my student with a few broad questions and some good 'ole fashioned scaffolding. I wondered what sort of things Kassandra would be tested on today. Last time, we had focused on Realism, which was well within my comfort zone. This semester, I am taking a class on American Realism, so I was able to answer any questions she may have had—I felt lucky, having heard stories of tutors being placed entirely outside their element, like the girl who was forced to help with Computer Apps on a system she had never used. We joked about how Realism likes to point out just how much the world “sucks” at times, and from there, we leapt into a conversation about what irony is and why it's so hard to actually define.

This time, I walked through the door and walked over to Kassandra on my own. I pulled up a chair and asked her how her weekend was “Good! I went down to Atlanta, chilled. Planning my eighth tattoo.”

“Your eighth?” I said in disbelief.

“Yeah, I've got 'em everywhere.”

We talked about tattoos for another minute or so, and I came to the realization that for Kassandra, getting new ink was a way not just to decorate herself, but to memorialize things. She had her own way of telling stories.

Then, it was back to business. Of our work that day, the story that stuck out the most was one about a man who loses an important document on the ledge of his apartment building “The Contents of a Dead Man's Pockets.” He, a workaholic, climbs out the window to get it, and the next few minutes are stretched into pages upon pages as the man realizes his potential mortality and makes it back through the window a changed man. This story frustrated Kassandra to no end. She didn't see what the point was in dragging out a few simple events. Most of the prose was compound-complex sentences, too, which would have been confusing for anyone to follow. I explained that this was stream of consciousness, and that if she felt overwhelmed, the author had succeeded.

Something else we found helpful was in making a list of hard-to-remember words. At the end of the session, I asked her a few of them, and Kassandra was able to define most. In first drilling them, we attempted to link new words to things she knew or things she may have heard. “Have you ever heard, like, an accident on the news called a 'catastrophic event'? They're talking about a horrible disaster. You know how I remember this? I had a cat named 'Tastrophe....She died.” In this way, Kassandra found it easier to bring things to recall; and introducing new words as already vaguely familiar to her seemed to put Kassandra at ease. This way, she did not have to continually admit how much of the curriculum was new to her. When a word came up on a quiz we had gone over she'd lean toward the computer. “Oh, that's the one that's strong hatred, right? I remember.”

Today, Kassandra had to tackle a few essay questions, too. Putting what she knew about a story into words was not something that appealed to her. “She doesn't check these, anyway,” she said.

“So, you only want to try if it's for a grade?”

“No....”

“Let's just do one and I'll leave you alone.”

I broke apart one question into several parts. Kassandra passed each part of what she wanted to write by me before she typed it out, again not wanting to be wrong. She'd then look back at what she had written and reword it until it didn't sound “awkward.” We talked about transitional words and making what would be disjointed sentences flow together as a paragraph. In the same way that Kassandra had mentioned multi-clausal sentences confused her, she seemed to have an issue with subject-verb agreement when the sentence got to a certain length. When she made a grammatical error, I would read back that part of what she had written with emphasis. “What should go there?” More times than not, she was able to identify the error. When she finished typing, Kassandra read the entire thing aloud.

“That's solid work, right there. Good job!” I smiled. I have noticed that when Kassandra speaks, it is not always grammatically sound, but I am hoping that is something we will be able to improve with time. I don't care if those essays aren't required. It encouraged Kassandra to truly think about what she was trying to express, and I wish PLC would make them a constant presence in the curriculum. For the PLC student that wants to move on to college or tech school, how are they going to look their first college paper in the face without feeling completely overwhelmed?

Session 1- Kassandra's Kicking Motivation

I have never been much of a morning person, but Mrs. Green's promise had me launching out of bed in the morning to slap my alarm off. I embraced a morning workout, ate a balanced breakfast (“breakfast” usually isn't in my vocabulary), and made sure I looked put together before walking out the door. This Wednesday was about confidence. If I didn't walk into that building feeling sure of my abilities, who was I to force my help on someone who was unsure of theirs?

I walked through the doors ten minutes before the next class started. Mrs. Green waved me over to her desk. “So, I've got a student for you.” She wrote a name on a post-it note and handed it to me. “Kassandra. She needs help with 10^th Grade lit.” It was explained to me that this girl was the new girl I had seen cowering by the door last week. She had sat in on the table talk, too, but had been too timid to contribute to the conversation. Instead, she threw in some well-placed snickers at her classmates' antics and stretched out across a chair. Her clothes were form-fitting, and on her wrist, I saw what looked to be an amateur tattoo of a hibiscus flower. She was only fifteen, but I was sure she had a story, and I was wondering how she and I would hit it off.

When Kassandra walked in the door that day, Mrs. Green allowed her to sit down and get comfortable before she approached her at her computer and introduced me. “Hey, Kassandra? This is Chelsea. She's from UGA and knows her stuff. She's gonna make sure you get caught up, all right?”

Kassandra smiled at the floor instead of me. “All right.”

I took a seat next to Kassandra. We shook hands and smiled, and then I just began talking to her about everyday things. I told her a bit about myself, about what I like to do in my spare time. She asked me if UGA was as awesome as everyone says and I told her that from my experience, it's not too shabby. I asked her about what sort of things that piqued her interest, what her favorite music was. For several minutes it was all laughter and ice breakers. And then I got down to business. “Okay, so you know that as a complete and total English nerd, I have to ask- What are your feelings toward English? Do you like it, or...?”

“I mean, I don't hate it or anything. I read sometimes.” Kassandra went on to tell me that everyone in her house speaks Spanish constantly, and it's only between she and her sister that her vocabulary gets put to the test. She told me more about her sister; she is nineteen and has a son, but the pair was abandoned by the child's father. The sister's only choice was to take low-paying jobs to survive, and she regrets the choices she has made. “She told me that one of us has to finish high school, and because, you know, she never did, it's me.” She cited her sister as her main source of motivation, stating “She'd kick my ass if I gave up.”

And then, we got started. At first, Kassandra asked me to read the passages aloud, and then she volunteered to take turns with me. Every time she reached a word she was uncertain of, she'd pause and give pronunciation her best shot, only with an upward lilt to suggest it was a question. “Close,” or “That's what it looks like, but” I'd say, before correcting her. Sometimes when I could tell she wasn't stringing together what she was reading, I'd wait until the end of the paragraph, then say “So, tell me what those guys are up to.”And in that fashion, we'd piece together the story until she could answer any questions about it. Soon, Kassandra was asking me questions, mostly “What's that word mean?” We wound up laughing about how difficult a certain story was because many of the words were in French. We put our best accents on and read the dialogue with gusto.

What struck me most about Kassandra was how determined she seemed to be to get work done. The moment a story came up that she had yet to read, she'd open up a new window and dive in. I had seen other students the last time I was at PLC head straight toward online summaries or use the “find” tool to pinpoint the answer to specific questions without actually reading the passage. I knew Kassandra must have become aware of this, too but she kept to a stringent, no shortcuts policy. She also didn't turn to me for easy answers. She was perfectly content to talk it out until the answer struck her. Every so often, she would get fed up but just how arduous the material was, and I would just meet her grumbles with ones of my own. “I know they don't make it too riveting, but you're doing good work.” I also told her that it gets better in college, which she'd see for herself.

At the end of the session, she thanked me for helping her out. We had completed a good number of quizzes, and she had made A's or B's on every one. Kassandra was largely self-motivated; and although she seemed to need a hand with some basic ESL comprehension, I knew her drive would make any tutor obsolete in a month or so. “You know what you want and you're going for it,” I said, “That's awesome. I respect that.”

“Yeah, I am. I'm gonna graduate,” she quipped back. Kassandra had a plan, and she took pride in it.

The Gates Open

Today was my first day at the PLC, and may I say that simply walking through the doors caused the knots in my stomach to untie themselves. I had a lot banking on this morning. It was an experience I had no frame of reference for, only the handouts and hints that the first day of Dr. Smagorinsky's class had supplied along with a success story from the one girl in class who had tutored at the PLC a semester prior. But instead of nervousness upon signing in at the reception desk, I was washed clean with relief. Due to an email that had gotten lost in the first-week shuffle of the semester, I had not been able to start tutoring the week prior. Returning to class to hear my classmates talk about dispelling their own first day jitters was torture. They spoke about kids who had natural curiosity, whose potential they thought they could unlock...oh, a little something called English 2020, a computer program that sounded like it could dispel the possibility of either of those things.

What is PLC? It's a tiny school—one of three in the county—and it is unlike the traditional high school. Meant to recapture the kids who didn't fare well in your basic high school setting, it caters to people ages sixteen through twenty who have at least one year of high school under their belts. PLC stands for Performance Learning Center; it focuses on the completion of mostly online programs which are done at the students' own pace. Should they not show up for a day, it's no hassle to anyone but themselves, and they set the pace for how quickly they finish each course. Should they show up ready to work every day, there is nothing stopping them from graduating sooner than possible from your average high school.

Sounds like a plain n' simple model, doesn't it? But this PLC gave me pause...because prior to LLED, “PLC” was a favorite phrase in my vocabulary, but with a very different definition. I have focused on hip hop culture as a means of self-expression. I am enthralled by the idea of “spitting” words relevant to our everyday lives, words that shed light on social issues and vent the frustrations and beautiful little moments of urban life. Spoken word poetry is my favorite facet of hip hop, and in the spoken word community, we use PLC as an acronym, too. It stands for “Participatory Learning Community.” In this other PLC, each poet is encouraged to better his or her self and ultimately achieve literacy in a safe, supportive setting. Writers discuss a “read and feed” tactic in which everyone is keyed into delivering their own pieces and then providing feedback on the pieces of others. Everyone is given respect, and students are intended to act a co-teachers...an awesome leap for students who want some sense of authority and teachers who refuse to be staunchly authoritarian!

In a participatory learning community, there is no way to sit back and passively learn. If you refuse to chip in, your colleagues suffer. It's about making students feel empowered and heard. It aims to make all of students' experiences feel valid, and the recognition of students' unique way of communicating as an art in itself. It does not force colloquialisms down students' throats or tell them they are “wrong.” It is a new way of introducing Language Arts that focuses on the ways people actually USE language in addition to traditional English studies. I am so passionate about THAT PLC, because I've felt it. I am familiar with what it is like to hear an audience snapping and humming in agreement to the thoughts that you've written down. It is a feeling worth chasing down time and time again. I know I want to integrate the functions of THAT PLC from the moment I am given charge over a classroom. But I have to admit that given my bias, my first day at THIS PLC made me saddened that the acronym had two meanings.

When I first walked into the school, Mrs. Mimi, our supervisor, showed me around the compact campus. We walked down a stout hallway with classrooms anchored on either side by classrooms full of computers. Bright posters and examples of student work hung on the walls. In the hall, as students returned from lunch, teachers mingled with them, referring to every student by name and personably ushering them to class. A police officer lingered at either end of the hall, but despite the suggestion that control was necessary, students held playful exchanges outside the classrooms. A girl rode by on piggyback, a boy muttered back something about “fashion discrimi-hatin'” after he was asked to pull his pants up. But when I entered a classroom, the mood shifted. I saw students plugging into their own computers, logging into the English 2020 program I had heard only bad things about. I could hear the bass boom of music coming out of several pairs of headphones, and every few minutes, someone seemed to be tinkering with a phone in their lap.

On one side of the class room, three white kids lined the computers against the wall, all dressed in black. They whispered between themselves. As I passed behind them, I caught the smell of smoke. The rest of the class was African American, save a new Latina girl who sheepishly selected the computer closest to the door. Most students called to each other from across the room; they oozed confidence and a nonchalance, despite the fact they were in class. All of the students were withdrawn once the period started, however, and that for me was a new thing. In my high school experience, English classes were all about being plugged in with each other. We held conversations and engaged with our teacher. Here, it seemed the teacher's main function was to remind students to put away their phones, lower their music, stay on task. And what was going on on their computer screens? Multiple choice questions and lots of 'em.

Performance learning seems to be exactly what we student-teachers complain about when we talk about stringent standard testing. Tests, tests, and more tests do not indicate that meaningful learning has taken place! It causes students to stress over “what English 2020 is looking for” as opposed to what sparks their interest. And while I can see the allure of retreating to an online program—that feeling of independence and the reduction of teacherly nagging—where's the fun in that? These are kids who were often bored by what their old high schools had to offer, who perhaps don't see the use in taking English, and here we are making it feel more and more like something they have to satisfy, when English is truly something that can satisfy them

But we'll put my English 2020 rant on the back-burner, because I did not get the pleasure of its acquaintance today. Instead, I met Mrs. Green, a young English teacher who told me she's been at the PLC for six years. The wall behind her desk showed the fruits of her dedication; it was coated with thank you notes and signed posters. “You're gonna want to save 'em all,” she told me after class, referring to her students, “and you won't always succeed. But the desire to has kept me here.” Throughout the class, she wandered behind the students with a light-footed step. She asked them how they were doing and if they had any questions, and after a short listen, it became obvious that she knew exactly where each student was in the course. “Melissa, how are you liking Jack London? Depressing stuff, huh?” she asked one girl. “Brenard, I need you to finish up those topic questions on theme today, alright? Look back at your notes if you need some help.” The kids responded to her just as conversationally, but with a dash of added respect. It made me think there was something to be said about the book my group has begun to read, Jocks and Burnouts. The book is all about how you get out of your students what you put in. If your students authentically believe that you think they are beyond hope, you'll get an unmotivated student. Engage them and expect them to do what is asked, and you'll get a mumble or two, maybe, but they'll ultimately get back to what they were doing. Mrs. Green seemed well-liked to a fault, too. Twice in the time I was there, she had stray students knock on her door and come in to chat.

“Where are you supposed to be right now?” she'd ask.

“Oh, across the hall. Stuff's boring. I miss you.”

Today, all the students open to tutors were paired up in another classroom. So, Mrs. Green asked me if I wouldn't mind observing a “table talk” instead. I nodded, and soon kids were shuffling into place at a table situated in the center of the room (Believe it or not, she had to tell some students twice to pause English 2020). Six students gathered around. They were the last to receive this lecture. Mrs. Green led a talk about mood versus tone and how one begets the other. She emphasized how the subject matter may be the same, but the stance the writer takes in discussing it impacts what we as readers feel. To exemplify this, Mrs. Green challenged students to compare how Michael Jackson's “Man in the Mirror” and a Tupac song approached the topic of social reform.

The kids lit up—she was using music, something native to their lives outside of school. When asked to read MJ's lyrics, one student snickered “Can I sing it?” “Hey, whatever floats your boat,” Mrs. Green grinned. The kids were eager to offer commentary, but at the same time, they were hesitant to answer any posed questions. It seemed to stem from the fear they'd be wrong in front of their peers, and in an environment when students are not working on the same material with their classmates, I'd imagine this anxiety goes undiffused. Kids nudged each other, hinting that they should volunteer. The kids would sheepishly shake their heads or laugh it off. “I dunno, ask Curry. Kassandra, you wanna go?” But every answer was met with positive reinforcement from Mrs. Green, right or wrong. “Yeah, Antoine. Tone definitely has something to do with what words to writer picks. What else can you tell me?” Or, to get the students moving, Mrs. Green would simply ask that they go up to the board. “So, mood and tone work together, right? Would someone mind drawing a Venn diagram for me?”

I respected the effort she was taking to reach her students. With the connection she made to everyday culture, no one dare raise a hand to ask “When am I gonna use this stuff, anyway?” They realized that these were the sort of thoughts they entertained while kicking back with their friends. These were the sort of decisions made before they put new music on their mp3 players. As the students slumped in their chairs, nodding, I looked at the students and wondered who I'd be paired with. I wanted someone who didn't see the spark in themselves, someone with a hard shell, someone who would challenge me as much as I would challenge them.

That day before I left PLC, I thanked Mrs. Green. “We'll have you with someone next week,” she said, “Promise.”