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.