The Value and Purpose Behind Community Engagement
An Analysis through Student Tutoring
My first honors experience occurred throughout Spring semester 2013 and had three components: Making Sense of Language Arts, Bearcat Buddies, and peer tutoring.
Making Sense of Language Arts is a program that pairs a tutor with a kindergartener at Rothenberg Academy, in Cincinnati for one hour every week. The students that are educated through the program are selected based on certain communication difficulties they exhibit. The uniqueness of this program is in its methodology of teaching. The program uses sensory techniques, such as wide gestures and voice articulation, to teach basic letters, words, and word-picture associations to the students. Although not a terribly well-known, the sensory methods the program uses is one of the newest and most fresh systems rising in elementary grade school education today.
The second program I was involved in, Bearcat Buddies, is much more popular among students at UC. The program is affiliated with a group of inner-city schools in Cincinnati and sends tutors to work one-on-one with certain selected grade school students on math or reading. As part of the program, I was sent to Roll Hill Academy, where I tutored two 3rd grade students, for half an hour per week individually. I was assigned to teach them reading in preparation for the Ohio Achievement Assessment (OAA) that they took in the spring.
Lastly, I was also involved in a private initiative I arranged with a fellow collegiate classmate in my Gen. Chemistry class who needed help with the course matter. I tutored him anywhere from 3 to 6 hours every week, depending on his needs with the subject material that we were studying in class that week.
Making Sense of Language Arts is a program that pairs a tutor with a kindergartener at Rothenberg Academy, in Cincinnati for one hour every week. The students that are educated through the program are selected based on certain communication difficulties they exhibit. The uniqueness of this program is in its methodology of teaching. The program uses sensory techniques, such as wide gestures and voice articulation, to teach basic letters, words, and word-picture associations to the students. Although not a terribly well-known, the sensory methods the program uses is one of the newest and most fresh systems rising in elementary grade school education today.
The second program I was involved in, Bearcat Buddies, is much more popular among students at UC. The program is affiliated with a group of inner-city schools in Cincinnati and sends tutors to work one-on-one with certain selected grade school students on math or reading. As part of the program, I was sent to Roll Hill Academy, where I tutored two 3rd grade students, for half an hour per week individually. I was assigned to teach them reading in preparation for the Ohio Achievement Assessment (OAA) that they took in the spring.
Lastly, I was also involved in a private initiative I arranged with a fellow collegiate classmate in my Gen. Chemistry class who needed help with the course matter. I tutored him anywhere from 3 to 6 hours every week, depending on his needs with the subject material that we were studying in class that week.
Experiential Learning proposal: Community Engagement
My experience was a self-designed experience under the theme of Community Engagement. I am linking my proposal for this experience below, which explains in extensive detail, my three projects and my motivations and purposes behind pursuing these projects.
revision_3-__bearcat_buddies_honors_experience_proposal.docx | |
File Size: | 38 kb |
File Type: | docx |
Completing the Experience
I completed the experience in 15 weeks during Spring semester 2013.
Making Sense of Language ArtsThis is a photograph of myself with my fellow tutors, which included many experienced adult mentors as well as three college student peers. The student I worked with in this program was a kindergartener and was, by far, my favorite out of all of my students. He was always enthusiastic to learn and was incredibly quick on uptake.
Below, I have linked a sample page from the packet I would work from each week. Every week focused on one letter. The student would learn to write the letter, associate it with a word that began with that letter, and then associate that word with a picture. The letter "b" is the first letter I helped him learn. The student first needs to trace the letter with his finger, then draw it in the air, all the while continuously repeating, out loud, the sound that the letter makes.
Research on sensory techniques shows that music, touch, sound, and extensive reinforcement of not only letters and words, but also meaning and association of meaning with a story or greater purpose, is a skill that, if learned early in a child's life, will propel him much further in reading comprehension that another student of his age who learns only to read but not to associate the reading with his own perceptions of the real world around him (Making Sense of Language Arts). This is why the methodology used in this program is so revolutionary; when the child is barely 5 years old, he is already learning "read to learn" rather than "learn to read" which is what is traditionally taught at his age.
Cited: http://www.makingsenseoflanguagearts.com/index.html Private Peer tutoringThe last facet of my experience was an extraordinarily enriching one. I learned quite a lot from it--probably as much as my student did. I was recommended to tutor him by my Chemistry professor, when he approached her asking for help with the subject matter. It became a routine for us to work on whatever my student felt he needed to work on, and since I was also in the same class, I got as much review as he did. In fact, because I was tutoring him, together we did many more Chemistry problems in preparation for midterms than I would ever have done if I had been studying on my own.
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Bearcat BuddiesThis is a photograph of myself with Ms. Brown, who was one of the main organizers of Roll Hill Academy's Bearcat Buddies curriculum. I had two 3rd grader students with this program, who were more difficult to handle than my kindergartener with the "Making Sense of Language Arts" program. My experience with both these students led to my research on the behavior of children in association with location, parent income status, and upbringing: "The quality and stability of a child's human relationships in the early years lay the foundation for a wide range of later developmental outcomes that really matter--self-confidence and sound mental health, motivation to learn, achievement in school and later in life" (Shonkoff, et al.). While I do not know the specific nature of my students' lives outside of school, it is not difficult to identify the connection between the lack of motivation that one of them exhibited toward her lessons and the research proven above. She also had a very lacking vocabulary for her age level that could possibly have risen from a lack of exposure to written material at a young age, most likely a result of the illiteracy in the family. Nevertheless, on the good days, both my students had incredible stories to tell, about their winter holidays or spring break, and I felt very touched that they considered me to be close enough to their level as a friend, to share such stories with me, instead of the impersonal teacher-student relationship I feared.
Cited: http://www.google.com/urlsa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fdevelopingchild.harvard.edu%2Findex.php%2Fdownload_file%2F%2Fview%2F587%2F&ei=GfmNUPj1PImoyAHLvYCICA&usg=AFQjCNGpsAAmgDRcmOjG2rQTbkx7K9F_XA&sig2=fG7SQrq-8uyP4L4fH2lF-A The photographs below show the curriculum logs I filled out for my two 3rd grade students. |
Immediate Reflection: What did I learn?
Because of the multifaceted nature of my experience, I gained a very wide variety of insights into Community Engagement. I learned new techniques to help enhance the language comprehension and letter/word association of my kindergartener. I learned to appreciate the equality that I held with my 3rd graders--the understanding that they are no different than I in intelligence but only in circumstance and thus it is my duty to help them realize a better path for their future. Finally, I learned that by teaching someone else, I myself can learn as much as my student.
Dissemination: My life through Learning: The Value and Purpose Behind Community Engagement
For my dissemination, I presented my experience in front of the Center for Community Engagement (CCE) and some members of Grad Cincinnati, as well as two advisers from the University Honors program. In this presentation, I focused on my outlook on community engagement as well as some improvements that CCE could help with, to make these tutoring programs more effective as well as accessible to a wider audience. The PowerPoint presentation I have linked below is a brief, succinct outline of my presentation and displays some of these potential improvements that I suggested.
dissemination_ppt.pptx | |
File Size: | 460 kb |
File Type: | pptx |
Reflection
Below is my reflective essay that I wrote recently, about a month after I completed my experience. It showcases all that I have learned from the experience about community engagement, both on technical terms and on a broader level. Let it serve as a conclusion to this experience. Needless to say, I will definitely continue with student tutoring in the future as I thoroughly enjoyed working with my students, through both the triumphs as well as the hardships.