New experiences at the PLC 2/1

I visited the PLC for my second tutoring session with Tangela this semester on Wednesday February 1st. It was sad when I first walked in because she told me that she had sprained her ankle over the weekend! She said she was not in much pain, just a little uncomfortable. When I sat down she said she was working on some EOCT practice for her Economics class. Her teacher had set up a sort of flashcard review online. It was a mixture of asking a question or listing a term and then Tangela would try to answer it aloud to me and then we would click to see the answer. We worked on this for the duration of our time together. I thought that the practice Mr. Piazza developed for the students was great. Tangela thought that it was very helpful to have it in a sort of flashcard form. She knew about half of the terms. When she did not know a term, I would help her break the question down word by word. I would try to define the words or explain things that I thought she may understand better. Sometimes, she was then able to understand the question. If she did not know the answer then I would have her repeat the question and answer to me two times each to sort of solidify it in her head. I asked her before I left if she thought she learned some new definitions and if she thought the program was good and she said yes that she wanted to do it again the next week! An exciting thing for me about being in the PLC from 12:45-1:45 is that I am in the classroom for advisement. At first, I was a little upset because I thought it would not be beneficial for me to sit in on the class's advisement, but I was wrong! It was really interesting to observe the lesson on brainstorming. The class played a little game that involved brainstorming and they all talked together about the benefits of brainstorming ideas in many facets of life. Almost all of the class participated in the discussion which was great! Mr. Piazza seems like a great teacher and a really nice guy. He is great with the kids and I think that it was such a blessing to be in his class. He is very patient and understanding which is sometimes hard to be with the students. I love seeing him interact with the students and will continue to learn from him. Overall, I think that this was a great day at the PLC and I look forward to tutoring next week at my happy place! :)

Let's do this... 1/25

I was so excited and anxious to start working with Tangela at the PLC again! I was a little bit nervous, because I was going to be working in a new room and with a new teacher. The teacher's name is Mr. Piazza and it is in the downstairs part of the building. When I walked in, Mr. Piazza and Tangela both seemed excited to see me. I was running a little bit late (by about 3 minutes) and when I walked in Tangela said, "I was just startin' to think you weren't comin'!" I laughed and walked toward her seat. Mr. Piazza got a chair for me and we started to work on the website "USA Test Prep". Tangela had forgotten her username and password, so it took us a little while to get set up. Mr. Piazza was very helpful and seemed very nice, which made me so happy! After we got logged in, we decided that beause the EOCT for Economics is coming up in about a month we would work on that first. There was an option to take a test first to help the program know which questions would help the student, and which questions the student already knows. Sadly, it did not seem like Tangela knew many questions on the practice test at all. I have no taken Economics since I was a junior in high school, so it was no walk in the park for me either! I started trying to explain some of the terms and concepts to Tangela. What usually works best is when I take the problem we are looking at and change it so that it is more simple or has more familiar words to get her started. Then I will talk her through eliminating me of the answers. Finally, I will ask her to choose what she thinks is the best answer and then explain to me why she is choosing that one. If there were any concepts I was unaware of at all, I wrote them down so that we can be sure to go over them next time. It was a good first day back overall! It was cut short though because of a fire drill. It was interesting and I was excited to see how procedures worked. There was no warning, but Mr. Piazza said we "would be interrupted" about 1:30 and to be prepared to stop working. It went pretty smoothly, and we excited the building pretty quickly. The fire drill lasted a little while because apparently a fire marshal was there to inspect something. After the drill, I was about to leave when I noticed another tutor leaving from the same class. It seemed like she may have just started so I introduced myself and started talking to her. She said that it was her first week, and was doing the tutoring for a CHFD class. She asked me a few questions, and I was thankful that I had experienced some of the same things the previous semester, so I was able to help her out! I walked to my car and felt so happy that I was tutoring again at the PLC, my happy place. :)

Back at the PLC!!!

My name is Hannah and this is my first time ever blogging! I am excited to blog about my time at the PLC! I was a tutor at Classic City High School last semester. I did not go with a class, but I heard about this unique environment and wanted to check it out. My experience was beyond amazing, and I am glad that I am able to continue tutoring there this semester. Maybe a short description of the experience I had last semester would be helpful... When I originally started tutoring I was assigned to a literature class and to a certain student, but he ended up being absent often and I started working with one girl almost every day named Tangela. At first, I think she was skeptical. She wondered why I wanted to come and tutor when I was not doing it for a class or anything. She was nice and polite, but I definitely felt shut out, and like she did not want much to do with me. After about 3 weeks of tutoring I felt lke we were making progress. She seemed to be doing much better in literature and began asking questions about my life and telling me some about hers. I could hardly contain my excitement! Our relationship continued to grow for the entire semester and we became so close. Tangela is an extremely hard worker, with an extremely positive attitude. She second guesses herself sometimes, but she is a very bright girl. Because I hope to teach high school English, I wanted to tutor this semester in a Literature class again. However, Mrs. Mimi (the graduation coach), encouraged me to instead help Tangela again in her Economics class, and during her advisement time we could work on EOCT and GHSGT practice. I knew this was an offer I could not refuse. :) I would be able to work with Tangela again and hopefully help her on her way to passing her big tests! This is sort of the background info you need to know to start off reading my blog about my experiences at the PLC this semester! Enjoy! :)