Helping Others Helps Me

Our mailman asked me to help his daughter with math as she was struggling.  He heard I was a math teacher from his friend who had a son in my class several years ago.  Although I don't usually tutor, my mailman is the best and there is almost nothing I wouldn't do for him so of course I said yes.

This happened to be a great week to start, since school were closed, Jill had lots of free time and it just so happened I didn't have a lot to do this week either so we met on Monday.  My mailman and his daughter walked in with the biggest box of cookies I have ever seen and sure enough, they were my favorite cookies.  I told them not to bring anything again as they were friends and friends don't need gifts from friends.

Jill and I worked for about an hour and it was obvious from her facial expressions that she was catching on and feeling really good about the things we were going over.  She even seemed to enjoy the math.  When she left we made plans for two more sessions this week.  I had a fight with her dad when he wanted to pay me.  Friends don't take money from friends and I only help people I like.

My mailman is back to work so Jill has been having her mom bring her over.  Today mom walked in with a huge bag of fruit.  More important was the way Jill was able to write a geometry proof when she left and her new confidence.  On Monday she just wanted to pass.  Today she wants honor status in math.  I assured her we will keep working until she gets this on the regents.

Working with Jill reminded me of how much I loved teaching and how much I loved working with students who needed me.  It felt good to give and it felt great to get the hug when she left. 

A Benefit Of Being At A Very Big School

Mrs. White went to see Mr. AP because her daughter was struggling in math. Little White was one of the kids moved (without parental or child consultation) from a four term class to a two term class. Mrs. White wanted Little White moved back. Mr. AP said "No. Just go to tutoring and Little will get the help she needs. What period does Little have lunch?" Little responded, "Period 9." "Oh,", responded Mr. AP, "there is no tutoring period 9. She will have to find help somewhere else. Thank you for coming in."

Mrs. White and Little left, walked the halls and wondered where they would find this extra help they were promised.

Tutoring

No matter what anyone says, there is no viable tutoring at Packemin HS. The school is just too big and the day is too long. The kids need the extra help so we often rely on peer tutoring.

I asked my calculus classes if they were free period nine and, if so, would they be willing to spend a day or two a week helping out in that class. I explained that the students were really weak and showed the class they type of problems we were working on. One boy said "boy,are they stupid." I jumped right in and corrected his language. I explained that just because kids were having trouble now does not mean they are stupid. I told him what he said was mean and uncalled for. I wanted my class to know that I didn't want anyone who felt like that to volunteer. Most of the kids were appalled by his words and the list I passed around looking for volunteers quickly filled up.

The most common question anyone asked me was "Do we have to tutor?" Of course, I said, "No, this is totally voluntary. Even if you sign up, and something comes up and you cannot make it, that is fine. You are doing me and my class a huge favor but never forget, you come first." The kids were shocked. The science department requires AP kids to tutor. The English teacher they had the previous year required them to tutor as well. I remember a geometry student, in desperate need of tutoring, could not meet with me because of her obligation to tutor someone for the English regents. I again emphasized that they were students first and their needs would always come first. I promised, as a reward, I would write them really great college recommendations and I would never be too busy to help them, even if it meant coming in at 6 in the morning or staying as late as necessary when my day ended.

Some kids had class the period I needed volunteers and wanted to know what other periods they could tutor. I just marked my geometry kids second exam. I am definitely going to pair some of these kids up with the calculus students.

Wow, I just came up with another goal for myself. But, I am sure it is one I would have missed giving to my AP.

Is This Really Tutoring?

The school is really trying to provide regents tutoring but, when 70+ kids show up for extra help, I wonder how much extra help they can really be given. That is the number of kids I've heard that are showing up for our Saturday tutorials. One teacher and over 70 kids just does not amount to a tutoring program. It does provide extra lessons, but that is all.

Many, many years ago, I opened my big mouth and got a homework helper program started. But, because of my big mouth, I also got stuck working it. We had a few hundred kids showing up twice a week. We filled the cafeteria. But, I recruited tutors and it worked! The kids got individual help and many succeeded. One of the plus parts of the program was that kids who came for math help ended up staying on and tutoring English or history or even stayed on and tutored the math they had just learned to do. It was exhausting but it was rewarding.

The geometry regents in June 16. The large group setting is not working for most of my students. I promised to meet with them the Saturday before the regents. True, I have 68 kids on register, but I know they won't all show up. But, at least it is me with my own kids, no one else. We'll meet at 10 and stay until we run out of steam. (I am giving up a weekend trip to Florida for this.) They'll pass this exam or not, but it won't be from lack of effort.

You Can't Get Water From A Stone

You can't get water from a stone and you can't get any more work out of a teacher by requiring them to go to that G-d awful library five days a week to tutor.

Library tutoring sucks! There are too many kids to give any of them meaningful instruction. Wednesday, I had twelve waiting when I arrived at my assignment. The kids were a mixed group, geometry kids, honor, regular and repeaters, math B kids and integrated algebra kids. No one could get more than one or two questions answered. One poor kid (a regular) missed a day of school and wanted me to teach him some stuff about statistics. There was no way I could do that.

Now, I never mind tutoring kids outside the library. Most of my colleagues feel the same way. On almost any period, you will find the halls lined up with kids and teachers working away. The difference between the library tutoring and the hall tutoring is that we help the kids we want to help, the kids in our classes and we can give them the individual help they need and cannot get in the library. We don't mind giving our time as we only are going to the library 2 or 3 times a week.

Now there is talk of changing our tutoring to a five days schedule. That means, our hours are regulated and our free time is cut to nothing. I don't know if the admins can do this, I am not part of the exec board anymore. I know I won't put in for tutoring if this occurs. I'm going to take a nice, easy hall patrol assignment instead. (Since I have had tutoring and have seniority,this should not be a problem.) The admin might be able to win this battle and make us (even me) tutor in the library daily, but they will lose in the long run. All that extra help, the hallway help, the help that really helps will dry up. The admins will look good on paper but not where it counts.

A Good Way To Spend A Saturday Morning

Spending time outside of school tutoring my students is nothing new to me. It is something I have always done since my first days teaching. My colleague friends always did it to and we never thought twice about the number of hours we spent doing it. Our classrooms were always open early in the morning and they were filled with kids looking for extra help. We held review sessions during regents week and the kids piled in also. It never occurred to any of us that this was something we should not be doing. It wasn't even until I started at my present school that I learned teachers could actually get paid for staying extra to do this.

Helping my students is a big part of who I am. Maybe its my insecurity, my belief that if I was better at my job, they would be doing better in class. I don't know. I just know it is what I do. Years ago, before we had to worry about consequences of getting too close to students, I used to hold review sessions in my basement. I would take my kid's big blackboard, we sat around the basement floor and worked for hours. My own kids grew up watching my students learn. It is too dangerous to do this now so all my tutoring is confined to school. Over the years, I've worked with them on soccer fields, in gyms and in lunchrooms.

This semester I have no regents classes but a few weeks ago it occurred to me that no tutoring was being offered for the Math B regents. Thank you Mayor Bloomberg for cutting our budget so no funds are available for this. I started getting nervous. Although these kids are not mine now, about 60 of them were mine last year for the first two-thirds of the term. They weren't the strongest math students and I wondered how they would do without extra help. So, what is a nut like me to do? I held a regents review session this morning. Most of the kids are on the senior trip this weekend (a stupid weekend for this since it is right before regents exams and every senior must take at least one exam) and I did announce this at the last minute, but I had a decent turn out. The kids showed up at 10:00 AM (some were there much earlier) full of questions and topics to be clarified. I went over everything they asked and taught them some "legal cheating" (ways to beat the system using the graphing calculator). All in all, it was a great morning. It got my adrenaline going and I feel ready to come home and conquer the world.

I don't do per session. If money was offered, I would have left the tutoring to others. The paltry amount I would receive could not compensate my weekend of lost time. Doing what I did today is what works for me. The reward I got from these kids as they left the room is better than any paycheck I will ever receive. I intend to do the same thing for the kids in my geometry classes who take the regents in June.

Many years ago, when I first started in my present school, a veteran teacher said, "In this school, we don't tutor students." I answered, "This teacher does." That teacher is long gone. This teacher will be gone soon. I'm hoping the new crop of teachers will be more like this than that.

Worth While

Cooper is a young man I met during my C-6 tutoring assignment. He needed to pass the regents in math B to pass the course. He came in with a well used regents book and lots of questions which showed how hard he was working.

The last day of school Cooper was the only one who showed up for tutoring. I was able to really help him that day and showed him some tricks on the graphing calculator that would help him on the regents. Since he didn't own one of these calculators, I gave him mine, to practice and to study with. Although I only learned his name five minutes earlier, I had no doubt that he would study and return the calculator to me.

I was correct on both counts. Cooper was waiting for me after the regents to hand me the calculator. He was in the street because someone told him I had gone for lunch and he did not want to miss me. And, Cooper passed the exam. He didn't just squeak by, he got a 76. He was thrilled when I called to give him the news.

I know I do more than my fair share of bitching and complaining about those C-6 assignments, but a kid like Cooper makes doing it all worth while.

Insane Asylum

I walked into the library today to do my C-6 assignment and found ten kids waiting for help. To complicate matters, Terence (aka assistant principal in charge of security) brought four more kids in for tutoring. It didn't seem to faze him that there was standing room only or that I am only one person. He did his duty so he could go and eat his lunch. The salad dressing and silverware he takes to go with his brought from home lunch were waiting for him.

When I got to the library, there were no chairs available. Mr. Comatose (the only male librarian was sitting at the front desk, staring out into space, as he usually does. Sometimes I steal that chair, but not today. I ended up going into the librarian's office and taking one of theirs. I'm sure they had a fit when they saw it missing, especially when I did not return it at the end of the period. I figured that was the least they could do to earn their salaries.

The libarians got upset when they saw so many kids asking for help and actually came over to try to organize things. Of course their organization involved lots of noise and screaming and asking me if I knew the kids. I told them that knowing them was not a requirement of tutoring and that I would go around and answer one question at a time. The kids wanted to know why there weren't more teachers in the libary, as midterms are this week and next. The librarians tried to answer, but I ignored the question and told everyone to get Suit so he could see what really goes on that period. I just ignored everything around and kept tutoring. The librarians got nervous thinking Suit might actually come up and see how awful the library was, so they managed to make some of the kids leave and I ended up with about 8. One girl said she has trouble getting help because it is always so crowded.

It's a good thing we have tutoring. So much gets done.

Good On Paper

I walked into the math office a little before period 2 today. The office was filled with kids who needed help. There was one teacher in the room and it was obvious she was doing her best to help them and it was also obvious that she was overwhelmed and that it was impossible for her to help them all. I went over to one girl to try to help her before my class started. The girl was a Math B student and her questions involved domain, range and composition functions. The poor kid was totally lost. She was having problems factoring and solving basic equations (skills she needed to do the other questions.) I helped her a short time, but had to go to class. She wanted to stay another period but no teacher was assigned to tutoring until third period. No one was going to be around to help.

The same situation hits me when I have my tutoring in the library. There are just too many kids for one person to effectively help. Sure, I can answer questions, but when the kids really need a topic taught or thoroughly explained, it just cannot be done. On Monday, the English AP commandeered the library for her departmental meeting. No tutoring could take place. The librarian told me to go to the math office but, I am assigned to the library, not the math office, and it is not her job to tell me to go anywhere. Also, the math office was being used for math meetings. My AP used his own space instead of the space belonging to someone else. Other days the library is closed because it is overcrowded and the kids cannot get in for tutoring. Yesterday, I sent a bunch of them to Suit so they could complain. (I don't know if they got in to see him or if they even made it down there.)

One of Principal Suit's favorite tutoring programs is "lunch and learn." Teachers are assigned to the cafeteria where kids can get help while they eat. Sounds great, right????? Wrong!!!!!! The cafeteria is so loud no one can hear themselves think, let alone an explanation to a problem. There is also no seating area for tutoring and the smells are nauseating.

All these programs sound great on paper. Maybe this is why my school got rated as "well developed." Too bad no one really looks closely into what is going on. Too bad no one sees through the smoke to see where the real fire is.

Another Thought

I tutor two to three days a week, as do many of my colleagues. If kids do well on the regents, it will be due to our efforts. Our names are not on their transcripts. They are not in our classes. If merit pay is to be distributed by a committee, will those of us who tutor ever see any of it? Can anyone really know how hard I work or for that manner how hard any of my colleagues work? Will we ever be given credit for a job well done? Merit pay will never work.

A Fair Solution (Almost)

Because math teachers are the only ones that really do any tutoring during C-6 assignments, we all rebelled last year. To appease us, Principal Suit agreed that math teachers would be working with a buddy and doing a 3/2 split. My AP told us to work out our tutoring schedule by ourselves. This has been working for everyone. Today, one of my colleagues got yelled at for working out a fair schedule--she would work Mondays and Wednesdays and alternate Fridays with her tutoring buddy. This is the same schedule I have worked out and it has been working well. He yelled because he needed a schedule to present to the parents and he couldn't present one with alternate Fridays.



My colleague, not wanting to fight with him, agreed to change and work every Friday. This might work now, but since our school is not on a 100% annualization, it might not work in the spring term. He doesn't seem to care. He only cares about what looks good on paper.

My blog buddy, Justice, Not Just Us is looking for a school where he can really teach, where children will be first. I don't think we work for a system that will ever allow a school like that to exist. Administrators and politicians are too busy looking at what looks good on paper. The good of the students never comes into play. This little concession to teachers makes us more willing to work the c-6 assignment and as a result, we are more enthusiastic and do a better job of tutoring. But, what do I know, I am only a teacher.