Journal #10 - Tutoring Carol: A Final Reflection

Journal #10

    Tutoring Carol has been an experience that I will carry with me for life. She has opened my eyes to all the little blessings in my life that I never really realized were privileges. Unfortunately, she did not attend our final session because she was sick but I intend on visiting South Burlington High School one last time to say goodbye to her and to thank her for all that she has taught me.

    First of all, she has further validated to me how important family is. Although she would get frustrated with her parents on the phone at times, she never failed to talk about how important her family is to her. They are the light in her life and even when school became stressful, she said that she had them to fall back on. I can completely relate to Carol on this because whenever I am having a bad day, a phone call with my sister, dad or mom always turns it around. 

Sister, Camy

Dad, Kevin

Mom, Jackie

    She has also taught me patience. I have tutored in the past, and currently tutor, but it has never been this challenging of a situation. The students I have and work with now are fairly advanced in Spanish so when I help them, they learn at a fast pace. Carol was different and it required more effort and patience on my part to assist her. However, I found that when I gave her time and explained certain things in simple ways, she benefited a lot from it. Patience is a very important skill that teachers must have and she has definitely taught me how to have a lot of it. 
    In terms of her development, I have not seen a major change and would keep her at level 3, Developing, on the WIDA standards for her listening, speaking, and reading. In terms of her listening, she is able to locate, select, and order information from oral descriptions, while also following multi-step oral directions. However, it is difficult for her to analyze and apply oral information that is relayed to her. This is the reason for why I do not believe she is quite at level 4, Expanding in this department. In terms of her speaking, she can describe processes and procedures well, yet does not have the ability to offer creative solutions to issues when they arise in these processes and procedures. She often looked to me for an answer when a problem arose. In terms of her reading, she was always able to identify main events, but struggled to find details that supported the main ideas. One improvement I did see in her reading was pronunciation. I believe this is because I required her to read aloud to me frequently. 

    I have seen a major positive change in her writing, which makes her progress to a level 4, Expanding, on the WIDA standards. When I first started tutoring her, it was difficult for her to summarize information from her notes. After dealing with multiple assignments where she had to do this, she improved in this area immensely. Additionally, I would always politely correct her if she made a grammatical error in her writing, so over time she did not make these grammatical errors anymore. Moreover, she accumulated good editing and revising skills. The only aspect of writing that she has not completely mastered at level 4 is regarding her ability to create original ideas or detailed responses. Her responses are typically simple and straightforward. In the future, to enhance her skills in this area, having her write more personal essays would highlight her creative writing style more, in my opinion. 

    Finally, Carol and I were able to share a lot about our different cultures with each other. I talked to her about my family, and she talked to me about hers. Additionally, we shared stories about our childhood and where we come from. It was interesting how we could still relate to each other on certain things, like struggling to make friends, for example, even though we grew up so far away from each other. Lastly, it was so exciting to learn new French words each week and it was always rewarding to see how happy it made her to share them with me. In total, I am so happy I had the opportunity to tutor Carol and I strongly believe we both gained something beyond the horizon of academics from working with one another.