Teaching Adult Learners vs. High School Grads

On thursday and friday I taught my first lessons at Hostos Community College. Up until now, I was "co-teaching" and more so just "assissting" my lead teacher like giving feedback on papers to students, chipping in a comment here and there as the lead teacher taught the class, going around to check people's works as they worked individually and in collaborative groups, and giving feedback to the lead teacher on her lesson plans. However, on Thursday evening I taught a lesson for 2 hours on my own and same with Friday. My lesson was how to do an outline for the CATW.

What struck me most amazing was the comfort I felt when teaching the adult students in comparison to teaching the younger students who are mostly high school graduates. I felt like the adult class was so much more stimulated and in fact my lesson took 2 hours for that class because they asked many questions and volunteered to answer my questions while the younger class mostly just sat down and looked straight at me without acknowledging that they understand anything that I am saying. I called on a few people but it was still a bit useless. And of course, with this group, my lesson took only one hour. I did the same activities with both groups and somehow the adult students, I felt, were more interested to learn.

Thus, great pat on the back for me, nice job, you chose the right field to get an M.A. in!

Steps Needed to Teach/Learn

In these past few weeks that I have been teaching at Hostos Community College, I have learned about myself as a teacher and as a learner. One thing I realized about myself, a weak spot you may say, is my inability to break everything down for the students. This isn't true about every aspect of writing or literature but when it comes to certain topics and skills, I have found that I can be very impatient and wanting to just jump into the work itself.

Similarly, the text we read in the Intro to Teaching class from Peter Hawkes further elaborated scaffolding. He explains, one must really learn what steps students must take to be able to arrive at the same questions that great scholarly literary critics come across. Once they have reached that level, they will be able to think at the same level as you. We just started reading more fictional literature in my class at Hostos and have just begun teaching analysis of texts. In this case, I realized that I in particular, don't seem to have the necessary patience to break things down in the simplest way depending on each students' background knowledge to be able to understand the text and then move on to criticizing and analyzing it.

In this case, I really just sat back and tried to see how my lead teacher handled the situation and tried to absorb all of her techniques but also think of the theories I've read thus far to see if I can somehow connect it to this situation in particular or not. As a learner, one must take the first step first and then move on to the second and third. Likewise, as a teacher, one may begin with just "assisting" a teacher and help in any possible way and then believe that he/she can move on to the next step.

For Bookworms of CCNY & Beyond...

I just wanted to introduce a website my father discovered a couple of days ago called Alibris. I'm not sure if you've heard of it or not but it's one of those incredibly amazing priced online bookstores where you can find most books for only $0.99!! The shipping and handling differs from maybe $2 to $4 or $5 and the more books you buy the less s&h you pay! I just purchased some of Mike Rose's greatest books on literacy in addition to a couple of literature books I've been meaning to buy for a while now. So the website is: www.alibris.com

I personally used to buy books a lot when I was younger and didn't understand the value of money I guess (haha). My parents always tried to dissuade me from it and eventually as my bills became bigger throughout the years I dropped the habit. However, I sort of hate borrowing books from the library especially when I'm as busy as I am these days because in the end, I end up paying late fees. I have a horrible habit of not being able to stop myself when I'm in a room full of books (library) and take out more books than I can read in one period at a time especially when I have all my graduate class readings to cover. Thus, I end up reading only one or two of the bunch and return the other ones unused and I pay a late fee. So whether you hate borrowing books from the library for any reason like myself or love having ownership of books especially reference ones, this is the website for you!

Enjoy.

Lab 0.99 Solution...

As I previously blogged, my Labs this semester on Thursdays are horrible in the sense that the professor does not give me any particular assignments to work on with the students. To add, students are not exactly the most complying bunch and just do not care how loud they are and how they may be disturbing others, etc. In the Writing Center, there's always been this argument and complaint that how do we, as tutors, "instruct" labs? In a way, we do not have the authority to tell the students what to do in the class time and at the same time, we do. So what can we really do?

I've heard to suggestions of many tutors, some ambitious and others (mostly) pessimistic. However, I would like to try something of my own and just trust my own teaching instinct to see how things go. Since the professor never got back to me after I left a voice message on her office phone or reply to any of the notes I wrote on the attendance sheet of lab, I have decided to literally take matters into my own hands. So this is what I've come up with:

Since it is a computer lab, I will first begin by asking them to shut off the monitors (at least) of their computers. Then, take out a sheet of paper and write what you think of this lab. Some suggested questions could be: What do you expect to do while in here? What do you expect/think your responsibility as students is in this lab? What do you think/expect my responsibility is or should be as a lab instructor here? After giving them several minutes to write freely about all this, I will put them in groups of 3-4 (depending on how many students are present in the class) and share their ideas and to then come up with an agenda or set of rules to follow for this class as students, as lab instructor for me, and as the class as a whole. And then I will bring it together and write down the "rules" on the board and keep a "copy" of it on my own to then type and print for the whole class next time perhaps.

I don't know, am I being too ambitious here?

Student Conferences

Yesterday, we had student conferences from 1:30 pm to 8:30 pm with maybe 30 minutes break all-together. And wow! I have to say, I did not ever perceive just how tiring this process would be! Before, when a professor decided to hold "student conferences", it was good news to the students because that meant having to just go to meet with the professor for 10 minutes or so and sometimes having class cancelled for it. On the other hand, as a teacher, it's a lot more work. Here I was thinking "just talking to students for the whole day will be a piece of cake!" Boy, was I wrong!

I guess I did not realize when you teach, you do not talk for the entire class time and give a chance to students to speak their minds and at times give them time to work on the activities and especially in our classes, give them time to read and write while in class. However, when holding student conferences, it is like talking back to back the same comments sometimes without a break in between each conversation, and wow that is quite exhausting! By the end of the night, when meeting with our last few students, my lead teacher and I were both brain-dead! So, though I still think that student conferences are necessary to hold half-way in the semester to be able to speak to students invidivually, letting them know about their performance in the class, I am now more aware of just how demanding of a process it could be for the teacher.

Damn, being a teacher is so hard sometimes!

A Teacher's Library

The other day my (new) roommate asked if I had a good book that she can borrow so she can read on her way to work in the train since her iPod wasn't working. I got very excited to be able to share my book with someone and so I jumped up and ran to my room to get her something. Now I just recently moved to this place (less than a month ago) and since my last place was very small, I have not really brought all my books from my parents' house.

So, I ran up to my room and she followed me. I started looking at my little collection of books only to realize that I actually do not really have my good novels. As my roommate went through each book and asked me the title of one or the other and asked what it may be about, I suddenly looked from the outside and saw a library of a teacher, with books like "Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Freire, "Grammar Troubleshoots", "Second Language Acquisition", feminism books by Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir. I saw a library of an educated woman.

It really made me proud, finding out how I may be viewed by someone who may just come into my room to see the books I read. Even though I have to admit, I still feel like I am not ahead of my game and there are still a lot of books about education and literacy that I have to read that I have not yet even heard of. But I guess, it's good to find something out like this for a change, that I am not as "behind my game" as I thought.

Nice job Mahla.

Great or Unrealistic Expectations?

On Wednesday September 6, my lead teacher had a conference/meeting with the director of CUNY Start and the dean of CLIP at Hostos.

Apparently the dean asked her:
"How many students in the classes do you think will pass the CATW test in December?"
"About 50-60%"
"What can we do to get that to 95-100%?"
"...Maybe some training for this new test?!"

Cross over to Wednesday evening at 7:30 pm, in the Writing Center Theory and Practice class at City College with Professor Barbara Gleason. The discussion is about the history of writing centers and how when they were first made official, the administrative was already becoming anxious and impatient that why aren't the students getting any better? How come there's no immediate improvement just yet? And they were quickly concluding that there should really be no respect for writing centers and deciding that only the really "weakest" students should make a trip there.

Meanwhile, I'm sitting down trying to decide: are these expectations by the administration great or just unrealistic? Sure, everybody would like "fast" results and they don't want to give their money (funding) unless they are guarenteed improvement. I know writing centers and teachers alike have been troubled with this dilemma for years, but I still wonder how do we get past that? How do we, as teachers, reassure the administration, that though not as quick as they are expecting, progress is being made? How do we reassure students that with time and diligent practice, they can become better writers? And most importantly, how do we reassure ourselves that it's all worth it?

Reading Strategies: Why couldn't they teach us these sooner?

I've read the assigned readings for Tuesday evening's class on 10/05. "I Read But I Don't Get It" by Cris Tovani took me back to my own history of having difficulty with reading. I, too come from a background of teachers and tutors continually telling me to "think harder" and "concentrate" more to understand/comprehend the text. Eventually, due to my own interest in books and having this need to escape from reality sometimes and finding reading to be just it, I was able to discover the common "reading strategies" that Tovani presents.

When I read the text, all I was thinking was: I wish I had a teacher like Tovani back when I was in middle and part of high school. So that I wouldn't feel "dumb" for not being able to read well and would instead just employ the "reading strategies" to get to my "destination". I need to stop quoting now and get to bed; I had two really long classes at Hostos and did a bit of medical interpreting (another job of mine) this morning and am now officially exhausted. I don't think red bull will do the trick. Sleep is what I need, at least for the next 4 hours or so.