I worked at McCornack Elementary School with first-graders with two different teachers. I primarily worked with the language arts teacher, Sandra Stenius, but I also worked with the reading teacher, Julie Kneubel. This was not a challenging site for me to work at; I did not see any obvious cases of abuse or neglect. Sandra Stenius seemed to go out of the way to make every child feel important. It is in this tespect that I valued my work here. I will use Sandra as a model teacher as I prepare to teach myself. I did my final project on creating a climate of civility. I do believe that in her classroom it exists.
At first I was unsure about my assignment. On the first day there was a substitute. My advice, and this may seem crude, is to ignore the substitutes. They do not always seem to know what is going on. Then the next couple of times I came in with the mind set of a tutor and nothing more; This was not successful at all! Only after I opened up to the kids as someone who is more than a tutor did I find my place in the classroom. I went over and above what I needed to. I assisted on field trips and sat in the class as a teacher's aide on top of my tutoring. I think this helpe4 the kids to get to know me better. In the teacher's view I also became more then just another university student coming in to help.
I did not think I was going to have time to tutor. I fit tutoring into my schedule by getting up early on my one free morning and tutoring for three straight hours. This was the only way I could have fit it in. I did not have to prepare lesson plans so I also had little preparation.
The biggest tip I have for other tutors is learn how to discipline. The approach I learned was that you have to learn the children's personalities before you can effectively discipline. For example, I had to let Melissa be a little bit bad if she was going to do something productive. Her reward was being bad which just meant coloring a minute or so when she was supposed to be writing. Tina had to be constantly reminded to be good but once you reminded her so many times she got on task. You could not get frustrated with Tina or she would forget all of her work and suck her thumb. I found that proper discipline is the key to getting through to the kids.
The only other advice I have is look into what you really want from a site. I fit well into my site on accident. I did not know what I wanted to gain from my experience. Tutors need to look at if they want a formal academic setting or informal and what kinds of kids they want to work with. I had a lot of Hispanic children and I found it greatly enjoyable to help them with their English. Oh, and one more thing, have fun!