Tutoring

It's the end of the school year and I'm reporting on our tutoring at Floyd Light Middle School. There were 8 or 9 CherryWood residents originally but several dropped out and then communication dropped between teacher and tutor for several others. It ended up with 3 of us actually tutoring, Phyllis Moore, Bill Kapranos, and myself. Bill and I were assigned students in Tim Smart's Special Education class. I tried to teach reading to a 7th grade boy who had difficulty reading at a second grade level. The kid didn't like to read and was challenging to tutor. He also came from a very dysfunctional family. I didn't think I accomplished much, but the Principal told me he had observed considerable progress in the boy.

Bill seemed to have a similar time while Phyllis was assigned to a class of regular students and, although uncertain as to her duties at first, ended up having a good experience.

I also participated a couple of times with the after-school program which involved helping kids with their homework.

Principal Mark Gaulke (whose Aunt & Uncle are CherryWood residents) and I went over the program at the end of the school year. I recommended that we focus next year on students in Special Education classes. Mark agreed but pointed out that there were two other Special Education teachers besides Tim Smart. So, I will contact Mark in September and however many CherryWood tutors we have will be assigned to a student in Special Education. These are kids with low skills, some with low intelligence, or other disabilities such as dyslexia. Many are minority children with at least one having an Oriental name.

The Principal said that our tutoring program is included in a School Improvement Program report which will be used in an effort to get Federal funds. So I guess we've gotten off the ground.

Immigration

The first class in the course about Immigration, As Described in Fiction was today. It was a very interesting lecture and I'm looking forward to the next two.