Week 1

In my last few visits to YHS, I have been just making an effort to get to know the students. In the Algebra class, this has been fairly easy. Everyday Mrs. Porter spends some time giving leading the class through a few example problems. The class then is begins to work on their own problems individually. Mrs. Porter, the teaching assistant and I walk around the classroom and help students. This has been a very good way for me to get to know the students. In our brief conversations about math, they will generally ask me something not related to the class. This constant interaction has also helped me to learn their names.

Some of the students in the class struggle with the mathematics fundamentals like basic addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. I am getting a much clearer picture of how important a solid math foundation is in allowing students to be successful in future math courses. Also, it seems like some of the students who are disruptive are the students who are able to understand and complete the work. It is unfortunate that there is such a significant variation in the level of understanding in the class. The teacher can’t go ahead to appease the students who understand the material without jeopardizing the other students ability to learn. The advanced students then get bored and begin to be disruptive. I have also observed that the students are in a rush to finish problems and don’t exhibit much patience. The students are eager to immediately get to the answer, but not nearly as eager to meticulously go step by step to solve the problem.

In Mr. Sowder’s class, I have been attending and participating in the class activities. This week has been primarily lectures, which has made it difficult for me to interact with the students. Hopefully, next week, I have be able to increase my interactions with the students.

1st Day - "Motivational Speech"

Today, I made my first visit to the Algebra and Science classrooms. The teachers and I had agreed that I would do a “motivational” speech on the first day as a part of my introduction. I put motivational in quotation marks because I have never given a motivational speech and I haven’t really considered my life to be motivational. Nonetheless, I was challenged with the task of figuring out a way to frame my life in a way that motivated others.

In the Algebra class, Mrs. Porter turned the class over to me right at the beginning of the hour (after announcements). I introduced myself and told a summary of my life story starting with elementary school. I tried my best to demonstrate obstacles that I have had to overcome along the way and focus on topics that a high school freshman could relate to. For example, I mentioned that my father passed away when I was 11 and I was raised by a single child. I mentioned that during high school my mother lost a job and effectively would travel for weeks at a time to work at other hospitals, which forced me to become more independent. I also talked about my middle school infatuation with girls and that being the reason why I choose to attend an all male high school. Toward the end of the speech I talked about my career as an undergraduate engineering student and some of the different summer experiences that I have had.

Different parts of the speech captured some of the student’s attention more than others. I did my best to ask questions of the audience to keep them engaged. I tried to walk from side to side so that I was in front of all the students at some point. All in all, I was very proud of the entire interaction. At the end, several students asked my questions. One student even challenged me to prove that I could explain how a manufacturing process that I had referenced from one of my internships worked.

In the previous class, I was surprised by the undertone of talking that persisted even while I spoke. Some of the students seem to have no problem talking while someone is speaking to the class. The number of students who were doing this really created an audible level of noise in the class. I felt challenged to use the tone and inflection of my voice to try and maintain the audience’s attention. I also had to make an effort to speak above them and keep a quick pace with my story so as not to lose their attention. The experience was very different from the presentations that I am accustomed to giving where the audience is entirely polite and attentive.

In Mr. Sowder’s class, I waited until the end of the hour to give my introduction. This seemed to make a big difference in the level of attentiveness of the students. They were really rambunctious and anxious for class to end. Their attentiveness was much poorer than the previous class. I really felt like I was struggling to maintain the interest of the students that I had. To combat this, I paced through the aisles and gently tapped students who were talking on the shoulder. This approach worked moderately well. All in all, I should’ve definitely presented at the beginning of class.

Introductory Meeting with YHS Teachers

Today, I had my first meeting with the teachers with whom I will be working. Mrs. Porter is the Algebra teacher and Mr. Sowder is the Science teacher. The meeting was at 7:00am in the science classroom. My supervisor suspected that scheduling the meeting this early in the morning was my first test and indeed, when I arrived to the meeting at 7:03am, they commented that I had passed my first test by being able to arrive relatively on-time.

We spent a brief amount of time introducing ourselves and I described the goal of the program and what role I hoped to play in the remaining months of the school year. Both teachers have had more than 15 years of experience and I could instantly tell that they had a wealth of knowledge about teaching. What immediately struck me was the amount of passion that they have for their students. Throughout the conversation they shared different stories with me about what happens in the classrooms. They told me how difficult it can be to teach a class when so many of the students are craving for attention and will do anything to get it. Given the needs of the students, they agreed that having one teacher for 25 - 30 students is unreasonable.

We discussed some of the logistical stuff about what days I would come and which classes I would attend. I later decided on the Algebra and Science classes and to attend twice a week. I took away from the meeting the clear message of “just keep coming.” Both teachers told me that once the students see that I am there consistently and interested in helping them that the relationships will develop. The worse thing that could happen would be to come one day and never return or return sporadically.

[Editor’s note: The following section was added as a reflection on how the initial meeting process could have been better]

Although our initial meeting worked well to break the ice and allow us to introduce ourselves to each other, we spent most of the time discussing who we were and our personal philosophies on teaching and education. Since I have such a strong interest in education, I found myself really enjoying just listening to the perspectives that both of these teachers had to offer. Retrospectively, we should have held two meetings, one meeting to break the ice and get to know each other and another meeting to discuss more particular details about what role I would play in the classroom.

It would have been very beneficial to schedule another meeting where I looked over the calendar and the upcoming topics and discussed what ways I could be involved in each section. As the semester progressed, I asked the teachers what their plans were for the following week and I would proceed accordingly with regards to thinking of ways to be more active in the class. I think that having a meeting to do this and spending a significant amount of time on the front end will help make future volunteers as effective as possible at connecting with the students.

Introduction

Greetings All,

My name is Maurice Telesford and I am currently working with the College of Engineering’s outreach office at the University of Michigan. In this blog, I will try to capture some of the experiences that I have working as a teacher’s aid at Ypsilanti High School. I am the guinea pig of sorts in the sense that I am testing out a model for a partnership program between the UM-CoE and YHS (more acronyms…. UM-CoE = University of Michigan College of Engineering, YHS = Ypsilanti High School). In this partnership, we hope to be able to provide science and engineering graduate students who can work as teaching assistants in math and science high school classrooms. The goals of this program are:

To provide role models for the students

To allow the graduate students to gain practical teaching experience

To try to help motivate the students to be more interested in their education and STEM fields

To bring applications of science and engineering into the high school classroom

I will be working twice a week in a freshmen algebra and introductory science course assisting the teachers. This blog will touch on my weekly experiences, things that I’ve learned, advice for future teaching assistants and anything in between.

Feel free to post any thoughts, comments or advice that you have.

Test

This is just a test to see if I understand how to post and to see what they will look like...