Getting into the swing of things, tutoring at Bradley Tech!

Greetings everyone,

It has been a while since my last post!  Since my first 2 tutoring sessions in February and another 3 in March, I can officially say that I am now into the swing of things!  It's been a very interesting journey so far and having worked with multiple students on spanish and math with a wide range of skills, yet I look forward to the challenge every week.

I want to first go into a little more about Bradley Tech.  It is a trade school and really pushes for the development and mastery of multiple tech skills.  I think this is a really neat idea because we now know that not everyone is meant for college and many people need to fill trade roles in the automative, metal, welding, and carpentry industries.

Now from the moment I walk up to the front doors, the experience from this high school is completely different from my own.  The doors are locked and I need to get buzzed in.  After walking through the doors, I precede to the metal detector and xray scanner which I can now bypass because I am a tutor.  From there, it's off to the Boys and Girls Club study rooms which are either on the first floor or second floor.  Often times security has to let me through another set of locked doors.  This can be slightly challenging when they are not around... The most different part for me is that I have yet to see a white student at the school.  Since I came from a high school with little diversity that was relatively safe and had minimal security, I feel like I'm always walking into a highly secure complex at Bradley Tech, yet this is a normal high school with normal students.  I had to bring this up because my high school experience was so much different and plain.  It's very interesting to observe how different it can be only 180 miles away...

Back to tutoring, I have really enjoyed helping the students on their homework, whether it is Math or Spanish.  I can honestly tell that these students are here to learn and get better.  They are making the commitment and putting in the effort everyday by coming to this program and it's making a difference.  Just the other day helping a student with the pythagorean theroem and indentifying right triangles, she mentioned she wished the teacher had more time to go over this and more detail.  She was so happy because after going through a few examples with me, it made sense to her.  This is really a gratifying experience.  However, it makes me wonder about the current education system in general.  We set such rigiourous standards to help make sure our students are prepared for the next level, but what's the benefit when it is so rushed that students don't have the time to fully grasp it?  And when they fall so far behind that they give up or fail at the next level, what good did going that fast in the first place do?

It's also been a great learning experience for me.  Not only do I get to help these students, I also get to work with and know talent students of different ethnicities and races that I normally never would have crossed paths with.  This is super exciting!  I also am learning to be very patient, because as an engineer and spanish minor, not everyone picks up on the pattern and relationships shown on paper as fast as I do.  When to me it seems obvious, to them, they are still so new at it, it hasn't clicked yet.  I think this is a very useful skill to learn and practice as it forces me to explain things in different ways and take different approaches.

With that, I'm signing off.  I am very much looking forward to the rest of my tutoring sessions in April and May!  I will be sad to see the end of May come around and the conclusion of this service learning experience.

Ross