Coming into this semester, I had always thought students were either learners or nonlearners.

Learners being those you were good listeners, note takers, test takers, and were all around A students. Non-learners being those who either skim by or fail out do to not getting the good learning genes. After learning what we have learned in our professional development class I now know that this is not true whatsoever. With the seven critical factors learning is meaningful and effective and without them students can still learn just not as well. With engagement, repetition, input quantity, coherence, timing, error correction, and emotional states learning is so much more useful and in depth. My own field experience proved that these critical factors do indeed show benefits when utilized. My tutee was a kindergarten Hispanic student that knew very little English. He knew some basic math and reading skills; however they were all in Spanish. I found it my job to help him transfer this knowledge into English and expand upon them. I noticed that my tutees teacher utilized the seven critical factors on a daily basis. I learned from her and my own professors how to use these in in lessons with my tutee to maximize his full potential. Being a kindergarten class using these factors was difficult; however the teacher did it very well. Furthermore, just the age and attention span of five and six year olds can be difficult. The teacher used the engagement factor to its fullest. She would hook the students in at the beginning of a lesson, whether it was with an assignment of talking about a previous task or something as simple as coloring a picture of what they were about to learn. As young students, assignments were kept at a minimum time to keep the students attention. Even within the short amount of time students would get off task and the teacher would have to improvise with something to re-engage them. My tutee comes from a difficult background and is the youngest of three brothers. From information I heard from the teacher, I could tell that both older brothers had learning and discipline problems. This was untrue with my tutee, other than being less proficient in his English skills. After my tutoring session was over the teacher told me that he had started to show more potential in all aspects of learning ever since I had started coming. I can only correlate this with Jensens seven critical factors. I used these each visit. Starting with engagement and ending with emotional states, the factors wholly helped, along with one on one time, with maximizing my tutees full potential. Educational psychology helped greatly in this experience. We had learned that at a kindergarten age, students attention spans are minimal. Their brain is at an all-time high learning to learn and only so much information can be taken in at one time. This stage in life will go on through the teenage years when puberty starts to begin. The brain only learns to cope with what is given, so these students basically learn to learn in their own way with the things they are faced with on a daily basis. Once my tutee is past this stage in his life I believe he will be a very successful learner.

Another class that has helped is speech. Without speech class it would have been hard for me as the teacher to make professional decisions to fulfill the lessons. I had to accurately display the information I was teaching about, along with focusing it on the projected audience. My tutoring experience being in a kindergarten class made it somewhat difficult to get on that level at first, but I figured it out and it became an easy motion to perform. Speech also proved critical with the interviews and discussion I had with both the Principal and the cooperative teacher. I could carry out a professional conversation and I was more confident providing a more effective and appropriate meeting. Spanish class also served its purpose. I never thought I would use Spanish outside of college, however, somewhat true; I used it while I was still in college. My tutee was from an all Spanish speaking home. He knew very little English. I was rusty at first but by our last session we could communicate with certain words and gestures. Now looking back at it, my tutee probably taught me more than I taught him, and he doesnt even know it. There are many other ways of learning than just classroom instruction through extracurricular experiences. As a freshman and sophomore I was on the livestock judging team at Howard College. Though this had little effect on how I taught through instruction, it helped greatly with skills of how to make a point. In livestock judging we have to give a set of reasons why we placed the animals the way we did in a short speech. I learned that with my tutee I had little time to get my point across before his attention was elsewhere. I had to effectively teach in the time that his attention allowed. Another extra-curricular experience that furthered my own skills was a mission trip to Russia, where I spent three weeks working in orphanages with young people. While there I learned that kids are just happy to know that there are people out there that care. As in the classroom my tutee was glad to see me walk in the door every week. He was happy to see that someone other than family or his teacher was there to help him. In Russia and in my tutoring experience, there was a language barrier. In both I knew very little of the other language. I learned that emotional states and gestures became very critical to the students own emotion. Working with high school FFA students at their annual Leadership Development Events and Career Development Events, I had to provide specific leadership skills. In the tutoring classroom I am no longer the student, I am the teacher. I had to provide those same leadership skills in the classroom as at the FFA contests. Global awareness is very critical at all times during the course of any profession. I believe that are many things the normal population do not realize pertaining to education. When I think of politics I do not think of republican or democrat. I think of a hierarchy in an institution. Within the education system, the most recent event is the development of the STAAR test. Not being in the classroom and knowing all the ins and outs of it I cannot vouch for all aspects of it or for all teachers. However, I can talk about how the people who are voting all of these new test

in, have no clue what its like in the classroom, or to be that student taking the test. They do not know the true needs of each student as individuals. It all becomes a political group that gets carried away. Now students who fail just a few of these tests will not be able to graduate on time. Though it does not affect my kindergarten tutee yet, it will in the near future. I think of the popular picture in the education world, of the elephant, fish, monkey, giraffe, and hippo that reads for a fair assessment everyone will be judged on the ability to climb that tree. Not all students are at the same knowledge point at the same time. Another aspect of global awareness that is present in my kindergarten tutoring class is the cultural awareness. In the state of Texas, culture is a huge part of our culture. There are so many differences in cultures you cant keep up. My tutee had a strong Hispanic background. There was a huge cultural difference just between me and him, however we overcame these differences and were able to learn a great deal. Economic awareness had a huge impact on me as an educator. It opened my eyes that not everyone comes from the same checkbook as you. I had never really taken the time to sit down and think about it. I had a habit of asking my tutee what happened over the weekend for him. I soon realized that he told me the same thing each week. This was because of the lack of funds in his home. Whether it is the nations economic state or a particular students economic state, both are critical factors in how the student perceives prior knowledge. Overall, this field experience in a classroom has opened my eyes to a whole new world, for the better. With the abundant amount of instructional information I have learned in my class and the real world information I have learned through field experience, I feel I have a better knowledge of how students learn and how to affectively apply instruction to further the students knowledge.