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Claire McWilliams

Dale Thomas, Marcella Verdun

Detroit Fellows Service Learning

April 10, 2017

Final Paper

This winter semester I was a 1 st grade tutor at Ralph J. Bunche Preparatory School. I was

assigned to Ms. Dearing's classroom while tutoring 5-6 students; LaMarrie, Myah, Christopher,

E'Sean, Dashawn, and Jordan. My goal for this semester was to help these kids become better

readers. This experience was very beneficial as an Education major, and it helped solidify my

want to become an educator in the future. Though this experience was wonderful, there were still

successes and less successful experiences I had while tutoring.

My Impact on the Students

The first few weeks at Bunche elementary was rough. My first impressions with all five of

my students were that there was so much potential, yet so much doubt coming from these kids. It

was pretty discouraging as these kids would begin to read a book with me and then out of

nowhere say, "It is too hard, I can't read this" even if they were reading flawlessly. I felt that

these kids have believed that their reading was never going to be good enough. With friendly

reminders and talking about how they felt about reading, I was able to break that mental barrier

pretty easily with all of my students. I was able to give them that extra push and confidence with

the time we spent together.

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Another impact I had on the children was that I was another positive adult influence in their

lives. I got to know each of my students pretty well, and they have openly appreciated their time

with me. There were quite a few occasions where one student would explain a story of conflict

with me, and I would just advise them to be a kind person, ask if they told someone, when it

happened, and if something happens again to tell their teacher or and adult near them (there was

never a large issue that I ever needed to tell Ms. Dearing for). With the one-on-one time, these

kids were able to grow and socialize with me. Myah was so shy at the beginning of the semester,

and by the end she was joking around with me during a game of Go Fish. Myah's situation was

just a simple example, however each child became more comfortable as the semester went on.

All five students, and myself, were able to grow as people. I was able to become a role model for

these kids, and I really think it helped in their lives.

Successes

My first success story is about my student, Dashawn. At the beginning of the semester, he

struggled like the rest of the kids. He was very hardworking and struggled sounding out words,

and certain letter pronunciation such as X, and qu. Another issue was that he did not want to read

to me, so many times I was reading and pointing to the words as I went. His results were

decently consistent, yet on the slower side for much of the semester. Then one day, everything

clicked. Dashawn was picking out books and reading them to me, I never had to ask him if he

wanted to read the poem of the day in Fast Start, he just started to read it. Dashawn's

comprehension of rhyming words began to flourish as well.

Jordan Morris also was successful in learning more words and how to sound each word apart.

Jordan was my "extra" child, the one that I would see only if another student was absent, so our

time together was even more limited. Jordan struggled with sounding out words, and with his
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personality he would quickly become very discouraged and try to end the session early.

Naturally, I would refuse and try and get him to become more optimistic every time I saw him.

Soon Jordan picked up on what I was trying to do. He was more open to what I was trying to

teach him. Jordan used the arm slide method quite a bit after I taught him it. Each time he would

ever get stuck on a word, he would break it down and blend it together using his arms. With the

limited time we had, Jordan made it to unit 4, and improved quite a bit on his testing at the end.

Less Successful

Dashawn also experience some unsuccessful strategies while I was tutoring him. Within the

last 3 weeks of tutoring, Dashawn began to mix up his B's and D's. When I realized this was

happening, I introduced him to the "bed" tool. Dashawn understood it and tried to remember it,

but once in a while he would still struggle with it. For example, the post-test I gave him, he

struggled identifying which letter was B and which letter was D, as well as what sound each of

them makes. Perhaps if I was enforcing it even before there was an issue, I could have avoided it.

Another suggestion could be that Dashawn was not fully comfortable and remembered it always,

because he did continue to make the same error often but not as consistently.

Experience as a Person

This experience as a tutor has a tremendous impact on me as a student and as a person. I am

currently and education major, so it gave me one of my first tastes of educating students. To say

that I enjoyed it is an understatement. The look on these kids' faces when I came to the door and

called their names is memory I will never be able to forget. I am choosing to be an educator

because I want to give back to my community that I am in. Because I have been given a

wonderful education so far in my life, I want to be able to do the same for my future students,
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and I am confident to say that I provided at least a little bit of that this semester when tutoring

these kids.

This was also my first time ever being a tutor outside of my hometown. I am from the west

side of Michigan (Muskegon) and so I was able to see connections and differences between

Fruitport Public Schools and Detroit Public Schools. For example, a connection was the specific

reading and learning strategies we used to help the kids learn. However a difference was that

Detroit Public Schools has been partnered with the Detroit Fellows Tutoring Project and

Fruitport Schools do not have any sort of tutoring programs. I found that really interesting, and

perhaps there could be inspiration for new changes in Fruitport Public Schools.

This class was able to fulfill my service learning requirement for my major, as well as my

Honors credit for the year. I also really enjoyed continuing my push for reducing illiteracy here

in the city of Detroit. Though it was only with 6 kids this semester, I know that it is just the

beginning of what I will be doing for the rest of my life.