Oren Logan

April 30th, 2017

AVID Reflection:

Date Log: 1 hour (9am-10am) each date

Note: 2 weeks in March and 1 week in April were missed due to Spring Break and
PARCC testing, in which we were not required to go (or make-up) by our cooperating
teacher.

January 25th, 2017

February 1st, 2017
February 8th, 2017
February 15th, 2017
February 22nd, 2017
March 1st, 2017
March 8th, 2017
March 22nd, 2017
April 12th, 2017
April 19th, 2017
April 26th, 2017
May 3rd, 2017

General Duties:

As a tutor in the 2017 AVID program at Blevins Middle School under my cooperating
teacher, Ms. Mary-Pat Hulse, I had the opportunity to work with between six and fifteen 6th
grade students, who were new to the tutorial and questioning process. At the beginning of the
semester, my job was to help teach this new process to the students, and guide them to ask
critical thinking questions, and complete their work. As the semester progressed, I was able to
offer more help with the process, and I had the opportunity to award certificates based on student
engagement, thoughtfulness of critical thinking question, and willingness to work with others. I
also had a number of classroom management strategies that I had to employ in order to try and
keep students on track.
Reflection:

Overall, I have mixed opinions about the AVID program, though my opinions may be

biased due to the fact that I was working with 6th grade students that had never been a part of the

AVID tutorial process before. Many of the students I was working with were still apprehensive

about being in the program, and many of them verbally communicated to me that they did not

want to be part of the program moving forward. I believe that many of the students that stick

with it in seventh grade and beyond are more willing to participate in the process as they have

had an ample trial period at this point.

I personally learned a lot through the AVID program, but I am skeptical that the students

participating in my class, learned as much. The AVID program provided me with an opportunity

to guide discussion and critical thinking, while also giving me the chance to experiment with

classroom management skills and techniques. My AVID group was fairly balanced between

students that wanted to be there, students that were indifferent, and students that blatantly did not

want to do any of the work. This provided to be a challenge, as I wanted to cater some of the

critical discussion to all of the different learners, but I found myself unable to in the short

duration of the class period.

As I became familiar with the program, I found myself questioning the usefulness of the

tutorials, especially with the younger 6th grade students (I am positive the tutorial process is

much more beneficial to students in 8th grade or high school). Most of the time, students would

bring in questions/concepts that they either knew the answer to, or had only just been exposed to

in class. This either made the tutorial process repetitive (as students already knew the answer) or

extremely confusing, as no one knew how to approach, or question the problem. A good example

of this was when students were trying to find the area of a circle without ever being exposed to
the concept of Pi. You could elude this predicament to skipping the acquisition phase of a

teaching cycle, directly to the elaboration phase. While it is important to elaborate learning,

students will often become confused if they have to apply critical thinking before learning the

components/tools to be able to solve the problem.

I think there either needs to be a modification of the AVID program in the first couple

years of student involvement, or more guidance of student questions (one hour a week was too

little for us to guide the point of confusion questioning done before the tutorials). Either students

should be given a number of question examples, or the AVID tutorial process should take on a

different format during the 6th grade year. Instead of trying to skip to the elaboration part of the

teaching cycle, I think it would be beneficial for students to try on teaching concepts, rather than

just asking questions, if students come up with points of confusion that they do not have enough

background information to answer. I often found that the questioning process could leave

students confused if those that were questioning were only doing so to get tutorial participation

points. It would be interesting to see if having students peer teach concepts that they already

know (perhaps teaming up 6th graders with 7th graders) would encourage growth among all

students. One of the best ways to learn is to teach.

I have learned quite a bit from the AVID program at Blevins Middle School, including

how to manage a classroom, how to encourage critical thinking, and how I might establish my

own learning programs in my own school if I ever have the opportunity. I wish I would have had

more time to work with and establish relationships with the students, and provide them with a

tutorial experience that wasnt simply about answering the question at hand, but had a clearer

goal of furthering learning and critical thinking across many different subject-areas.