Yesterday I went for training at the Frontier College, which organizes literacy programs Canada-wide. It wasn't exactly ground-breaking stuff, but it left me feeling really excited about volunteering with them this year.
See, last year I did this program called Peace by Peace, which taught conflict resolution to grade five students through activities and discussions. It was a good experience, but I really wondered how much of a difference we made in the classrooms. With this, though, I think I'll really be able to make an impact on a student's life.
The College is all about developing a relationship with the student, building up his or her self-esteem, and making learning interesting to him or her. To me, the second point seems the biggest. In the training we looked at a high school student's piece of writing. Many words were mispelled, and it wasn't particularly sophisticated or complex in structure, but the first things our trainer pointed out were the strengths of the work: it was neat, in cursive writing, structured in paragraphs, with full sentences, and even though there were spelling errors, they were consistent, and the words were spelled phonetically, demonstrating that the student didn't have a problem with the vocabulary, just the spelling.
These simple things really opened my eyes. I never really thought about it, but the way things are in classrooms--one teacher and twenty-five to thirty students--teachers don't really have time to work on anything other than a student's weaknesses. So, if a student has a learning disability, or just can't keep up with the class, it must be so discouraging and damaging to the self-esteem to constantly be hearing about what he or she has done wrong. How often would such a student hear good things about his or her work? A simple thing like showing a student how many things he or she can do right can be a powerful thing.
Man, it's really hard to explain exactly how thinking about this basic ideas touched me. All I can say is that I am so ready and willing to go out and be a literacy tutor. I know it'll be hard to start---the downside of "individual learning" is that you can't actually be told what to do, you just have to go with the flow--but I think I'll really be able to help someone out, and become a better person in the process.
(P.S. Leafs won 6-0 against the Penguins!! =D Read my thoughts on the game at RHF.)
