whytutor

Leveraging the Volunteer experience

Once you have established your volunteer role in a school, you can create new opportunities to observe classrooms.  Watching a master teacher is an excellent way to understand the processes and flow of a strong classroom. 

Click HERE to read an article from Humboldt State School of Education that will help you focus and organize your observations.

Here are some steps to get you started:
•    Develop some expertise in the subject area you wish to volunteer
•    Try to attain some kind of recognized qualification in that subject
•    Your CSET test results are good examples
•    There may be local district rules and, perhaps, local laws concerning working in your school district.   Check with your local school districts to confirm how you engage with them.
•    Make sure you know and understand the curriculum or syllabus of the school or teachers you will assist with Volunteering.  Talk with the teacher and find out which students are struggling the most and what specific teaching techniques have worked for them in the past.
•    Prepare your volunteer lessons and practice them. Be very well organized. It is better to be over prepared than to run dry half way through a session.
•    Make your lessons interesting and interactive. In a good lesson the students will do much of the work.
•    Listen to your students; respond to what they know or don't understand.

Dangerous Situations to avoid
•    Avoid any situation that will put your students/you in any danger.
•    Do not become emotionally involved with your students beyond getting excited about academic achievement.

EnCorps Report from the Field
Here are some practical suggestions and insights from Alan Cleland, an EnCorps Pioneer and active mentor.
On Preparing for a Mentoring Session…
“In my case, my student is intensely oriented to the specifics of his situation.  My "lesson plan" is to go to each session having worked all of the homework problems he needs to have finished for his next class meeting. I get these from the teacher via the class web-site.

Then, we review these together, with him doing most of the work. Another thing we do is to correct the mistakes he makes in each test the teacher gives. The teacher requires the student to turn in these corrections at the next class.

Yet another thing we do is work on practice tests for the college boards that his teacher hands out. For instance, I just finished "taking" a 50-problem test at home in preparation for a session. Needless to say, all of this is great experience for teaching.”

On Separating Emotional Involvement….
“I try to be guided by what I read in the "Teach Like Your Hair’s on Fire" book.

For example, my student invited me to attend one of his soccer games, and I did so because I thought Rafe would have done it. But having said this, one always needs to be alert to the distinction between appropriate and inappropriate bonding with a student. Examples of this are always to reinforce things that his parents and teachers are trying to accomplish.

Also, one need to realize a students success or failure depends on a variety of factors, some of which are beyond a Volunteer’s control, so one can never take full credit or assume full responsibility for a students success or failure.”

A Word about Fee-Based Tutoring and EnCorp Teachers Policy
Encorps Teachers views Volunteering to support teachers in Low Income schools as a Career Pathway to becoming a Full Time Teacher of Record in the public schools.  EnCorps does not support participation in fee-based Tutoring services or individual Tutoring outside of a public school classroom.

What to know where you can volunteer?  Here are a few programs:

Greater San Francisco Bay area

•    Citizen Schools  in SF Bay Area (Oakland, San Jose and the Peninsula)

•     San Francisco School Volunteers

•    Experience Corps in Oakland, San Francisco and Marin County

Greater Los Angeles area

•    Prime Time   A supporter of EnCorps Teachers and the Los Angeles Unified School District

•    Engineers to Educators  (E2E) A program of the IEEE in Orange County
 

*Also consider going to your local school to see how you can help out!