i was reading an old issue of "time magazine," and i came across an article about the "best" videos submitted and aired on ABC's america's funniest videos. why "time" decided to cover this "story," i have no idea, but in a moment of procrastination, i decided to look one of them up on youtube, and came across the following clip, which, i have to admit, is pretty cute (it would be WAY cuter is the parents didn't speak though):
watching this clip made me look for this other video (http://www.hrtwrk.com/video/gooddoctor.mov) with this african american kid talking crazy for TRIGON Blue Cross Blue Shield. i used to watch it whenever i felt like a laugh, and, guess what, on youtube there are a series of commercials for the company. these child actors remind me of the kids i tutor.
commercial 1
commercial 2
commercial 3 (different child actors)
commercial 4 (another one with a different kid)
Monday, December 17, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
a long post about my job, tutorees, and stuff...
since i haven't posted in a while, i thought i would present you with an extra long entry to tide you over until the next time i feel the urge to purge what's on my mind...
so, i have a new job. i think i've written that before. but, anyway, after solving conflicts with teachers and our tutoring schedules, i think everything has settled into a stable schedule that appeases the teachers. this now means that on mondays, tuesdays, and thursdays, i start 10 minutes earlier. no big deal. i wake up at 745 and am able to beat the traffic that clogs up 59, I-10, 610, AND 45. unfortunately, my wednesday schedule sucks! i have to start at 730, which means i have to wake up at 5 to be out the door in time to tell the traffic to suck it.
many of the teachers were upset that we were pulling kids out at inconvenient times, which really kind of irked me. i mean, they're the ones who nominated these kids as being poor readers for this program, and now they are going to bitch and moan that the program is screwing with their schedule? sometimes i feel like the teachers just don't give a crap about these kids, because they aren't as "advanced" or whatnot. maybe i'm just to much of an ideaalist, but if i were a teacher, i honestly know that i would be sacrificing all kinds of things to make it work so a kid would succeed with his or her education, in addition to other parts of life.
anyway, after the initial progress monitoring tests, some kids were shuffled around and given to new tutors (there are 4 of us at the school, with another 4 at a different school...64 kids total, 32 at each school). my original batch of 8 ended up becoming 7 + 1, when one little girl with behavioral issues wasn't responding well to me or to any kid she was paired with. the project coordinator decided that maybe she'd respond better to a man...maybe she was the kind of kid who'd be more intimidated by a guy. at first i was a little offended, and upset that i couldn't get this kid to settle down and try to learn, but then i realized that i wanted her taken away from me, because she was just too much trouble and i didn't like her. yeah, i know, i'm a shitty person i guess. this is someone's kid, their baby, and i am basically saying, "go away." but i would rather she be with a different tutor, because that makes me more effective with the remaining kid. with her around, it was too much discipline and scolding, and not enough teaching. i spent more time getting her to actually look at the activity in front of her, than on doing the activity itself.
well, that +1 i ended up trading that problematic kid for was a little girl the other tutor had trouble with. i don't know why he had a tough time with her. i love her. she's supersmart, yet bubbly, and i think she's hilarious. i look forward to seeing her every day just to hear what'll come out of her mouth. whenever i see her during the 5 hours i'm at the school, she always stretches out her arms for me to take her to tutoring, even though she knows i only see her for 40 minutes after lunch. we have an inside joke, where i pick her up from her room and ask her if she's ready. she responds with a "no" and a smile. every lesson we do has a series of different words. as she moves from one lesson to the next, she picks up a new favorite word and makes songs or dances to them. first it was "pop," and then it was "jig" and "jug." now it's "buzz."
after initial assessments/progress monitoring, the week before thanksgiving, it was discovered that the 4 pairs of kids i had (and a few that other tutors had) needed to be resorted or split up. there were too many reading level differences between the pairs (for example, grade level for 1st grade is 60 words a minute. i had a pair of first graders where one kid read 53 wpm and the other read 6wpm). i lost 3 of my original kids, and gained 3 kids from other tutors. both my original third graders were taken away from me, and split between two tutors. it turns out, one of them, the boy who read 39 words a minute, was special ed, which i had been specualting for a while. it seems like the three kids i really liked were taken from me, and i was given not so fun kids in their place. of course, that's probably because i bonded with my 7 + 1.
so, the little OG kid i had at the beginning of all this (pablo) had to be given to another tutor, and i took one of her kids...a little fat girl who says "stickuhs" instead of "stickers." she's growing on me, but i miss the little thug boy i had in her place. he was like a little man. he would have been my challenge, since he could only read 6 words a minute and didn't know many of the sounds associated with the letters and groupings of letters in the alphabet. now, instead of kids' reading skills being my challenge, i now have to deal with lazy pronunciations and a pair of third grade girls with attitude problems. i can totally tell that my new third graders are going to be "mean girls" when they get older. heaven help the unpopular kids at their schools in the upcoming years. instead of 7 + 1 (which later turned back into 8, when i fully accepted the new girl, and now don't even consider the first problem girl mine), i now have 5 + 3.
anyway...i am growing to love my job. it's temporary and offers no benefits, and i worry about what will happen in may when the school year is over, but i can't let that get to me. i just have to enjoy and make the best of the 5 + 3. some of the things i've learned about them and heard them say make my day, such as:
pair 1:
gerardo's mom's name is anna. his mom and dad don't live together, but are still married. he watched the latest version of "halloween" with them on separate occasions last week, and can't get the theme music out of his head. he only has one pair of black shoes, and they are his wheelies.
angeles's grandmother died in a church after dancing too much. a baptismal fount factored into the story at some point. i don't know how, but it was mentioned. i can barely understand her diction sometimes.
pair 2:
brianna only wants pink star stickers, so i have to save them for her for the ends of our sessions. her favorite color is pink. whenever i let her choose her big sticker for her sticker page, i write in my record book about what we did and what comments i have, i write in cursive. none of the kids can read cursive, but she always watches me write and says, in a cute hispanic accent, "strange words," but it sounds like "stuh-range woreds." and she repeats it until i'm done writing. instead of "santa claus is coming to town," she beleives it's "super man is coming to town." she hates gym class. she also hates cold weather because she can't stand the white long sleeved turtlenecks her mother makes her wear. she went to mexico last weekend and fainted, so doctors gave her a shot on her shoulder. she likes to drink red gatorade and eat hot dogs and cheeseburgers.
angel's favorite color is green. he calls me "miss traina." he talks. A LOT. he told me he never does his homework, he just goes home, changes his clothes, and plays his PSP. he likes playing a WWE game on his PS2. he also has a little sister who scratches him and leaves scars on his neck/chest. his favorite word is "bunny." when i give them practice stories to take home and read, he reads them while sitting on the toilet.
pair 3:
jasmine's dad only gets "a couple of bucks" for working on skyscrapers' wires. her father's friend and colleague died after falling on the job. she has a trampoline in her front yard. her sister is in the kindergarten room next to the tutoring room. she's "a good student."
jeffery's tia had a miscarriage, and to hear him retell the entire story is like listening to a bad sci-fi radio play, expecially when the little boy has no idea how babies are made, and where they are in a woman's body, in the first place. when he was absent last week, jasmine played word bingo by herself. when jefferey finally played bingo, he thought it was unfair that jasmine got to play alone. he asked me if she won, to which i responded, of course, because he wasn't there to play against her. he said he was there. his "espirito was there."
pair 4:
jennefer (said "you spelled my name wrong," when i wrote j-e-n-n-i-f-e-r) and andrea (ahn-drey-ah) are the two third graders who are too good for this world, apparently. they have the ability to invoke blackmail and extortionist activities, when the situation calls for their desire to gain information. for example, they were saying tongue twisters, and instead of being informed correctly, that it is "peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," they said, "peter pecker and his peppers." i told them never to say "pecker," because it wasn't a great word. i didn't think before speaking. as soon as i said that, they wanted to know what "pecker" meant. knowing that it was better for me to keep my mouth shut than actually tell them, i hinted that they would figure it out in the next few years. this response didn't sit well with them, and they decided that if i didn't tell them, they would let it be known to the entire school, as well as to the program coordinator, that i had a tattoo (we're supposed to cover them up, but the one on my wrist peeks out a little from under my watch. the women who hired me haven't seen the tattoo...i wore a sweater during my interview). fun.
blackmailed by a third grader seems like no big deal, but these days, kids are evil, and courts are so sensitive to what they have to say, that they would surely lock me up in jail by misconstruing that i merely let them know that "pecker" wasn't a word i thought they should repeat over and over, rather than showed them someone's pecker. and, no, dirty people, i neither told them nor showed them. i just said i didn't want to hear the word, and that the world of euphemisms, slang, and nicknames would be revealed to them in due time. also, i didn't say anything, because i feared that it was bad enough that i told them an anecdote about my use of a ouija board during an elementary school slumber party, and corrected their retelling of the bloody mary urban legend (a topic they have brought up every day since i butted into their conversation). i tried to fix my bloody mary mistake by, instead, telling them about the real, historic, bloody mary, but now i have them confused and thinking that the bloddy mary from the dark bathroom mirror that claws at your face was one of britain's royal monarchs, Mary I, daughter of henry VIII. i could have then taught them the Henry VII song. why couldn't i just have said that bloody mary was the name of a drink? i wouldn't have even had to say it was an alcoholic one. i could have just left it as a generic drink. what the hell? anyway...
so that's my job, and those are the kids i work with. it's not so bad really. there could be worse jobs, co-workers, and people to be around.
so, i have a new job. i think i've written that before. but, anyway, after solving conflicts with teachers and our tutoring schedules, i think everything has settled into a stable schedule that appeases the teachers. this now means that on mondays, tuesdays, and thursdays, i start 10 minutes earlier. no big deal. i wake up at 745 and am able to beat the traffic that clogs up 59, I-10, 610, AND 45. unfortunately, my wednesday schedule sucks! i have to start at 730, which means i have to wake up at 5 to be out the door in time to tell the traffic to suck it.
many of the teachers were upset that we were pulling kids out at inconvenient times, which really kind of irked me. i mean, they're the ones who nominated these kids as being poor readers for this program, and now they are going to bitch and moan that the program is screwing with their schedule? sometimes i feel like the teachers just don't give a crap about these kids, because they aren't as "advanced" or whatnot. maybe i'm just to much of an ideaalist, but if i were a teacher, i honestly know that i would be sacrificing all kinds of things to make it work so a kid would succeed with his or her education, in addition to other parts of life.
anyway, after the initial progress monitoring tests, some kids were shuffled around and given to new tutors (there are 4 of us at the school, with another 4 at a different school...64 kids total, 32 at each school). my original batch of 8 ended up becoming 7 + 1, when one little girl with behavioral issues wasn't responding well to me or to any kid she was paired with. the project coordinator decided that maybe she'd respond better to a man...maybe she was the kind of kid who'd be more intimidated by a guy. at first i was a little offended, and upset that i couldn't get this kid to settle down and try to learn, but then i realized that i wanted her taken away from me, because she was just too much trouble and i didn't like her. yeah, i know, i'm a shitty person i guess. this is someone's kid, their baby, and i am basically saying, "go away." but i would rather she be with a different tutor, because that makes me more effective with the remaining kid. with her around, it was too much discipline and scolding, and not enough teaching. i spent more time getting her to actually look at the activity in front of her, than on doing the activity itself.
well, that +1 i ended up trading that problematic kid for was a little girl the other tutor had trouble with. i don't know why he had a tough time with her. i love her. she's supersmart, yet bubbly, and i think she's hilarious. i look forward to seeing her every day just to hear what'll come out of her mouth. whenever i see her during the 5 hours i'm at the school, she always stretches out her arms for me to take her to tutoring, even though she knows i only see her for 40 minutes after lunch. we have an inside joke, where i pick her up from her room and ask her if she's ready. she responds with a "no" and a smile. every lesson we do has a series of different words. as she moves from one lesson to the next, she picks up a new favorite word and makes songs or dances to them. first it was "pop," and then it was "jig" and "jug." now it's "buzz."
after initial assessments/progress monitoring, the week before thanksgiving, it was discovered that the 4 pairs of kids i had (and a few that other tutors had) needed to be resorted or split up. there were too many reading level differences between the pairs (for example, grade level for 1st grade is 60 words a minute. i had a pair of first graders where one kid read 53 wpm and the other read 6wpm). i lost 3 of my original kids, and gained 3 kids from other tutors. both my original third graders were taken away from me, and split between two tutors. it turns out, one of them, the boy who read 39 words a minute, was special ed, which i had been specualting for a while. it seems like the three kids i really liked were taken from me, and i was given not so fun kids in their place. of course, that's probably because i bonded with my 7 + 1.
so, the little OG kid i had at the beginning of all this (pablo) had to be given to another tutor, and i took one of her kids...a little fat girl who says "stickuhs" instead of "stickers." she's growing on me, but i miss the little thug boy i had in her place. he was like a little man. he would have been my challenge, since he could only read 6 words a minute and didn't know many of the sounds associated with the letters and groupings of letters in the alphabet. now, instead of kids' reading skills being my challenge, i now have to deal with lazy pronunciations and a pair of third grade girls with attitude problems. i can totally tell that my new third graders are going to be "mean girls" when they get older. heaven help the unpopular kids at their schools in the upcoming years. instead of 7 + 1 (which later turned back into 8, when i fully accepted the new girl, and now don't even consider the first problem girl mine), i now have 5 + 3.
anyway...i am growing to love my job. it's temporary and offers no benefits, and i worry about what will happen in may when the school year is over, but i can't let that get to me. i just have to enjoy and make the best of the 5 + 3. some of the things i've learned about them and heard them say make my day, such as:
pair 1:
gerardo's mom's name is anna. his mom and dad don't live together, but are still married. he watched the latest version of "halloween" with them on separate occasions last week, and can't get the theme music out of his head. he only has one pair of black shoes, and they are his wheelies.
angeles's grandmother died in a church after dancing too much. a baptismal fount factored into the story at some point. i don't know how, but it was mentioned. i can barely understand her diction sometimes.
pair 2:
brianna only wants pink star stickers, so i have to save them for her for the ends of our sessions. her favorite color is pink. whenever i let her choose her big sticker for her sticker page, i write in my record book about what we did and what comments i have, i write in cursive. none of the kids can read cursive, but she always watches me write and says, in a cute hispanic accent, "strange words," but it sounds like "stuh-range woreds." and she repeats it until i'm done writing. instead of "santa claus is coming to town," she beleives it's "super man is coming to town." she hates gym class. she also hates cold weather because she can't stand the white long sleeved turtlenecks her mother makes her wear. she went to mexico last weekend and fainted, so doctors gave her a shot on her shoulder. she likes to drink red gatorade and eat hot dogs and cheeseburgers.
angel's favorite color is green. he calls me "miss traina." he talks. A LOT. he told me he never does his homework, he just goes home, changes his clothes, and plays his PSP. he likes playing a WWE game on his PS2. he also has a little sister who scratches him and leaves scars on his neck/chest. his favorite word is "bunny." when i give them practice stories to take home and read, he reads them while sitting on the toilet.
pair 3:
jasmine's dad only gets "a couple of bucks" for working on skyscrapers' wires. her father's friend and colleague died after falling on the job. she has a trampoline in her front yard. her sister is in the kindergarten room next to the tutoring room. she's "a good student."
jeffery's tia had a miscarriage, and to hear him retell the entire story is like listening to a bad sci-fi radio play, expecially when the little boy has no idea how babies are made, and where they are in a woman's body, in the first place. when he was absent last week, jasmine played word bingo by herself. when jefferey finally played bingo, he thought it was unfair that jasmine got to play alone. he asked me if she won, to which i responded, of course, because he wasn't there to play against her. he said he was there. his "espirito was there."
pair 4:
jennefer (said "you spelled my name wrong," when i wrote j-e-n-n-i-f-e-r) and andrea (ahn-drey-ah) are the two third graders who are too good for this world, apparently. they have the ability to invoke blackmail and extortionist activities, when the situation calls for their desire to gain information. for example, they were saying tongue twisters, and instead of being informed correctly, that it is "peter piper picked a peck of pickled peppers," they said, "peter pecker and his peppers." i told them never to say "pecker," because it wasn't a great word. i didn't think before speaking. as soon as i said that, they wanted to know what "pecker" meant. knowing that it was better for me to keep my mouth shut than actually tell them, i hinted that they would figure it out in the next few years. this response didn't sit well with them, and they decided that if i didn't tell them, they would let it be known to the entire school, as well as to the program coordinator, that i had a tattoo (we're supposed to cover them up, but the one on my wrist peeks out a little from under my watch. the women who hired me haven't seen the tattoo...i wore a sweater during my interview). fun.
blackmailed by a third grader seems like no big deal, but these days, kids are evil, and courts are so sensitive to what they have to say, that they would surely lock me up in jail by misconstruing that i merely let them know that "pecker" wasn't a word i thought they should repeat over and over, rather than showed them someone's pecker. and, no, dirty people, i neither told them nor showed them. i just said i didn't want to hear the word, and that the world of euphemisms, slang, and nicknames would be revealed to them in due time. also, i didn't say anything, because i feared that it was bad enough that i told them an anecdote about my use of a ouija board during an elementary school slumber party, and corrected their retelling of the bloody mary urban legend (a topic they have brought up every day since i butted into their conversation). i tried to fix my bloody mary mistake by, instead, telling them about the real, historic, bloody mary, but now i have them confused and thinking that the bloddy mary from the dark bathroom mirror that claws at your face was one of britain's royal monarchs, Mary I, daughter of henry VIII. i could have then taught them the Henry VII song. why couldn't i just have said that bloody mary was the name of a drink? i wouldn't have even had to say it was an alcoholic one. i could have just left it as a generic drink. what the hell? anyway...
so that's my job, and those are the kids i work with. it's not so bad really. there could be worse jobs, co-workers, and people to be around.
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