Tuesdays' Tutors
Tuesdays' Tutors Lab Vision Statement
Students from Hardin Park Elementary worked in collaboration with their tutors in the Tuesdays' Tutors lab to create bilingual books. Each student chose a topic based on their interest to first illustrate and then write their book in English.
Next, with the help of students in Dr. Beverly Moser's class who are preparing to become English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers, the authors translated their English texts into Spanish. It was a big job that took most of the semester. Students had to learn to budget their time accordingly!
The Tuesdays' Tutors afterschool program offers preservice teachers from the Reich College of Education opportunities to apply a variety of educational strategies to support the development of literacy, math and science concepts and skills in young, diverse learners. Paramount to the program is the building of positive relationships between the children and their college tutors, who strive to become their mentors - experienced and trusted advisors. The program is held on the ASU campus in order to promote positive attitudes and expectations for the young students' continuing education.
Summary of Operation
In addition to three semester hours of class time, the lab meets one afternoon a week from 2:45 to 5:00. The RCOE provides the funds to send two vans to Hardin Park Elementary School to bring twenty-two children to the ASU campus. Each college student is paired with one child for a series of at least ten tutoring sessions. The children begin the afternoon by completing their homework, which usually consists of math and spelling. Tutors are instructed to have the students read aloud to them during this period of time. Mid-session, the children and their tutors take a break from studies to engage in physical activities. Finally, they return to the lab to work on their individual or small group projects. Over the semesters, the projects have varied from studying the ducks at the duck pond, or studying the habits of penguins or wolves, to constructing and flying their own kites, or writing bi-lingual books about a topic of their choice.
Interdisciplinary Team Approach
In order to evaluate the efficacy of the Tuesdays' Tutors Lab, we are currently collecting data related to the University students' beliefs about English language learners, beliefs about their own role as a mentor and the development of teacher identity.
These data are collected through a pre, midterm, and post short-answer survey which consist of four open-ended items related to the topics of beliefs about English learners, the mentor-mentee relationship, content knowledge, and knowledge and use of appropriate instructional strategies.
SALT Grant #1
In the spring of 2008, Dr. Goodson-Espy, Dr. Gross and Dr. Clark were funded through a SALT Grant to work on lab curriculum. The team designed an integrated (science/math/literacy) unit on bears because this is an environmental topic with local relevance. Students were introduced to the process of collaborative reasoning to discuss issues associated with bears and humans existing in close proximity. Students developed concept maps to illustrate their prior knowledge, learned about bear habitat, interacted with a guest speaker, and gained experiences in writing personal stories. They also learned how to apply similarity in order to create scale drawings and learned how to interpret scale maps. Additionally, they solved math puzzles involving bears.
SALT Grant #2
A second SALT Grant was awarded in the spring of 2009. Dr. Fitts, who speaks fluent Spanish, became an invaluable member of our team. Our focus, based on the expressed interests of the students, has taken two directions. The Project Approach enables students to create: 1) projects to present at the upcoming campus-wide Diversity Celebration (e.g., Quinceañera); or 2) projects with an environmental theme (e.g., effects of pollution on human/animal habitats) to present at an "environmental fair" to be held the last day. We have also offered increased opportunities for students to be creative through technology (e.g., completing brochures for their projects, conducting a micro tech scavenger hunt of the environment on the ASU campus, creating iPhoto books, and building "Jitterbugs" to explore electric circuits and momentum).
AsU Learn Mini-Course
The project provides experiences to RCOE preservice teachers to help them assess if teaching is the right career for them and to help them develop their skills as a teacher, mentor, and tutor. An AsU Learn mini-course is used to deliver modules that help students understand the roles of a mentor and tutor and that explore ways of teaching math, science, and literacy. Video vignettes from the TT lab are used to provide concrete examples of effective teaching. Parts of the mini-course are used in CI 2800 and in CI 4030.
Evaluation and Findings
In order to evaluate the efficacy of the lab, we are studying University students' beliefs about English language learners, beliefs about their own role as a mentor and the development of teacher identity. Data are collected through a pre, midterm, and post short-answer survey which consist of open-ended items related to the topics of beliefs about English learners, the mentor-mentee relationship, content knowledge, and knowledge and use of appropriate instructional strategies. The research literature indicates teachers tend to be white, middle-class females, who teach based on their own experiences, which usually did not include diverse populations. In the absence of new experiences with diverse populations, these new teachers do not see a need to modify their instruction to address the needs of diverse learners. Our preliminary findings show that experiences such as the Tuesday's Tutors program do influence the perceptions of new teachers about diverse learners and help them recognize a need for them to change their views of their role as a teacher. Additionally, teacher candidates indicate growth in terms of their perceptions of their own roles as mentors of the Hardin Park youth. Possible areas that limit the efficacy of the lab experience include the limited amount of time that tutors meet with tutees and the perceived irrelevancy of the lab for those university students who are not preparing to work with elementary or middle school aged students. We are currently seeking outside funding to support the project's research and activities.
