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Kids benefit from OCS tutoring program

by Susanna Henighan

It was a home run for Albert Bell. The ex-Indians slugger made it around all four bases because Chris, a fourth-grader at Prospect Elementary School, answered correctly a math problem posed by college junior Michael Stuart .

Stuart worked with Chris and Paul, both fourth-graders, on division, decimals and multiplication as part of an afterschool tutoring program run by Oberlin Community Services (OCS). In the math game Stuart was playing with his students, each problem meant a new baseball giant was up to bat. Bell's success came from Chris's correct calculation of Bell's slugging average.

Stuart is one of 18 Oberlin students who spend Monday and Wednesday afternoons tutoring, mentoring and simply spending time with fourth-graders at the elementary school. The tutoring program, now in its tenth semester, is organized by OCS, and coordinated by two Oberlin students, senior Matt Losneck and junior Erin Fitzpatrick. The program has grown over the years, but Anne Fuller, OCS director, said this was the most sucessful semester yet in terms of College participation.

Stuart worked with Chris and Paul in the school library while five other groups of College students and fourth-graders worked around them. Organizers of the program try to keep the tutor-student ratio one to one, but usually some tutors have to double up.

Some groups worked with geometric shapes, others on division using multi-colored shapes, while still others worked through problems on paper. The curriculum of the tutoring is developed, as the other parts of the program are, by Losneck and Fitzpatrick. Both students were hired by OCS as interns to coordinate the program.

Before the math tutoring began, the group of College students and children gathered for a snack and the community service portion of the afterschool program. The snacks, provided by the Second Harvest Food Bank, are a highlight for many of the children. On Wednesday, the group assembled as other students filtered out of the school, catching buses and rides from parents.

As the room emptied of non-participants, Losneck and Katherine Bower, a social worker at OCS, announced the community service portion of the afternoon. Losneck said the community service part is designed to get the children interested in their community, as well as to wind down the children before the tutoring.

Wednesday's service program was provided by a visiting friend of one of the college volunteers. The friend, who was visting form Scotland, read a folk tale from that region to the group, and asked chldren to talk about its moral when he finished.

Most of the community service programs have been focused on envirnomental issues since both Losneck and Fitzpatrick are Environmental Studies majors. Fuller said other programs were about violence prevention, drugs and hunger awareness.

The central part of the tutoring program is the actual tutoring, however. Bowman said the math instruction is concept based. "It's based on `Show me how you are thinking about this,'" Bowman said.

Losneck said the tutoring is ooften a vehicle for mentoring and other types of instruciton the children need. He talked about one child he has tutored who had obvious difficulty reading the problems, so the two of them had to work on reading skills as well.

Tutors recieve training from OCS before they start working with the kids, but Losneck said success comes from experience and practise more than anything else. "When I first started, I had no idea what I was doing," he said.

This semester tutors have been working with the children toward the fourth-grade proficiency exam which tests basic skills and progress. The children need too well on the exam to move on to fifth grade.

One challenge for tutors has been adapting to a new style of teaching math, currently in favor in elementary education. The system teaches children to add and multiply from left to right, instead of right to left. It is called base-ten math because you add or multiply in the tens place before the ones.

Discipline and control are also skills the tutors have to learn. The children, worked up after their day at school, are hard to calm down. On Wednesday, as the group assembled on the floor for the community service portion, Bowman reminded the children in an authoriative voice to sit with their tutors.

"I'm always the bad guy," Bowman said, smiling. "Fourth-graders are very animated. It can be really hard."

Another challenge for the tutors is learning how to be patient and communitcate with the children. Losneck, who is thinking about going into teaching as a carreer, said the experience has made his idea of teaching a lot more realistic.

"I wanted to [teach] when I started and now I'm not sure, but I think that's a good thing," he said. "I think that it's a good thing to have learned boundaries of my patience."

One tutor, who preferred to remain anonymous, said she often found the tutoring very frustrating because she doesn't feel she is making that progress. "The program is great, but you have to be really patient," the student said. She said she rarely felt like she was helping her fourth-grader and that she wished she could see her get through.

Losneck said he understood this frustration. "Tutors expect to see results all of a sudden," he said. "Since we see [the kids] twice a week it is hard to see improvement from day to day."

Organizers say there is improvement over the course of a semester or year, however. "You can see a big improvement in grades and attitude," Bowman said. Losneck said teachers often stop by the tutoring and say how glad they are certain children are participating.

The children, after enthusiastically expressing their love of the snacks, usually concurred that their snacks, agreed that their tutors help them. "I like the food and we get to learn and I get my math good," Amber, one of the children, said. She said her grades in math have gone up since the beginning of the semester.

"I like the snack and the tutoring and the college kids," Bradley, another child in the program, said. Another particpant, Angie, said, "The math program is nice."

The College volunteers feel strongly that what they are doing is important, but Fuller said she thinks what brings them back is the relationships and friendships they build with the children. Stuart said his favorite part of the program are the children he tutors. "I enjoy working with Paul and Chris," he said.

First-year Gillian Russom said she thinks the program helps children who have problems with the classroom environment. "I think it is a good idea to talk about math outside the classroom context," she said. Russom said the best part of the program for her is being able to get to know people in the community.

"It's good to see the kids and I like being in a public school around here," Russom said. "And it's really good to see people who aren't between 17 and 21."

The tutors are assigned to children who organizers hope they will be able to work well with. Amber and college first-year Stephanie Jones were one group that seemed to have hit it off very well. Amber had taken a test the day before so Jones was letting her play geometric games this afternoon instead of working on problem areas. Amber is enthusiastic about the program.

Jones said her biggest challenge is finding new ways to teach concepts that don't bore Amber. "The biggest challenge is keeping them focused," Jones said. She also said the greatest reward was when she felt she had really helped Amber. "I like it when I teach someone math and they understand it," Jones said.

Losneck has a similar view on the tutoring. "It's not so much the progress over all [that is rewarding.] It's when something happens when you're teaching him and you see the lightbulb go off," he said.


Top Photo:
3-2-1-Contact!: Junior Michael Stuart spends time with Paul and Chris (right)  at Prospect Elementary where he tutors in math and plays games too. (photo by Susanna Henighen)


Bottom Photo:
Fitting together the pieces: Anne Fuller, the Oberlin Community Services director, helps two Prospect Elementary fourth-graders with their math skills. (photo by Susanna Henighan)


Oberlin

Copyright © 1997, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 125, Number 20, April 11, 1997

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