Tutoring

This semester I have been working with the Hispanic Tutor Center here at school, and I got assigned to help a kindergarten class at a nearby elementary school. There are 6 Hispanic children in the class. Some of them speak perfect English as well as Spanish, but others can hardly speak two words in English. It has been a great opportunity for me to practice speaking Spanish once a week, and not to mention just outright laugh sometimes because the kids are so funny.
The first story I have happened about a month ago. Two boys in the class were coloring some letters as assigned. One of the boys was almost finished, while the other one had pretty much just started. The boy who had just started coloring happened to glance over at the boy’s work who was almost finished. He just stared for a moment then said, “Whoa! You’re speedy, how did you color so fast?” The boy paused and then replied, “Well, I’m superman!” The boy who originally asked the question paused once again then said in all seriousness, “Yah, you are superman.” ‘Superman,’ then jumped out of his chair and yelled, “I’m a Superhero!!!”, as he ran around the room with his arm up like he was flying. The other boy just sat and watched in awe and admiration. It was hilarious.
The next story I have, was just one of those days when I actually felt like what I was doing was worth it. A little girl in the class named Angelina is really behind on her fine motor skills. She has a really hard time writing any of the letters. So one day the teacher had me take her out into the hall to work on writing her name. We played some games with the letters in her name with flashcards first, then proceeded to practice writing. She did just fine until we got to the “e” in her name. She just quit writing and stared at the ground. I then wrote her an ‘e’ to show her how, showed her the flashcard that had an ‘e’ on it, we practiced writing it in the air, but she just wouldn’t try to write it. I told her to look at me and I asked her why she wouldn’t try. She said, “my brain just isn’t working this morning.” I told her we could skip it and come back. After writing the rest of her name, we came back to the ‘e’. She decided to try and write it, but it didn’t look anything like it was supposed to. I then decided to teach her a different way to write it, because the way we all write it just wasn’t working for her. This is how we did it. We start at the bottom of the ‘e’, and then circle up and around until the line hit the line we had already drawn and then we “stop!”. (which I said animated every time.) She thought it was really funny every time I said “stop!” And then she began to like writing her e’s. She even said, “this is fun, my mom is going to be so proud of me when I show her I can write my name!” Ever since that little lesson she writes her name just fine, and it makes me so happy inside to know I actually taught her something that made her feel better about herself.