Onondaga Nation School Week 5

Unfortunately, this week at ONS the school has pictures days and for the after school program we were kicked out of the gymnasium. Instead, I helped tutor some of the students, and help them complete their homework. I worked with the 4th grade students mostly on their spelling and math homework. This was a different experience for me. Both Monday and Tuesday were like this. 

Students seemed to be a bit more receptive to my help rather than their teachers. I believe this is because the teachers are in the classroom with them all day during school, and if the student was confused during class, sometimes it is nice to get a different view on the subject, and how to do something. For example, I was helping two girls work on their math homework, and I taught them how to split equations. They would ask questions like what is 6x4, and I would ask them what 6x2 is. When they would say 12, I would say now what is 12x2, and the students would come out with the correct answer. There teachers never showed them splitting equations, but for some students it is easier to complete harder math problems by splitting it into two questions.

This was a different experience for me as I have never tutored students before in their academic classes. I have mostly worked with students in a physical education setting. This experience gave me more insight to what an after-school program as a teacher from the school would be. I would never just be running a class in the gymnasium, as a teacher of that school I would be working with the students in all of the separate parts of the program. I liked being a part of the whole after school program rather than just the physical activity part. It made it much easier to connect with the students than to just have them play a game. I got to really communicate with them, and not just express that we only have 15-20 minutes and lets get right into a game.