Saturday, April 28, 2012

"Thank you, Jin!" OMG!


# 2nd day at the PLC (3:33-5:11)

                You have no idea how much I didn’t want to go back to the PLC.  Well, I guess you could guess it from the two weeks of gap between the first time and the next time I went to the PLC.  I was too embarrassed to meet Gariuan again.  Actually, I didn’t want to have to see her again because I was not confident about myself teaching something or anything to her.  

                Just as I (selfishly) wished, Gariuan wasn’t in the room today, so I got to tutor a different student named Ayla.  She needed help with Chemistry, which I haven’t even looked at for almost three years; however, I felt a little bit more confident with Chemistry than Language Arts although I’m an English major.  I know it’s ironic and somewhat embarrassing to think or feel this way, but this is how much diffident I am about English.  I’ve always had this mind that I’m not good at English in general because this is my second-language and just because.   

                Whole story in short, I gained some confidence back from today’s tutoring.  On almost all tests and quizzes I helped Ayla, we got 100%.  Because I needed to refresh my Chemistry brain, I watched the online lecture with her and tried solving the problems with her, looking up some extra information on the internet.   So, it was more like a study group than a tutor session, but anyway the result was better.  And, she told me I was pretty and “THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME! I WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GET A 100 WITHOUT YOUR HELP.”  My eyes almost teared up when she told me that, and I thought to myself “perhaps, this is what gets teachers going.” 
 
                I still had problems with speaking eloquently and explaining things effectively to my student, but Ayla seemed to follow me pretty well.  I don’t know if she was just following my explanations and my assumed answers because she didn’t know the answers herself.  I don’t know, but  it felt AWESOME because she respected my explanations and guesses, and most importantly because my guessed answers were correct!   After the PLC, I ran to my neighbor’s room and told her what happened today.  I was so happy, and my neighbor wanted to try out this service learning as well after seeing me all excited and happy.  Today was a very important day for me because it reduced my fear of going to the PLC.
-          Jin Kim, 11:00pm 02/15/12

No comments:

Post a Comment