Patience is not my virtue

I was excited to begin tutoring at Peabody. I learned a lot from the students I taught, and I only hope I taught them as much (if not more) as I learned from them. As much as I enjoyed tutoring, some days it felt that it was "in the way" due to make-up tests, upcoming tests, or other homework duties. Overall, tutoring was a learning experience that has taught me a lot... both in positive and negative aspects. Positive in knowing that I could help others, negative in a way that, now I know I do not have the patience to teach kids!

Gabrielle Hernandez

Class of 2015

Gym helper

I enjoyed helping with Peabody Elemetary School. Instead of tutoring, I helped the gym teacher and had a lot of fun. I liked helping the kids and sometimes partaking in the activities they were doing that day. I think gym class is very important to young children, and I felt that the class was well organized and well led. I have a lot of respect for the gym teacher. Though I enjoyed helping, I don't think I could take on that task everyday. However I enjoyed the volunteering experience, and I would continue to do it as long as I can.

Sarah Combs
Class of 2015

Remember the Golden Rule

Nothing excites me more than seeing a smile on a person’s face.  Going on four years, I have been around children.   During the summer, I work for The City of Memphis with the Summer Camp program and The Board Walk with the Memphis Red Birds. Before we started tutoring Peabody Elementary kids, I was eager to meet the children.  Being able to help the children with any kind of work makes me smile, knowing that I can increase their confidence.   I helped them discover different techniques to remember certain words or discover easier ways to remember the main topic of a story. 

                The children felt comfortable around me; I’m sure they thought I was their age by the way I look. What saddens me the most is knowing that some children don’t get attention at home from their parents.  I realize that can be a major reason kids don’t ask for help when their struggling in class. I’m a big believer on the Bible passage “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”  Any way I can help out, I’m willing to do.  

Ty Harris

Class of 2013

Please let me go to the gym!

            When coach first told us that we were going to be tutoring elementary school children, my first thought was, "Ok, this is going to be bad for me; I don't know how to tutor!"  Then she said that we could either tutor or assist the gym teacher.  So I chose to assist the gym teacher.

            In gym class, I learned many different things that I never knew or learned about in elementary school.  For example, they learned about the names of bones of the body.  It amazed me how they could name them, and they are just first graders!

           I really enjoyed this experience.  Seeing them laugh and smile when the teacher brought out a new game to play made me smile because I remember how much I loved gym class in elementary school.  Everyone should volunteer and help students to succeed at a local school.  I think it would be a great experience, especially if you have never done it before.

April Bonner
Class of 2015

You want me to teach reading?

To be honest, when I heard about tutoring I was a little nervous. I have worked with kids before at basketball camps and summer camps, but I never had helped someone with their school work unless it was a classmate or my little brother.  I’m not exactly good at teaching things; I am more of a Kinesthetic Learner, so when I found out I would be helping kids learn to read I wasn’t exactly sure I would be a great teacher. I also found when I was younger when i had tutoring, it was never fun and I didn’t feel like I was learning much. My opinion soon changed when I started tutoring. I found that it was actually fun helping the kids; they would usually say something silly or funny while attempting to learn a big word or something they did not understand.  The activity my kids enjoyed the most was reading a book that either had to do with animals, dinosaurs or some form of action reading like discovering something. They also enjoyed the fact that if we had enough time we could draw a picture of everything we just read to make sure that they understood the story. Overall, I enjoyed my experience tutoring at Peabody. It honestly wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, and I was a better tutor than I thought I could be. This is something that I would like to do again next year.

Aramis Judson

Class of 2015

Kids Aren't as Bad as I Thought!

We (CBU Women's Basketball Team) were assigned the task to tutor students at Peabody Elementary school. The thought of having to work with younger kids frightened me, since I don't really like kids. Secondly, my people skills are not the best. In my mind it was a no win situation for me. The first day I arrived I went to gather my student, and she guided me to the library. Our first assignment was to see how advanced the student was in the ability to recognize words in order to know where our starting point would be. I thought we would get to a first or second grade level, but she flew through the chart. She got down to the fifth grade level.

Overall i had a great experience, even though due to schedule conflicts I was not able to go as many times as I would have liked to. The students taught me to open up and get outside my comfort zone. By doing this I gained a greater appreciation for teachers and what they do to better students. I learned that kids are not as bad as I thought they were.

However, I do not see myself becoming a teacher anytime soon.

Candis Clear
Class of 2013

To Teach or Not to Teach!

I’m currently attending school to be an elementary school teacher so getting the chance to be around students seemed like it would be interesting to me.  It seemed like the perfect opportunity to gain experience and references for my future job.  Before I started tutoring at Peabody I thought to myself, “Okay either this will better prepare you to be a teacher or it will give you time to change majors early on.” 

While tutoring I have learned that sometimes students get easily distracted even by things from the reading.   When this happens you have to remind them of the task at hand and keep them focused.  Also as a tutor it is important to know your student.  If a second grade student is struggling with higher level books you wouldn’t choose a fifth grade book for him or her to read you would choose one appropriate to her grade level.  Yet if you have another second grader who reads beyond his or her grade level you may choose a higher level book in order to challenge that student.  Another thing that will always come in handy when dealing with children is patience.  Sometimes I had to remind myself that my student isn’t my age so I should slow down with the exercises.

The students who I tutor enjoyed playing word games.  If they knew the word you could see the excitement on their faces or if they couldn’t quite pronounce it you could see the confusion.  As a tutor that would be the time I would step in and slowly help them say the word.  When we didn’t play games we would read a book and talk about the illustrations that corresponded with them.  Sometimes we would read a book and if there were no pictures my student would get bored so I noticed that children like pictures.  They seem to make the reading experience more fun.

Well, I’m still an education major so that must tell you that I enjoyed my tutoring experience.  My students may have thought that I was only helping them, but they don’t know how much they helped me.

Amber Williams
Class of 2015