Notes from Pegeen

Hi all,

Thanks for your ongoing efforts to make this project work. This is new for me, too, and since I signed on to this project at the very last minute, I'm learning as I go. In fact, one thing I've learned--and this is a note for Dolly and Kyle for their report at the end--I believe that for this kind of set-up to work, there has to be a lot more deliberate preparation on the part of the instructor to integrate tutors into the classroom, while she's designing the course, the assignments, the daily schedule etc. As it is, I'm making this up as I go, and I appreciate your patience with me!

To address a couple of concerns:
Tutors are welcome in my class at any time, even on days they're not scheduled, and for as much of the class as they like. I may not have something for you to do every day, but there should always be conversations and instruction for you to observe. When I made the tutor schedule, I was trying to imagine those days when there would be more hands-on work and/or more explicit instructions about the assignments the students were working on. I was worried that you would feel like you were wasting your time just watching the students and me talk. But if you think this would be useful, then by all means, please come!

The piece of this that I'm still working out is how, and to what extent, to invite tutors to participate in the class discussions. As a teacher, I work really, really hard to make students accountable to the rest of the class by showing up prepared and willing to participate in conversation. Any teacher will tell you that the classroom dynamic is one of the trickiest and least predictable parts of teaching a course like this. I still worry that these students in particular will start to "shut down" if tutors are participating in the discussions. Not only do they see you as older, but also wiser--better readers, better writers, better students (after all, you're the tutors!) I'm not sure what to do about this, but I'm thinking about it, and would appreciate feedback.

During the next couple of weeks, we're still reading the first part of Outliers, they'll be writing a summary of Ch. 2 this week, and then we'll start working on the next major essay assignment. As I said above, you are welcome to attend my class whenever you like!

Pegeen