Claire TS #2

Date/Time: March 10, 6:30-8:30pm

Location: Tutee’s home in Sienna Square Apartments

I met with my child tutee Damarce and her 5 siblings for the first time today. When I arrived at the apartment, only Damarce’s older brother Mutoni was there, and he informed me that their mother was in the hospital. When I asked Mutoni where his brothers and sisters were, he asked me to pull up Youtube on my phone and played several African music videos by his older brother and sister who are apparently gospel music stars in Rwanda. After like 20 minutes of that, I asked again about Damarce and he called his siblings back to the apartment from where they had been playing outside. 

They invited me to have a seat at their kitchen table and I invited any of the children who wanted to learn English to come have a seat too. I quizzed them a little bit on colors by pointing to different things in the room and asking their color. I asked each of them his or her name and how to spell it to check how comfortable they were with the letters of the alphabet. The lesson I planned involved important questions and answers to know for everyday life and learning English (such as "Yes/No," "What is this [called]?" and "I don't understand"). I made something like flashcards with three sections—the English word/phrase, a picture to represent it, and the Kinyarwanda equivalent. I went over each one and its pronunciation. I asked them some comprehension questions and tried to get them to practice using the vocabulary in pairs (person #1 pick a question to ask person #2; person #2 give an answer that makes sense), but they didn’t really seem to follow. I think they are used to speaking in English only with the teacher and being asked questions with only one right answer. I want to work on getting them to practice speaking English with one another, since it could benefit them so much in the long run. Going forward, I think I need to work on making the activities simpler/not trying to pack in so much and “teaching to the middle.” The oldest sibling there understood what I was saying throughout and translated my instructions to the younger children, but I don’t want to aim my lessons way too high for my tutee, who is a second grader. I wonder if I should ask the older girl not to translate for me unless everyone is totally confused, because it takes away the incentive for the others to try to listen and figure out what I’m saying in English. I did a couple of brief activities at the end that I hope to do each week to help improve their pronunciation and listening. They seemed to really enjoy them, so I’ll try to keep incorporating them in meaningful ways.

A friend of mine did the TEFL Certificate last session and tutored this family. She had shared with me how sweet the family was and how the parents were always present during the tutoring sessions, so I felt fairly comfortable going into this tutoring session despite my very limited experience with children. However, the parents were not there for my first visit. I think that was a good thing for me to experience though. It helped me push past my fear of being left alone with a bunch of kids I didn’t know. It didn’t hit me until I was done tutoring and was on my way home that my “biggest tutoring fear” had come to pass; I had shown up to a household of kids with all different English levels that I didn’t know and there were no parents present…and it was okay!