An Update on “My Teaching Job (?!)”

Thank you everyone for your words of encouragement and congratulations on this post!

I ended up not starting on Friday since my application was still being processed. I’m waiting to hear back from the school. I’ll update when I’ve had my first day!

Jodi asked: What will your duties include? Will you work 1:1, w/ small groups, or in the classroom w/ the teacher?

As an AVID tutor, I will be an assistant to one of the AVID teachers and work with him all day through four class periods with students in grade levels 9-11.  I’ll only work one or two days a week and those days will be Tutorial Days; if second tutor is needed, the days he or she works will also be Tutorial Days. AVID provides many helpful tutoring and studying techniques for students, so that they can help each other and themselves: for example, students are taught that when helping a friend, to lead them to the answer with prodding questions instead of saying the answer outright.

I’ll be overseeing this process with the AVID teacher. Students bring in a few questions they had from their core classes (like a math concept that’s giving them trouble or an essay prompt they’re puzzling over), get into small groups according to the subject of their questions, and take turns explaining their question and receiving guidance and help from the tutor (the AVID teacher, me, a student in the group who feels confident with the question, or a combination). Students are encouraged to bring the textbooks and notes of the classes they have questions for extra resources.

Being an AVID graduate, it’s been fun to write about this process that’s so familiar to me! More to come!

My Teaching Job(?!)

I received a surprise blessing last week: I’m being hired by Manteo High School, my alma mater, to be an AVID tutor! The front office secretary left a message on my answering machine earlier this week to call back when I can and when I did, the principal asked me to come to the office. They said after the previous tutor said she couldn’t work this year, that I was their first choice to take her job. It’s kind of crazy and I’m worried that I’ll be really busy with two part-time jobs and being a full time student, but I told them my schedule and they seem flexible. I’ll be working Fridays through the whole school day with a previous AVID teacher of mine. Since I want to become an English teacher, it should be an eye-opener!

Looking Back

In honor of Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, here are two pieces I wrote about my experience with cancer and how it has affected my life up to the present.

Handwriting In Education

Image from abcandj.com

(This was my senior graduation project paper. Click here to see my product!)

In all the ways America has changed over the last century, schools are among what have changed the most. Some change has been for the better; some has not. For better or worse, this is mostly due to our nation’s increasingly modernizing culture. Students are not as ready for their futures after high school as they could be due to factors such as regression in their writing abilities.

Handwriting Survey Documentary

Here is the product of my Senior Project. I did a survey of what people thought of four samples of handwriting and made a documentary about it. I then discussed people’s opinions of handwriting versus typing.

Enjoy!

Click here to read the essay I wrote on the topic.

Handwriting Survey!

Hey everyone! I need your opinions for a study that I doing on handwriting. Please take a look at these samples of handwriting and answer the following questions about one or more in an email to sharah353@gmail.com.

My First Author-ish Experience

I have an elective class called AVID, which helps students prepare for college. The teacher of that class is also an English teacher, the yearbook class teacher, and the SAT Preparation Course teacher. Apparently, the only student to sign up for the latter class was a girl named Abby, so they combined the SAT Preparation Course with the AVID class. Since she has already taken the SAT, she mostly works on the yearbook during fourth period, organizing pictures and writing articles.

One day this last December, she approached me about having an article in the yearbook about my book. I have told maybe a dozen people in school about it, so I guess by now, in my senior year, I’m pretty well known as a writer. With a flutter in my stomach, I accepted and Abby said that she would email me a list of interview questions for me to answer. It took an embarrassingly long time to finish (my internal editor was always proofreading it) but I finally got it to Abby last month. She pulled pieces of it to write up in an article, but here is the original interview. Enjoy!

A Video!

I have been experimenting with the video editing program, Movie Studio Platinum, for about a year now. It’s been a slow process, but I’ve finally figured it out to some degree! Here’s a recent video I put together. Enjoy!

The Positive Conundrum

So I’ve been digesting something.

Not literally. I mean, I’ve been digesting my supper for the last two hours or so. But that’s not the point.

I’ve been mentally digesting something.

Purpose.

Lesley recently commented on a blog post of my mom’s and I’d like to answer a few questions she posed.

She said:

“Thank you for taking the time to post all those past photos. Such a miracle she is. Does she ever feel burdened with the thought that she has to do something ‘special’ because she was given the chance for a future, like she was given it for a reason? Or is she content to just be “Sarah”? Odd question, I know lol.”

First of all, it’s not an odd question at all. :)