I tested a student named Olympia by asking her to spell vocabulary words that were on her spelling quiz. The reason I did this was that she was not working on a homework assignment, so I thought I could ask her some spelling words to see if she knew the words or not. This method is called active recall because students are being tested or testing themselves on what they know and don’t know. As I scanned the word list, I randomly chose the words to be spelled and told Olympia to spell them. Olympia spelled almost all the words correctly with one or two mistakes, and she displayed contentment on her face when I complimented her for every word spelled correctly. Additionally, I tested a student named Georgia with her multiplication because she was writing out all the multiplication tables from one to nine on the back of her multiplication table cheat sheet. I was unsure if she knew all her multiplication tables, and I figured the only way to find out was to test her. I asked her to tell me the answers to some of the multiplication problems, and she answered them correctly with certain problems requiring more time than the other problems. Georgia’s hands were on her lap, and I noticed that she found the answers to the hard multiplication problems by counting the numbers with her fingers. That image of her counting touched my heart because I remembered counting with my fingers from elementary school to middle school when we were not allowed to use calculators on math exams. I told Georgia that counting with her fingers may take more time, but she should not be embarrassed because she should stick to a method that will get her the answer. By testing the students on what they learned, I understood the importance of active recall as the keys to exam success and memory consolidation because the brain is actively engaged to recall the information learned or studied. 

I decided to head down to the arts class because the library was close to empty and most of the students were doing fun activities in the last hour of the academy. When I entered the room, I saw students drawing something on computer papers with markers, teachers observing the children, and other students playing with the train tracks on the carpet. I went over to the second table where the students were drawing and introduced myself. The children were adorable with their pure smiles, cute drawings, and talkative behaviors. There was a problem between Edith and Dabby because Edith was unwilling to share the sticker book with Dabby, so another teacher had to intervene and ask Edith to share the sticker book. I also encouraged Edith to share the sticker book because the book was the school’s property and that Dabby did not receive any stickers. It was a comforting sight to see both Edith and Dabby cooperate by sharing the sticker book, putting the stickers into their papers, and talking about the stickers. This sight reminded me of arts class in elementary school where I would talk with friends and draw something. I feel glad that I went down to the arts class because it helped me relax to see children be creative with art. 

Madaline asked me to help her with her math homework to which I gladly accepted. Seeing that she only completed two of the conversions, I tried to remember what method my elementary school teacher taught us to make conversions and immediately a lightbulb went off. I decided to teach Madaline the King Henry Doesn’t Usually Drink Chocolate Milk (KHDUDCM) acronym where the first letter of each word represented a type of meter and “usually” represented the standard unit of meter. I wrote out the first letters of each word in the acronym on top and wrote the number from the third question under the K column on Madaline’s notebook. I walked Madaline through the steps and explained to her the process for each question, and Madaline seemed to understand as she nodded and showed focus when she answered my questions correctly on the number of zeros and decimal places. Madaline’s confidence in working through the questions shined brightly, and I think the main reason was due to her understanding of making conversions and using a simple strategy to get the answers. I smiled at the thought of teaching a strategy that I found useful to me to a young student because I felt that my small help allowed her to make sense out of what she learned in class. This made me realize that tutors and teachers most likely feel an internal source of reward when they see students understand the material and work through the problems.

I double-checked a student’s math homework, and I hoped my explanations helped her better understand the material. There was a question that asked if the person would arrive at the movie theater on time, and the question required information from the previous question for the answer. When I understood what the question asked and computed the answer, I explained to the student what she needed to do using the information from the previous question. I told her that the person would not arrive at the movie theater on time because the person would be 2 minutes late. The student did not mindlessly listen to my explanation because she nodded her head and made eye contact to show that she was listening attentively. She asked me questions to understand the problem. Although I told her what to write on her paper, I think she understood it but she needed more practice on those related time problems to figure out why the person would be late. While double-checking the student’s math homework, I was reminded of how the easier problems were at the beginning and harder problems were at the end. I remembered how I wished all the math problems were at the same difficulty level in elementary school, but now as a college student I understood that the shift in difficulty level was to challenge the students’ understanding of what they learned and force them to apply the math principles in a critical way.

I assisted a girl named Madalaine with her English homework, which was to write sentences that included the vocabulary words that she learned. When Madalaine showed me the words she learned in her notebook, my eyes widened with surprise because the vocabulary words were pretty advanced. She explained to me that the words stemmed from the Latin root word “port”, which meant to carry. I asked her what grade she is in and she told me that she is in fifth grade. Now I understood why she was learning words such as spectator and portable because fifth grade is the last grade of elementary school. There was one word that Madalaine asked me to define. The word was opportunity. I told her that opportunity is something that is given to you and you should take it to grow as well as improve. I don’t think my definition seemed clear to her, so I asked her if the A+ Academy was an opportunity for her to improve her math and science skills. She stared at me blankly and said she did not know. We eventually moved on to another word that was simpler and easier to write a sentence for. However, the word opportunity stuck with me because I wondered how the Latin root word applied to the word opportunity. Finding the answer on Google, I learned that opportunity came from the phrase ob portum veniens “coming toward a port”, which meant wind blowing ships into the harbor or favorable wind that came blowing towards someone. This is an insightful meaning because an opportunity is something favorable that comes toward a person, and the person has the choice to either grab it or let it go.

My first volunteering experience at Beverly J. Martin Elementary School’s A+ Academy was enjoyable. Ms. Stacy asked me to help a boy named Ansan with his math homework. Ansan is an energetic and bright boy who approached me with a smile as well as waved his two sheets of homework and pencil at me. We sat down in front of the two tables in the classroom area. Ansan asked me how to solve a question that involved groups of numbers, so I told him to draw out the boxes and put dots in each box. He drew the boxes and counted the dots with excitement because he did not have to do complex calculations. 

We finished one sheet of homework, so we had another sheet of homework left. The first question asked to make an array of squares, and my mind went blank. I knew this was elementary school level math, but the wording of the question completely escaped from me. We asked Ms. Stacy and Ansan’s friend if they knew how to solve the question, and Ansan’s friend told us to draw the squares on the lines. My brain immediately connected the dots, so I explained to Ansan that he needed to draw five squares in each of the two lines. We eventually moved to a different table so that we can focus on finishing the homework. There was a question that had multiple parts, and two of them puzzled me because they involved understanding how columns and rows worked. I explained to Ansan that a vertical line is a column and a horizontal line is a row. The array had 16 squares and the question asked what number multiplied several times together resulted in the answer. It took me a few minutes and repeated reading for me to understand the question, but I explained how to solve it to Ansan. It looked like he had trouble understanding columns and rows, but he tried to understand what I was saying as he wrote down the answers. For one of the questions, I had to search up how to draw a tape diagram, and I learned that it was a long rectangle with multiple straight lines. I told Ansan the number of lines he needed to draw on the rectangle, and he quickly drew the lines out of excitement to finish his homework. Helping Ansan with his homework was a meaningful experience because it taught me how I can better engage students to focus and explain the correct answers to the homework.