Service Learning Week #4

This week was definitely very interesting.
On Monday I was asked by my boss if I have free on Wednesday, and after I thought about it, I said yes, because on this day is Senior Assessment day and I did not have any plans for that day yet.
So then she told me right away: "Ok so you are going to come in at 8 o'clock in the morning and will stay until 5 in the afternoon." First I thought "Great, my only free day and then work."
I was suppose to be looking after one of the Computer Labs in Websterhall, since they know that I am quite good with computers. I was there to help the teachers out if they had any problems with the computers or with the Test Program itself.
So I got there this morning (Wednesday) at 8 o'clock, obviously I was again the first one to be there. All rooms where locked and nobody was there. I waited for 10 min until the secretary showed up with whom I was suppose to look and check over the three labs in Webster. We stated with setting up all the computers in the Lab. We had to check on the Internet Browser for the Pop-up Blocker and had to make sure that the links to the Test page worked.
After we where done with the three Labs, I was assigned to look over the two upstairs, while she was checking on the one's downstairs.
Everything went quite smoothly, the Teachers arrived, the students started taking their test, until the first problems started to show up. One of the students lost connection to the Internet and was afterwards not able to log into his Test again.
Another one's Test got stuck on one page and so on.
I solved most of these Problems myself and for the rest of them I called a friend of mine in Matthew Hall who was during that time responsible for all the labs and was handling the big problems.
After the first test we had a little lunch break and shortly after that we had to get the computers again ready for the next Test.
The second test went better then the first one. With less problems and easy to solve one's.
All in all it was a very long and tiring day and I will go to bed now right away. But I still enjoyed doing so.

Service Learning Week #3

Last week I had a women there to Tutor that comes to me regularly already since last semester. This week she came only once in, since she wanted me to go over a test that she recently got back in her german class. Besides a view little mistakes where she seemed not to have concentrated enough she did very well. It seems to me that tests get longer and longer in today's language classes. You don't have much time anymore to think about you answer because otherwise one will run out of time. I realised that on one of my own classes too. I take French as one of my language classes. And we got a 70 Question long test. half of it was answering long questions to different texts.
Besides that I did not do much with her anymore.
The rest of the time this week no one else came to my tutoring. But this didn't mean from me to relax, but more that there is a lot of other work that I have to do while not tutoring.
I started out with sorting the Foreign Language Video's that they have there. It is not the most fun thing to do, but I enjoy the company with the other Tutors.
To me it seems that the language that most questioned for help is Spanish. 90% of the times when a student comes in to ask for a tutor, he/she is looking for a Spanish tutor.

Besides that not much more happened this Week.

Service Learning Week #2

I had a really intersting week this week. I got my first person to Tutor, which I had already also for most of my last semester.
She is a student who is taking german and came somewhere around the middle of last semester to request some help from me to prepare her for her class. She is a really nice person, and truly enjoys having me as her Tutor. She comes in about 2 hours a week, two days each one hour. She is a really hard working student who tries to improve as much as she can. She has troubles with her grammar in gerneral and so I try to help her out in this area. Even thought she improves quite quickly with her learning together with me, she still always comes back every week, because they learned new things in her class which she tries to understand completely.
We always have fun together, when I help her out with the new things they got taught in class. We try to make learning as enjoyable as possible and if she doesn't know something, than it is not bad, but through that we can figure out her weaknesses which she is willing to work really hard on.

This is so far my seconds week experience which was in my opinion very interesting.

Service Learning Week #1

I think as my first post it would be only right if I first explain what I am doing at the place that I am working at. One first has to understand the surroundings and the people that work around one before I can analyze them and my work completely.
I work as a foreign language tutor in the foreign language department, besides me there are several other tutors. I am tutoring German since I am German myself as many know already. Besides all the other Tutor, we also have a secretary, my boss, and people who look over the foreign language lab.
Dr Kluthe said at our last class meeting that it is going to be hard for those people who are already insiders to have an outsider look and point of view, but I don't think so. I have worked in the foreign language department as a tutor and a webdesigner already last semester and I am still remembering also my beginnings how it was for me to go there the first time, getting then my first student to tutor and helping out at the place and learning about the people that are working there.
I think this place is a very interesting to be at, because I am not only getting to see everything in the point of a tutor, but also I am getting to meet casual students from campus. This environment that I am working in is giving me to understand how hard it is for students and also for the people to help them to get better in their classes.
My very first day there was not that interesting. Sure it was a little bit weird for me to learn that I have to sit now on the other side of the table of a student, don't get taught but teach. But on my first day I did not had to do anything of these but I got to learn some of the friendly people that are working there, get to view the facilities and had to learn the rules about what students can and can't use.
This was pretty much my first day at my volunteer work place.