Tutoring

February 17, 2010.

The novice monks in Monk School take one English class a week at Monk School. This is not enough, and in every class there are usually at least 5 students who are really struggling with the material. As each lesson builds on the previous lesson, I am concerned that the ones who are behind (e.g., who cannot read) will never catch up. To that end, we have been discussing offering tutoring on the weekend but could never figure out when and where to do it. The novices have a busy day during the week and have to be at their own temples for praying and breakfast in the morning, then again for lunch before noon and for praying later in the afternoon. There is of course the added complication that the novices who most need help do not know English and my Lao is very limited. In our class on Friday, we broke out into 4 groups with about 6 students in each group. I really enjoy small group work because you can really see who is understanding the exercise and who is struggling. In my group, I had 2 students who were clearly not able to do the exercise. Lao students are excellent collaborators, which unfortunately means that when someone doesn’t understand and others do, the ones who do just provide the answer to the ones who don’t. There is a lot of shameless copying. However, I have observed that once students understand that (1) they are expected to try and (2) we will help them and (3) copying is not what we want, then having students who work together well is a big help. So I asked Tricia Feeney (the main GVI English teacher at the Monk School) to tell the class that I would be at the outdoor tables at the Monk School at 1:00 on Saturday. I did not expect anyone to show up but I had to try, and if no one showed I was happy to sit on temple grounds and read a book for an hour.

When I arrived on Saturday, a novice monk from the temple (on whose grounds the Monk School is located) joined me. He was keen to work on his English, so we chatted. Ron joined us a few minutes later. And lo and behold, so did 3 students from my class. I left Ron with the first novice and worked with the students from my class. Two more students joined us. Success! I wasn’t sure how much they were enjoying it (we were really just reviewing material from the last class), but at the end of the session they asked if I was going to be there the next day. So of course I said yes. I then designed a lesson to cover more material from previous lessons. Three students joined me and we had a lot of fun. I brought a small whiteboard and a clock (so we could practice telling time). It was a good session. One keen young novice asked if I would be there again next week, so of course I said yes. I am hooked. I really want to work with the students who are struggling, so Ron is going to run a more advanced session for the keeners (since he is already working with one keen novice) and I will work with the ones who need to start from square one. I am looking for an English-Lao dictionary that has the English word, the Lao word in English script, and then the Lao word in Lao script. I’m told (by several people) that Phosy market should have them. I will look on Friday when I go to get my week’s supply of cookies for morning alms…