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Math tutoring is often kind of obtuse.

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One thing I heard from a teacher at SPCPA was the best advice he ever got when he started volunteering in schools was to support the classroom. By that, he meant don’t come into a class with a personal agenda, but instead find out what the goals of that space or time are and do what you can do contribute to them. Reflecting now, I think that attitude helped me get the most out of my time. I learned a tremendous amount at SPCPA, both from the students I worked with and the teachers I observed. Most salient for me I think has been two things; an increased confidence I feel both in my skills as a tutor and in interacting with adult professionals in the education field. To summarize, I think that I would love to teach at SPCPA, but I’m not sure I would love working there.

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As an institution, SPCPA was very accommodating for me in finding spaces where I could both learn the most and where I could be the most helpful. Even with an alternating A-Day/B-Day schedule that only allowed me to see the same students every other week, I had a personal schedule that allowed me to work in the same classrooms every time I was there.

For an hour and a half I was in Mr. Petersen’s Advanced Algebra classroom, where I acted as a tutor when I could, but also spent plenty of time just observing. Mr. Petersen is an excellent teacher, who often encouraged me take on a daily challenge for myself, like taking notes on which students spoke the most by demographics or where the most common misunderstandings were.

The rest of my weekly four hours I spent in a study hall. At SPCPA, each student is required to have a study hall in their schedule, during which they do a weekly self evaluation with a teacher. I would help students in classes they were consistently struggling in, and I got to build relationships with a few students as well as learn how classes at SPCPA generally structured their work. This was by far where I had the most fun, working with students is a blast.

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While I was tutoring in SPCPA, it felt like there were a great deal of cool programs and ideas, but the execution of those ideas often felt half-baked. For example, while SPCPA seemed to be trying to support LGBT+ communities within their school, I didn’t see any outreach for students of color. In a similar but less serious example, I would frequently have to spend time looking up info for student’s assignments because the study hall coordinator didn’t know they already had it. This was kind of a persistent feeling I got while I was at SPCPA. A great deal of positive energy and good intentions, but a lack of organization and cohesion was holding things back from becoming something more impressive.

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According to the school website, SPCPA’s student body is about 20% students of color and approximately 70% of students are female. Additionally, although I couldn’t find any specific information, as far as I could externally observe there seemed to be a large population of LGBT+ students. I mention this because the school seemed to be doing a lot of cool things to support an inclusive environment, like making preferred pronouns a mandatory part of every introduction and openly discussing respecting a student’s gender expression. At least as far as I can observe, social justice seemed like an important part of the school’s climate.

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Without a doubt, the student population at SPCPA is absolutely incredible. It was really neat to work with a group of people who were consistently passionate about what they were doing at school. Even though I was never in a space where students were working on their performances, there was still a tremendous amount of passion and energy that most students carried to other parts of their academics. Most class sizes were pretty small, around 15-20, so that could also have been an important factor in what seemed like generally high student engagement.

From my observation, the general teaching style at SPCPA seemed to be a mixed bag. Teachers were mostly younger, and I learned that because SPCPA is a charter school, educators there cannot be part of the teacher’s union. Even with the energy from the student body, some of the teachers I worked with seemed kind of uninspired. That being said though, there were some teachers that were really incredible. One math teacher I worked with, Mr. Petersen, was really incredible in the way he developed student’s understanding of math concepts by asking students careful questions, something that wouldn’t have been possible without few students and high attention.

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Coming into SPCPA, most of my actual guesses about what the school or my role might be like felt very secondary, because I was actually quite nervous about my ability to be a good tutor! This was a stressful semester for me, and I was worried that I wouldn’t be helpful for students or teachers. At the same time though, I did have a lot of guesses about what the environment might be like. I attended a college prep private middle school from 5th to 8th grade, so I based a lot of my expectations on that experiences. Small classes, a wide variety in teaching style, and a less diverse student population because of the systems of opportunity that affected access to alternative schooling options were a couple of things I was keeping my eyes open for.

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St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists

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St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists

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-SCPCA is a charter school in downtown St. Paul, serving students in grades 9-12 involved in performing arts who are interested in a conservatory or college experience after graduation.

-In addition to classwork, students fall into one of several tracks depending on their art

experience and take classes related to their track in order to develop their skills. The tracks offered at SPCPA include vocal performance, theater, musical theater, dance, and vocal arts.

-As a volunteer, I worked in three different classrooms, primarily as a tutor or a classroom assistant depending on the needs of the space I was in.