Connecting and Communicating My Ideas

My inspiration for my innovation program came from my past experiences as a student who had a tutor. Through my digital story, I hope to inspire you to see what a great tutor can do to ensure that learning in a process that will benefit our learners.

Learning has not always been the easiest thing for me, it has taken a lot of patience on my end as well as my teachers. I like to always to tell my students that I was not an honor roll student at first, but someone who has felt failure and has failed. Through my failures as a student, I learned the ability to keep trying and move forward even when I feel discouraged.

I see this a lot on our students at our school. Students who fail but don't see another way to "figure out" their mistakes to become successful. Students who have always failed simply because they missed that vital step that could make them successful.

My innovation proposal was created to help those type of students because they're the ones that tend to fall between the cracks our education system. So why not create a tutorial program that will meet our students where they're at in their learning and build the skills that are necessary to help them be successful in the long-run.

As I look forward to the learning process and the steps that need to be taken in my implementation outline, I see students flourishing in their learning because they were able to understand that simple minute step or skill. Through my understanding in how I learn, I feel that I can still connect to those students and understand their struggles.

As an English teacher, I'm used to conferencing with students about their writing, and building their essay skills. Through my conferencing with, we identify together where their weak areas in writing and then we develop goals based on those weaknesses. Through their goals, each student focuses on developing those weaknesses into strengths. I've seen such success in this and rejoiced with our students when they reached those goals. That one small success does so much encourage students to continue on their path to learning.

My plan is to create more light bulb moments for students and teachers to share through our blended learning tutorial program. Through careful research and explanation in my literature review. This program can become great and useful to our students by innovating how we see and use tutorials. Although this is merely an idea, this plan is a continuous working in progress that has room for growth and changes to help our future students.

I want to continue my learning by reading a few articles as well as books that I have been meaning to read.

My reading list

Anderson, C, (2000). How's it going? A practical guide to conferring with student writers. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann.

Carl Anderson's book dives into the practice of conferencing with students about their writing.

As an ELA teacher, I often have difficulties with this with my students. I also thought it would interesting if I could take the writing aspect out for other content area.

Meldrum, Andrianne, ( 2015). The novice tutor: Answers to your questions about running a successful tutoring business. n.a.

Although this book is about running your own tutoring business, I feel like there are aspect to the novel that will help me create a tutoring program for students.

Reeves, D.B ( 2009). Leading change in your school: How to conquer myths, build commitment and get results. Alexandria, VA: ASCD.

I have to admit, I've read parts of this book. After rereading through some old notes, I need to refresh what I have read as well as continue my reading until I finish the book. I think this will benefit my ability to present my innovation plan to my campus when I reach that phase.

Romain, J.E (2015). Managing and combating testing taking anxiety in children. Retrieved from

https://blog.chocchildrens.org/managing-combating-test-taking-anxiety-children/

When I was searching pictures for my video, I came across this article about test taking anxiety in children. This is something that was addressed in my literature review, and I thought about taking more time to research test taking anxiety.