First off,

I have to mention how much I loved working with middle schoolers again. Though I love teaching at every level, the middle schoolers have so much spunk and energy, it rubs off a little and I can not help leaving with a smile on my face every Wednesday morning I spent there.
Before we started tutoring, I attended a training for AVID tutors and I honestly can say that I was very nervous because it was stated that math is where students will need the most help. However, with the way AVID works, students also help "tutor" one another and help as much if not more than I would. It turns out my job really was to keep the kiddos focused, on task, and to question when students could no longer question one another.
Something that was really beneficial to my success in this particular classroom was due to the first day of class with the students. The teacher of this AVID classroom had students interview us and also had us tutors play two truths and a lie for the students to guess. The reason I believe success can be attributed two this day is because students were able to immediately make connections and start to build relationships with me to be open and vulnerable later on.

One of the challenges I faced was engagement during tutorials. Students often are weary and maybe even dread presenting their "point of confusion" with their peers. Despite this being a challenge, I noticed that if I was gentle and showed understanding and patience, students would finally volunteer. Now, I am not saying this is a perfect system, sometimes we would participate in some awkward silence until someone gave into the awkwardness.

If AVID is not something that is implemented into my future school, I will bring a few things with me from this experience:

~ Relationships are key,

~ Embrace the awkwardness,

~ Teaching people skills may out-trump content learning some days,

and finally, teaching students democracy skills like interviewing, public speaking, and asking for help is super important, should be and can be implemented in every lesson.