FGD Insights | Session 5
Last March 20, I was one of the unfortunate student tutors who
were not able to catch up to our tutees who were on their way home. Apparently,
our tutees were dismissed early because if I’m not mistaken, it was the last
day of their classes.
I was extremely saddened by this because if it were their last
day, then does that mean Jayven wouldn’t come to school EVER again? Was last
week’s session our very last session? But I haven’t done that much impact to
his learning yet. Aside from that, we haven’t even said our farewells yet! This
is an unfinished business!
These are the thoughts that were running in my mind. I almost had
the urge to ask Jayven’s homeroom teacher about his residential address so that
I can go fetch him myself. Before I could carry this out however, our
professors advised us to finish our Focus Group Discussions instead—something I
wasn’t able to participate in because I was running late that morning.
That being said, I decided to head back to College of Education to
continue the FGD with my other supposed group participants. Once I arrived,
however, my supposed group was already discussing. Hence, I didn’t have a
choice but to create my own FGD with another lone person who didn’t have a
group—Raeven.
Raeven and I share the same sentiments when it comes to the
weaknesses and needs of our tutees. Both our tutees have a very little
phonological awareness with vowels, and they often interchange e and i, and o
and u. Thus, we both felt the need to provide supplementary activities that can
help resolve this.
Unlike my tutee, one of Raeven’s tutees always seems to get
distracted. And Raeven’s insight on how she handles this struck me the most
during our FGD. According to her, she uses the behaviourist approach which is
using reinforcements to make her tutee more attentive in their sessions.
Hearing her use this strategy wasn’t the thing that shocked me; it was her
negative outlook towards using it. It was as if she was embarrassed of herself
for using operant conditioning as a strategy to get the attention of her tutee.
In a way, I realized how some strategies are perceived as “bad” by
a lot of education students probably because of how these strategies are
presented in their respective classes. I just wish that this connotation would
be eliminated because for me, this is a misconception. These strategies exist
and continue to thrive for a reason, and this reason goes to the fact that they
are effective to some students.
Using a behaviorist approach is not necessarily bad--you are right. However, if one's student gets too used to the extrinsic reward, he or she may not be motivated to do the work when it is not given. I suggest that if rewards are to be given, these should be few and far between. There are many other ways apart from the behavioristic approach that one can try to get one's tutee to work hard at given tasks :)
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