Primary Task

By: Laura Huber

As a peer tutor, I probably learned more in this course than in any other course I have ever taken. This is not necessarily academic information type learning, but more learning about me and my future.

I have known for quite a few years now that I want to be a Visual Arts and Drama teacher, and have just been waiting to take this course, so that I can find out if I am really suited for the job. Now that I have taken it, I am positive that it's what I want to be.

I had many more positive experiences in this class than negative. There were only a few students who caused problems, and even then they were mostly cooperative. All of the students made me happy for different reasons, and each one of them gave me an experience to remember.

There was no single most satisfying experience that I had in this course. The best I can think of is an amalgamation of multiple things that were said and shown to me over the months I was there, and ended with a pretty awesome experience. It started with some students who decided that since I was the peer tutor, I was amazing at art and probably 'a hundred times better' than them. They looked at my work and thought they could never compare to it. In the first few weeks, I kept receiving these compliments. But as time passed and the students handed in more and more work, I started showing some of the individuals who had told me these things their work in comparison to my examples. At first they did not believe what I was saying - that their work was much better than mine. But the more I showed them, the more they came to understand. Finally, nearing the end of the semester, I had a student say to me" "You've shown me that I can be better than you if I try. Thank you."

For some people, hearing that from a grade nine, they would think it was an insult. But to me, it was one of the best things I've ever heard, because it made me feel like I had accomplished something, that I really had taught someone all I could. My success was standing right in front of me, only a foot shorter.

This class, save for one of two students, was generally unstressed about everything. Only a few students really worried about their work, and I thought it was sort of funny because they were the students who were doing the best, and who did not have to worry. Due to this, there were not many times that I might have had to reduce stress using humour. In fact, I can only think of one time with a specific student, where I helped her to remember the name of one of the members of the Group of Seven. She was very stressed that she could not remember his name, because it was going to be on an upcoming test, and on the final exam.

In this situation, I used a sort of inside/ongoing joke between me and my friend in Anthropology class. We were talking about Erik Erikson, and it went on to us making up as many people as we could think of who had similar first names to last names. For example: Jamie Jamieson, Rob Roberts, John Johnston, etc.

I told this to the student, because the member of the Group of Seven that she had trouble remembering was "Tom Thompson". This is a hard joke to tell, because you'd really have to be there to get the humour of it, or you'd have to be as immature as we are. But my student got it, and we laughed about it for some time. After the test she thanked me, and told me that she had a hard time keeping in her laughter as she was filling in that question.

To finish this off, I'll briefly list a few of my more memorable experiences during this course:

• At the beginning of the semester, I had to sit (squishing myself) between two of the computers on the desk in the computer lab, so be able to sufficiently block one boys attempts at bugging a girl. Then I was tickled by the boy, as he was trying to make me move.
• I told a bot that he could not use his cell phone in class. He then handed it to me, saying "okay, I know you have to take it then." I don't even know if I was allowed to take it or not, but I kept it in my pocket and gave it back to him at the end of class. I didn't even ask for it!
• I had to try to stop an aggressive discussion (not quite argument) between a few of the more easily distract-able boys, that continued for weeks. They were talking about the Creationist Theory versus the Big Bang Theory, and they kept asking as many students as they could which one was right, so that they could have more people on their side. If it hadn't made them completely stop working, I would have let them continue. They knew that if they could get me on one of their sides, that side would win, for some odd reason unknown to me. I knew that even if I answered them they would not stop, so I just told them that I wouldn't tell them my opinions, and that arguing over religions just cases war, and they should SHUSH and do their work!

All in all, this was probably the best and more informative course that I have ever taken. I had great experiences, learned lots about myself and others, made new friends, and just had a lot of fun. I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to have a positive impact on other peoples' lives, and have a good time while they're doing it.