A Free Tutoring Service...Back to Stephen White Middle School with Mr. Dear!
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Christopher (new student-Stephen White Middle School), Keisha (new student-Carson High School, rear) and Ashley (front-Curtiss Middle School). Right: Ashley takes photo! Please read...A Brief Editorial on Discipline...below! See One Editorial And Then Another!
This Lesson Review is dedicated to Mr. Jim Dear, Schoolteacher at Stephen White Middle School . Mr. Dear referred students to me back in 1999 and attended several sessions at my home in Dominguez Hills. Thank you, Mr. Dear, for your interest and intensity in educating our young people.
A Brief Editorial on Discipline: I have written many, many editorials. They have come about as a result of tutoring all types of students for free over these past 5 years and dealing with all types of parents, teachers, friends and foes. This editorial is aimed at some parents who bring children over and expect me to perform miracles, when they are doing nothing to assist me. I can do no more than the student will allow me. If I have a willing student, then we have a winning combination. Some students will not, I repeat, will not allow me a chance to assist them, no matter how hard I try. They come over for many other reasons than to learn. New students have no need to join if they have disciplinary problems! Those types of students already enrolled will now be weeded out and eliminated from the Free Tutoring Service! Some parents have not been willing to assist me in any way, form or fashion; and so now, they must deal with their own children in some other way than me beating my head against a stone wall to assist them. Our reputation as an intense Tutoring Service will go on and on and on! And so will my sanity!!! Our reputation will remain in tact as a Nonprofit Corporation that assists in elevating the grade point averages of all of our students. Cleophas Mike McAlpin...Founder/Chief Tutor/Webmaster/Director
Tuesday, April 22, 2003: A day of intense tutoring! ...As will all Tuesdays be!
I have set aside all Tuesdays as days of intense one-on-one tutoring. The number of students will be trimmed to a bare minimum on Tuesdays.
This Tuesday saw Christopher, Ashley and Keisha in attendance. Brittney, Cassandra and Charity (Carson Christian School) came over later because of homework assignments. I held one-on-one tutoring with some students for nearly 3 hours. Charity assisted Christopher with his math homework from Stephen White Middle School, while Brittney assisted Keisha with graphing straight lines. Cassandra, though a little ill, grabbed a book and started reading.
Keisha and I discussed her assignment from Carson High School. She now knows nearly all there is to graphing straight lines when 2 points are given. She will undoubtedly make an "A" whenever she is tested on that subject on an examination. Keisha is very smart and catches on very quickly. I stood amazed at her rapid comprehension on how to take an equation and put it into the form of the slope-intercept formula for a straight line...y=mx+b.
It was extremely gratifying to have a parent (Marilyn) in attendance for nearly 2 hours. I was motivated by her presence to carry on an even more intense tutoring session. Some of the topics and activities were:
1. Students were required to put their subjects and grades on the dry erase board and give reasons for passing or failing grades.
2. Students were given a chance to "speak out" on what was troubling them at home and at their respective schools.
3. Counseling occurred at its highest level. After years of witnessing recurring reasons for failure, I feel as if I have a handle on some of the causes for failure. I feel I can now assist psychologically in some way, and so I gave a lecture to the parent and the student.
4. We started with an examination that I had written several years ago for former students. We started with basic fractions and moved to geometry, decimals, exponents, sound, light, history, The Electromagnet Spectrum, prisms, the Internet, CD-ROM educational disks at our disposal, educational links on this website at our disposal, and finally a mental exercise involved with reciting the perfect squares from 1-144 in 6 seconds or less. Christopher finally concentrated and said "1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, 64, 81, 100, 121, 144" with a speed and confidence that made us all envious. It took him to while to really put everything out his mind but the need to recite those perfect squares in rapid fire order! He is well on his way with total and complete concentration on what is before him at Stephen White Middle School in Carson.
One might wonder why so many topics were discussed. One might think it was a waste of time to delve into the speed of light and sound; to speak about the range of human hearing of approximately 15 hertz to 15 KHz; to tell of the speed of light as 186,000 miles per second versus the speed of sound at 1000 feet per second and make comparisons between those two speeds; to tell about how light is dispersed through the prism that I held up for inspection before the students; to tell how "white light" is broken up into the colors that humans can see, from infrared to ultraviolet; to speak of tectonic plates, earthquakes and erosion; to speak of the cochlea, the hammer and the anvil as parts of the human ear and what "loud rap music" is doing to them; to speak of the woofers, tweeters and midrange speakers of the stereo system that stood nearby; to speak of the graphic equalizer and how it works to make music sound better; to speak of hearing examinations and how some of us will fail if boyfriends or girlfriends play car stereos too loud; to speak of child-parent confrontations and the reasons for them; to speak of ways to eliminate those confrontations; to speak of the church and the need to attend one; to speak of pride in oneself and pride in one's Race; to speak of Slavery and how far Minorities have come in education when they were thought of as idiots during Slavery days and afterwards; to speak of Charles Darwin and the "Origin of the Species"; to speak of from whence we came and our goals for the future; to speak of Blacks who now stand as "Directors of the United States Foreign Policy" when Blacks were once thought of as being inferior to all other Races; to tell it like it is at High Schools and Middle schools that turn their backs on student-lesbian love in hallways without saying a word about it; to tell it like it is when gang violence is tolerated on school campuses, and students hate to attend because of that violence; to tell students they should spend at least 3 hours per afternoon in intense studying and limit telephone and television to no more than 30-minutes! to tell it like it really is when one makes all "F" or all "D" grades and blame everyone else but oneself; to tell all students that they are hurting no one but themselves when they fail in school; to really come down on some teachers for not being intense in their jobs and cooperating with someone like me who is only trying assist them with their job!
Yes, these were some of the topics discussed on this Tuesday, April 22, from 3:00PM to 8:00PM. These were some of things that we did on this intense day of lecturing and tutoring and assisting with homework.
Thank you, Marilyn, for your attendance and interest. I am extremely elated when a parent participates in our Tutoring Session. It was a fun-filled afternoon of laughter and learning. It was an intense tutoring afternoon; one that has truly motivated me to carry on the work that I do...for absolutely no monetary gain! I, along with approximately 30 Professionals, all work for free! Doctors, Attorneys, Judges, Principals, Schoolteachers, C.E.O's, Colonels, Electrical Supervisors, Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Assistant Principals, and many others.....all work for free to "prepare our youth for the future"... in this Free Tutoring Service. We all are doing our part to assist...and I repeat...we are all working for free!
To the Schools: I, Cleophas Mike McAlpin, Director and Chief Tutor, will come to Stephen White Middle School, Carson High School and Curtiss Middle School to sit in classrooms and monitor subjects taught to the students above, as well as other students in the Tutoring Service...in the very near future. I will come armed with permission and paperwork from parents that give me that privilege. I have sat in the classrooms of over 300 tutoring students over these past 5 years and have been met with very little resistance. Please allow me an opportunity to sit in on classes so that I might assist you in your job! This is a part of our curriculum. Thank you.