TCNJ

23 FALL 2021 While the tutoring corps was designed with young students in mind, it had the secondary benefit of giving future teachers like Williams the experience of working with students in small-group or one-on-one settings — something these soon-to- be educators were deprived of during the pandemic. "We wanted them to get more experience working with actual kids in person," McCotter says. The tutors — students and recent graduates from colleges across New Jersey — spent the first week of July learning about the curriculum they would be teaching from TCNJ math professors. They also received general classroom instruction from Bassett. For Williams, one of the most enjoyable lessons learned was being reassured of her decision to become a teacher. "It's been ridiculously helpful," Williams says of her training, "just in learning how to hold myself as a teach- er, how to conduct a classroom, and affirming that teaching is something I want to do and am capable of doing." Perhaps most importantly, she says she's learned to recognize that all stu- dents learn in different ways and at different paces. The key to connecting with them, she says, is to identify and highlight their strengths. "Every stu- dent is capable of learning," she says. "You just have to meet them halfway." At the Boys & Girls Club, Williams normally tutored two students at a time, and she's learned to pair stu- dents according to how well each one motivates the other, a sometimes incongruous calculus that might move her to pair an overactive student with one who is more serene. She's learned which students do better while seat- ed and stationary and which do better when moving from spot to spot. These are lessons Williams will carry into her career as a teacher. communicate that to them, it's been very rewarding," she says. "But they're also having fun with what they're doing, and that's made me feel fulfilled with what I'm doing." At one point in her tutoring session with Cameron and Derek, Cameron asks if he can use a piece of chalk to draw something on the pavilion floor. Williams gives her blessing, and a moment later an excited Cameron squeals, "Ms. Olivia, look what I drew!" Williams turns to glimpse a message that would surely affirm for any aspiring young teacher the soundness of her career choice. In green chalk, Cameron has written: "Math Rocks!" ■ Christopher Hann is a freelance writer and editor at River Towns Magazine. McCotter hopes to extend the pro- gram into the foreseeable future. "We don't see these problems going away," she says. "The differences in achievement were illuminated by the pandemic, but there are always going to be kids who will benefit from one- on-one or small-group tutoring. And now we have a way to address that." As for Williams, she has enjoyed watching her students make connec- tions with the curriculum over the course of the summer, gradually evolv- ing toward their own "aha" moments. "Just being with them, seeing their eyes light up when they understand something, knowing I was able to " It's been ridiculously helpful just in learning how to hold myself as a teacher, and affirming that teaching is some- thing I want to do. " — Olivia Williams '23

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