Two of MVSD’s finest teachers, Ruby Huesca and Alicia Raygoza, recently provided training for students in Mt. View High School’s Teacher Preparation Academy (TPA), preparing them for tutoring elementary students at Payne and Maxson schools this school year.
MVSD’s 16-year partnership with TPA has been very beneficial to students, providing the high school juniors and seniors the opportunity to get a hands-on, inside look at the teaching profession, while providing elementary students with small group and one-to-one tutoring.
Ms. Huesca and Mrs. Raygoza shared many effective strategies for working with elementary students including the importance of making introductions and getting to know their students, how to carry out a read aloud with comprehension questions before, during, and after the reading, how to work with students to build a super-duper sentence, developing oral language and other reading comprehension tactics.
“You are helping by providing tutoring services and using your skills to help our students,” said Huesca. “You may not want to go into teaching now, but you may change your mind. It really is the most rewarding job because we are preparing the future.”
This year the 11th grade TPA students will be working with transitional kindergarten through sixth grade students at Payne School and the 12th graders will be working with elementary students at Maxson School. The high school tutors will visit the schools two times a week from October through April, providing additional support with reading, math and writing.
“You will be mini-teachers and help the students with site words, sentence structure, reading comprehension, oral language development, math concepts and more,” said Raygoza. “Your service and connections with our students will impact them greatly.”
During the training, Huesca and Raygoza had the students work in groups, taking turns as teacher and student, to practice their introductions, read aloud skills, and super-duper sentence builders. The room was buzzing with eager mini-teachers dedicated to perfecting their skills.
“I am excited to start tutoring,” said Ashley Mendoza. “The training is very helpful and is making me feel more confident.”
“I appreciate how they are showing us how to talk with the students and the importance of getting to know them, and also what to do with them,” said Aaliyah Johnson Bermudez.
“The demonstrations Ms. Huesca and Mrs. Raygoza are giving are very helpful and having us work together to do mock read alouds and super sentence builders is great,” said Noemi Jacobo.
The TPA program and the opportunity to work with elementary students is providing great experience for Diego Gonzalez, an 11th grader who aspires to become a teacher.
“I’m looking forward to working with the younger students, providing tutoring and helping them with their learning,” said Gonzalez. “My mom is a dual immersion kindergarten teacher and she is my inspiration for wanting to be a teacher.”
The TPA program is coordinated at Mt. View High School by teachers Mary Boutte and Amy Minick.
“This is our 16th year partnering with the Mountain View School District in our cross-age tutoring program,” said Mary Boutte, Co-Director of TPA. “We are so thankful to MVSD for sending us Mrs. Raygoza and Ms. Huesca to train our junior and senior TPA tutors.”
MVSD is grateful for the additional instructional support provided for its students by the TPA tutors.
“We greatly value our partnership with TPA and the wonderful tutoring program provided for our students,” said Dr. Raymond Andry, MVSD Superintendent. “The benefits to both the high school students and our elementary students are invaluable, as the tutors gain experience in the field of teaching and the younger students receive extra instructional support in reading, writing and math, as well as building positive relationships with their tutor. We look forward to another successful year of cross-age tutoring.”