I am working at the Student Service Center (SSC) of Northfield High School, which is the tutoring facility that assists students with academic struggles and provides a quiet space for them to work or unwind during the class day. The SSC consists of (1) a large main space with tables and couches, where the students can get help from me, the two promise fellows, or the site supervisor, Lisa; (2) a separate room called the “Chill Zone,” where the students can relax or do work alone or with a small group; (3) a separate room, which is called the “Credit Center” and is supervised by a school staff member, Emily, where the students can take online courses to help them catch up on their academic credits; (4) a separate room for small-group work or test-taking.

The SCC is connected to the school’s TORCH office and the staff members from both sites work closely together. In fact, Lisa would like me to occasionally work for TORCH as well. To clarify, TORCH is a community-run program aimed at closing the achievement gap by helping traditionally underserved students with their academic work. Additionally, Lisa works with a group of 8 students during 4thperiod on Fridays to help them with reading comprehension, which I also have an opportunity to partake in.

My first day was largely introductory. I was asked many times what my areas of academic strengths were, and most staff members were very excited to hear that I like to help out with reading comprehension and writing because, according to them, volunteers tend to dread those areas. Lisa showed me around SSC and told me what I will have the opportunity to help with, and then delegated the task of showing me around the school to one of the students, who happened to be at the center. I am not sure what the protocol for including students’ names is, so I will avoid using their real names in my blogs. The student who was showing me around the school (let’s call her Sarah) debriefed me on what classes in different departments usually look like and how the days are typically structured. She showed me the car shop that is part of the high school and where students can take classes in mechanics (which I thought was super cool!). Also, the pep rally was going on during the tour, so I got to see a tiny part of it, which transported my back to my own high school days. I had a wonderful time getting to know Sarah and learning about her future plans. After the tour, we came back to SSC and I got to hang out with some other students (who asked me tons of questions about Ukraine) and with the promise fellow, Sebastian.

* this is pretty much what the pep rally looked like! It was happening in the gym.

It wasn’t until the very end of my time at the high school when Lisa asked me to work with a student, who needed the test questions to be read out-loud to her. We went to one of the quiet rooms, where I read the questions to the student. Unfortunately, I didn’t get to interact with her much, but I was impressed by the subject area of the test. The questions mostly asked to identify the emotional charge of various sentences and to propose a healthy way of dealing with internal or external conflict. In a nutshell, the students were taught to be in touch with their emotions and have control over them, which is an incredibly important skill that is often overlooked in typical academic setting.

Since the prompt for this post is asking me to utilize Piaget’s framework, I will use my interaction with Sarah, the student who showed me around the school, to put Piaget’s framework to work. Sarah is currently a sophomore in high school, so she must be around 15 years of age. This puts her in the Formal Operational stage of development, where the students are expected to manipulate abstract ideas in their minds, with no concrete examples. Sarah certainly demonstrated her ability to do so, when she talked to me about her plans for after high school. She has an extremely detailed vision for her future (an abstract concept), and she is able to manipulate all the future hypotheticals in her mind, with little to no external cues. I personally found that quite impressive. Unfortunately, I did not get to witness her approach to academic subjects, but from what I could tell based on our conversation about her future, I would say that she fulfills Piaget’s “requirements” for an individual in the Formal Operational stage.

• This topic was modified 4 years, 5 months ago by Anastasia Romanova.