I first started playing Ultimate Frisbee when I was a freshman a in high school. When I would show up to pick up games with my dad I was usually the youngest person there by at least a decade and also one of the only girls. I started off in the position of a cutter, usually stationed in the middle of the field. At first I didn’t make a lot of cuts because I wasn’t sure where to go. When I did start making cuts for the disk I often wouldn’t have the disk thrown to me because my defender was too close to me. One day Seth, a family friend who also played frisbee, pulled me aside and gave me some advice on my cutting skills. I remember him being really encouraging and supportive of my attempts to get the disk and praising me for my stamina to keep running on the field. He then suggested that when I make a cut for the disk that I cut “less like a banana and more like a triangle.” Using some cones he made a diagram of the field and explained how making a sharper cut would allow me to get open more often. As an MKO Seth used scaffolding to help me improve my cutting skills playing ultimate frisbee. He observed that as a player who was eager to get the disk that I was in the zone of proximal development to improve that skill. Had he taught me about triangle cuts before I built up the confidence to cut at all it probably wouldn’t have made much sense to me. Instead he allowed me to build confidence cutting to the correct space before critiquing how I got to that space.

Tutoring in Mr. DuBe’s 9th grade English class this week I got to observe the use of scaffolding to write a paragraph. Mr. DuBe used the acronym RACE which stood for Restate, Answer, Citation, and Explain. The students had the chance to respond to 1 of 4 prompts about a short story they had read for class and then had to write a paragraph using the RACE acronym. Mr. DuBe and I then went around and read over everyone’s paragraph and gave suggestions on how they could improve their writing. For the most part all of them had followed the exact instructions and had written a paragraph based on the RACE acronym. I observed that many of the students finished up their work fairly quickly in part because they had a preset formula for their paragraph.

It was really interesting for me to observe this lesson because I remember receiving one almost identical to it in middle and high school. I remembered at the time understanding the concept behind it but also thinking “what if I want to write with a different structure?” or “does it always have to be in that exact order, always?” Having written a lot since then I understand that the point of the lesson is to help scaffold your writing and to outline how to support your argument not to prescribe every essay ever. I did however wonder how many kids were in the same boat I was in at their age.

Going around and checking students writing allowed me to be an MKO to the students. It was really interesting to provide feedback because I’m usually really bad at correcting my own writing and I remembered in high school being really bad at peer editing. Most of my feedback consisted of grammar errors as well as general flow of their writing. On my bike ride home from school I thought about how a lot of my feedback seemed like common sense and what had changed since I was in 9th grade to transform me from a student to an MKO. To be clear I would argue that there will always be opportunities to be the student and for someone else to be the MKO. In this instance though it was a strange experience being the editor not the writer and feeling like my feedback was actually helping.

One of the biggest things that stood out to me about their writing was how repetitive their writing was. This was particularly interesting because the week before I had observed them do a lesson on pronouns and then they had taken a quiz. While I don’t know what the structure of the quiz was the practice worksheets relied more on memorizing and identifying pronouns rather than the practical application of them. Hopefully with time and more writing they will begin to apply those skills.

My last two visits to the school I’ve really thought about how different the Mr. DuBe’s class is compared to my 9th grade English class. My 9th grade classroom was set up in a circle with tables and chairs that could easily move around the room. This allowed us to have lots of discussions in small groups as well as come together as a complete group with the teacher sitting among the students. Mr. DuBe’s class is much larger than mine and the chairs and tables are attached to form rows facing the front of the class, with Mr. DuBe at a podium near the front. This set up feels much more rigid and gives a rather rigid power structure between teacher and students. While I do see Mr. DuBe actively engaging with students on topics not necessarily related to school as well as playing music during free reading time, the layout of the general space doesn’t seem to aid his efforts to create a relaxed and inviting environment. I wonder if a more open space would allow for a more even flow of communication rather than Mr. DuBe always being the one to initiate a conversation.