Rubber Meet Road

Who am I?

Damon Whitten – education Guru (capital G).

New mission
Actually teach something – to people.

Background

I have been actively involved in delivering Professional Development (PD) to the tertiary sector for eight years working with ‘fairly’ well behaved tutors and teachers.  One of my primary roles is to deliver literacy and numeracy content to these tutors via workshops.  In other words – I am meant to know exactly what I am doing.

 A common occurrence at workshops is that a new tutor will approach me after the course and have the following discussion.

“Thanks for the workshop Damon.  I’ve just started tutoring and I’m in a bit of trouble”

“Trouble with what?”

“Everything”

“What in particular?”

“Well, I have 13 learners that have very low literacy and numeracy.  I just don’t know what to do.  How to get started, I mean.  I can do activities but that doesn't really get them where they need to be.  I mean, how do I move a whole class who don’t know about decimals but need to be working in tenths of millimeters?  How do I start?”

This is where this blog picks up.

Why you should read this blog

I will be chronicling how I go about developing the numeracy skills of a class of challenging students over eight weeks.  The principles will be applicable to any tutor.  It’s going to be a no-holds-barred look at what happens when an expert meets a real class.

It’s not going to be pretty – but it will be fun!