Hi, I’m Professor Wieland from the Mathematics Department, and welcome to Bergen Community College!

I run a special program called Service Learning, and it’s in the development math part of the program for the remedial students. It’s an excellent program because I take upper-level students, and I mix them with the remedial-math students, so it becomes like a big-brother, big-sister kind of program. This has been very helpful for the new students that come to the college because coming to college is a new process. There’s a lot for you to do. What happens is not only do these students help with the math; they’ll also say, “Oh, well, this is how you register” or “This is how you do that.” I find that they swap numbers. A lot of them are from the same culture, so they end up talking in the same languages. They associate themselves with similar cultures here at the college. So it becomes more than about the math; it’s about finding a buddy system. It really helps new students work their way through the system here, content-wise and also environment-wise.
Tutoring, well worth the time. It’s like giving back for all the times that you’ve taken back you when you were young. You might as well share. I mean, if you can’t share what you know, it’s kind of wasted. It’s a resource that’s available; you might as well use it. I feel great when somebody I tutor succeeds. They score even better—even if it’s just a miniscule number that they go up on a grid, that in itself is a step toward progress. And that is what’s important. If a person in a life does not make any progress, that’s not much of a life. In this particular situation, I’d like to see Sharon and Bill pass, but not just pass—I’d actually like to see them ace these exams. That’s my goal for them. Now, if I can persuade them to accept that goal as their own, and allow them to believe in themselves, to realize that that’s not a limiting factor, then I believe, and only then, do I believe I’ve succeeded.
My name is Nishit Patel. I’m doing tutoring for two classes: Math 011 and 033. It’s good to know some people and to teach them as a tutor; they trust you to do that. I wasn’t so good at math before, but now I am, so if I can help with my methods—that I made it, and if I can explain it to the students—I feel great about that. Right now, I can’t ask my teacher, right now, but if I know somebody, like if he knows my cousin, my friend, I ask Pratik a lot. So, if it’s a student, I feel free to ask anything I want, but in front of the teacher, I may feel like she thinks I’m dumb, so I really don’t ask—you know, like that. So they feel very free to me. They even ask me in the cafeteria.
I heard your students were asking my Service Learning students questions in the cafeteria.
Were they really?
It was nice. They really enjoyed it, having somebody that they could actually pull away from the lesson, say, rather than waving their hand. I call it the two-foot principle: you know, I’m in the front of the class, and they want to ask a question, but when the student’s walking around, and they’re very close to them—as long as they’re within the distance where they can grab them over, and say, “I have a question now”—they don’t feel so intimidated. So it’s nice having them walk around and see if there’s any help that they could offer.
My name is Tammy White, and I’m a part of the Service Learning Program. During the Service Learning Program, you have the ability to help people who don’t know as much as you do, and you’re able to help them learn, and it’s such a great feeling because you’re helping someone. The students are very comfortable asking me questions because they can relate more to a peer than another teacher. They are able to explain to you what they feel compared to what they think the teacher wants to hear, and it’s okay if they have it wrong because, once again, you are their peer, and you went through very similar classes as they did.
I’m Professor Cathy Flynn from Bergen Community College. She has a group of dedicated volunteer students in her higher math courses who are so helpful in joining with our, or my, remedial students in helping them to succeed at the first level of remedial college work. It’s been a pleasure the last two semesters with these students and their efforts. This semester, after giving my first exam, there were a number of students in each of my classes who have not been able to succeed yet, and so it’s our hope that this term, with Professor Wieland’s students’ efforts at tutoring, that they will pass their retests.
The tutors on a one-to-one position are able to assess the weaknesses of each student and supply the remediation in that way that’s easier for my students to process it, and then they’re expected to review a certain number of examples to be able to understand the process involved. The tutors offer a not necessarily different, but certainly a different personality, a different perspective than mine in the classroom. That’s so wonderful for the students to be able to see a student closer to their age who has succeeded in getting on with the college math program here.
Hi, my name is Pratik Patel. I’m a student at Bergen Community College. I am doing a Service Learning Program, for which I tutor students in math classes, like 011, which is regular Basic Math. They usually ask some stuff which they are not able to answer, or about things that are more complicated for them; some students do not know how to do addition and subtraction. They are just slow; they want to take their own time. They just need a push, that’s it, but then they can just go on. They need a push; that’s it. I’m also a student, so they feel I am a friend, and they ask me freely. They have a fear of the professor, you know, and they don’t feel as free to ask her. It has made a difference that I go in that class and they ask me, and they have really gotten help from me. This has really helped them. Sometimes they have asked me so-silly questions, and I would just think that even a student in kindergarten would answer that, but that is normal because they haven’t been with the math in so long. They are old people; they are just starting off their new career, or something like that. So it happens sometimes, and it has been going on. It is a real good idea: the students feel better when young, other students go there voluntarily helping them out as a tutor, so they feel free to ask a student. When the tutors are so free with them and talk to them so nicely as a friend, they feel better about asking more questions, their doubts are cleared, and they don’t have fear to ask. No fear is there in their mind; any doubt is left behind in their mind. But they still need more time; that’s it. There are some things that I have learned, such as certain math concepts which I had forgotten all about; I just cleared it out. I knew about that, but it just got cleared. It is even benefiting me, and it is even giving me some confidence—how to react to students, how to help them out, how to know who is having a doubt, and all that stuff.
I like the idea of this program because it gives me the ability to help people and to give some of my knowledge to somebody else. I really would recommend this program if you enjoy helping people. It’s helped me because I have been able to refresh my mind, my memory, in basic math; it really does help. As a matter of fact, in one of the instances on a test in my more advanced class, I was thinking about something the teacher said in the basic class, and it really does help you because you find a new way of thinking about things that you know automatically.
It’s good for me and the students both because I fell a little back with my algebra stuff, you know—I did not remember, and then I had to go through it—so it helps me in Pre-Calc, too. So it’s good for me and for them, too. They know, and I learn; that’s how it goes.
He was a student from a country that has the same mother tongue from my country, so when he has asked me questions, and when I talk to him so nicely, he has been so friendly, and he has asked more questions on that. He was really personal, like “What do I do?”, and he asked me about the college—how we should go on. So that really made a difference, and he was so happy to meet me, and he took my number, and he, of course, asked me all the time when he wanted help. He doesn’t call me now because I still go in that class, and I do the tutoring, and I meet him all the time. He was so happy to know which classes to take ahead [of time]. He wasn’t so happy when he was new to the college. He was so disturbed about when he will be graduating. I have a test on Friday, and I haven’t prepared for that, so I was going to drop today’s tutoring, but I thought, “No, I cannot; I have my friends waiting there for me.”