Last summer of 2018, I worked as a Tutor Counselor for the Rural Alaska Honors Institute (RAHI) where I helped motivate and prepare students for college life. This is an intense six-week college program for high school Alaska rural students where they take 2-3 college classes to earn eight to eleven college credits for free. As a tutor-counselor, my job was to help the students with their college classes. I was in charge of tutoring students in developmental college algebra and English 111.
The theory that I can relate to this experience the most is with the Utilitarianism theory. There was a time where some students stayed up late at night to do some of their homework, but our rules at the dorms were to go to bed and not do homework in the study room by 10 pm. So I talked to our dorm director and program director about this situation and carefully explained to them that in order for these high school students to experience college life, they would have to sacrifice some of their sleeping time to do their homework before the due date. I talked to them about how the students felt about the curfew on studying and homework and explained to them how it was affecting their grades. This meeting had some small arguments due to how the change can affect the students’ ability to stay active in the classroom. However, I had already prepared a list that students signed to petition the request to allow them to study in the study rooms past 10 pm with two tutor-counselors supervising them.
This change took away some of the stress from the students and they were all very happy with it. The students were able to stay engaged and active in their classes, and some of them were able to turn in some of their late homework. A lot of them were able to finish with honors after the program, and I received an award as being the most reliable for academic issues in the dorm. The dorm director, program director, and as well as some of the professors in the program were happy with the results because most of the students’ performance in their tests and homework improved. I was rehired by the program director to RAHI due to the actions I did to support the students and to help them become successful in the program.
Source: Business Ethics 9th Edition by William Shaw, Chapter 2: Normative Theories of Ethics
1 Comment for “M2 Maglaya”
jchawks
says:This is a really good example of Utilitarianism Theory. Wanting to help and make sure everyone is happy and able to do their work well. Even in the face of some probable conflict/agreements, the sense/need to make sure everyone is doing well was greater in that instance. This was a nice story and that’s cool you did that for those students. Great job.