Tutoring Experiences So Far

My first experience tutoring was when I co-tutored, and I was overwhelmed with mixed emotions. The tutor that I co-tutored with had set me up with a person that he thought would be a good starter appointment. When the girl came in the other tutor explained that I was a first time tutor, so that put the pressure off, and then pretty much let me do the appointment on my own. We went through introductions and I asked what her paper was on to get the appointment started. She began to tell me that she was finished with the paper and it was due tomorrow and the only thing that she had changed since her last appointment was the title. Siren bells went off in my head, oh god please let me be able to help her in some way! I shake my fears off and put the knowledge I have learned thus far into my head. She explains that the paper is really a set of poems from personal journals they wrote in class. From the minute I looked at her paper, I could tell it was filled with a lot of very personal information, including deaths and accidents in her family, so I felt uncomfortable asking her to read it aloud. I made a judgment call and decided not to read it aloud, but keep her engaged in the appointment. From the get go I was completely amazed with her writing! I understood that she had had previous appointments and was pretty much done with it, but besides one minor mistake I couldn’t find anything wrong with it. So I just gave positive feedback about her writing and how she captured the imagery her teacher seemed to want. She had changed her title and I told her that it connected with her theme better, of never giving up and perseverance. She ended her last poem on a sad note so I suggested that she may want to think about putting the positive theme more at the very end. Then at the end of the appointment, which she booked for an hour, we sat and talked and she thanked me and then left. I was a bit disappointed, wondering if this was the way it was going to be every time! I felt like I was no help to her at all, but I knew that I had done the best I could and I suppose that every appointment is different and that I can’t be a fair judge until I have more experience.

Well today I had a completely different experience. A girl came in and was a walk-in so I offered to help her. She seemed frazzled and overwhelmed from the beginning, so I tried to remain calm. She pulled her paper up and I asked her what her topic was, which she then pulled up on her laptop. After reading through the topic I asked her if she could read her paper aloud and if there were any mistakes we could figure them out together. She immediately seemed to get annoyed and said the paper was really long, so I told her I would read it aloud and told her to stop me if she heard anything out of place. I find out her paper has to deal a lot with sexuality in Ancient Greece. I could barely pronounce any of the words and felt like a moron! But I continued on understanding the benefit of this. She asked me a lot of questions about in text citations, the only problem was that they were ancient books and a bit more confusing than normal. I pulled up Purdue Owl and used that as a source to help her and also told her that I am not too familiar with MLA having just started using it again, so she may want to double check with someone else. I realized she was having trouble developing her thesis, didn’t have one of the source requirements, and no conclusion. So I decided to tackle the thesis and introductory paragraph. Well this girl had thought that I should write her thesis for her, so I had to keep redirecting her to make her write it herself. This session lasted an hour and a half and it was exhausting, but I felt like I had helped her a lot and if she had come sooner, she would have benefited more.

For now I am going to remain positive and collect as many tutoring experiences as I can, as well as brushing up on my MLA formatting.

Reflections on my first tutoring sessions

So here I am--two shifts at the Johnston writing center completed and hopefully past the apprehension I had about tutoring when this class began. First let me say:

1. Johnston is a super eerie building, sort of like a museum. I'm afraid to touch things inside because they all seem so precious and the toilets flush like a gunshot. On the other hand it is the coolest work environment I've been in so far, a futuristic open space that is so silent-- the best place to write (other than the Williams courtyard).

In both shifts I had someone book a one hour appointment and freaked out a bit, I hadn't yet considered the fact that people actually could schedule that much time. Both guys had reached the final drafts of their papers and marked "revising & editing" as the focus of their booked appointment. Both times I figured I was screwed and was going to end up with a student that will hand me the paper and refuse to work with me but maybe two experiences in a row have proved me wrong. I assume that both students did expect me to line edit the paper for them and hand it back. Student #1 had to submit his paper on gender issues thirty minutes after the appointment. He pulled the essay up on his laptop and I started to ask him questions about the paper with the fear that he might try to hand the computer to me. Student #2 successfully did put the essay in front of me to read, it was a weird assignment for a Race & Ethnicity class-- a fiction story that should be written like a non-fictional memory-- in which the student had to pretend to be an African slave telling the four stages of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Second, let me say:

2. This job is so cool! During my "shifts" I got to learn about and discuss issues like the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, war in Bosnia, and why little boys should be allowed to play with dolls. At this point I feel like nothing I'll read here will actually bore me, especially since the writer will be sitting beside me, though I guess there is a point where a chemistry lab report might fall into my lap or I might have to help with a 15 page excerpt from someone's novel.

Needless to say I did take somewhat directive approaches with both students. Though we first discussed the focus and organization of their papers, both students were close to strict word limits and didn't have room for further development. I had them read their work out loud in hopes that they would notice places where the voice sounded choppy but few times just had to give them the answer-- like in spelling--because it seemed just plain mean to withhold. Student #2 was already over the word limit and really just wanted me to run through his paper and cancel out 167 words that I thought he didn't need. It took about 20 minutes of explaining how he could solve that problem himself by not talking in circles and going straight to the point. I hope our session did something for him. I'll have to go back to the MS textbook to read the articles about "Directive vs Indirective" tutoring, I'm still not confident about technique when I think of how directive I actually should be in some situations and another read will hopefully solve that.

Feeling a little dissapointment

I have been scheduled twice to tutor on Wednesdays and still no one has made an appointment. I had one appointment during co-tutoring that i ended up fully tutoring because she was a walk-in and all of the other tutors were busy. It was an awesome experience and it really had me psyched up to do this and tutor independantly! But now, I don't know, it feels like I'm pointlessly sitting there and it's a little frustrating. I really want someone to make an appointment with me. Though I have really loved getting to know the other tutors in the Writing Center. They are a very fun group of people and we talk about the craziest things, usually spurring off an appointment someone had. Not about the person being tutored but for example they were trying to figure out the terms for a Jew who became a Christian. The term is Messianic Jew but then we got off on a conversation that it would be really fun to call the Jews for Jesus and then the conversation bloomed from there. It was pretty entertaining. But I don't know maybe posting a short bio will help get people to sign up with me for an appointment. Any suggestions? Is anyone else feeling this frustration?
-Sarah Ann