I’m pretty much the best tutor in the world.
Sorry, I didn’t mean to publish that.
According to UNC Greensboro, this is how I rank as a tutor, a little more specifically..
Attendance: 3 Point deduction for rescheduling one appointment (I was on a plane); but I think I made up for it by tutoring for a week or so without a voice. I’m also flexible with my hours and have always been able to accommodate students who needed help outside of my hours.
Active Learning: 4 We said at the meeting that this wasn’t really applicable to quantitative classes or hard sciences, but I think it is easy to translate to math. Problems have a main idea (what is the goal of the problem?, what variable am I trying to solve for?, what information am I trying to get?, etc); details (given values, etc); and information to locate (what formula to use, etc). I say I am exemplary at this because I really don’t see any other way for students to learn how to solve problems. When a client doesn’t understand how to go about solving a problem, my goal is to work through it by only asking questions (sometimes I’ll cheat and explain something to them, but then I’ll add “…right?” to the end – still a question). But generally something like “What do you know already?.. What are you trying to solve for?.. What kind of function does this look like?..” is enough to get students through a problem mostly on their own.
Scaffolding: 4 Similar to active learning in terms of helping the student identify vital pieces of problems, I feel like the ability to scaffold has been the most useful skill I have acquired and subsequently mastered. I have discovered (through first- and second-hand experience) that the root of all frustration in math is having too much information to process. I try to teach through example that reading an entire problem all at once is a bad idea, and to instead interpret each new piece of information as it is presented.
A kinda cool by-product of this: students start to see connections between concepts and similarities in processes. This is always fun because they realize that they have to study/remember so much less.
So admittedly I could use some work in some places too.
I gave myself a 2 in the Learning Skills category. I know we’re not supposed to be giving out handouts like this thing says, but I recognize that an important part of our job is helping students learn study skills and providing them with recommendations for improving their understanding. I usually neglect this part of the consultation because I am not thinking about it until the end of an appointment, at which point the student is eager to leave. For awhile I always left that part of the Tutoring Notes form blank. But since we got this evaluation rubric and I began reflecting on my performance in each area, I have been working on being more diligent about this.
…And that’s why I’m the best tutor in the world.
