Tutoring @ TJ’s

I’ve enjoyed tutoring this semester a great deal and would like to return eventually to tutor again. I’ve learned a lot about myself from this experience and I’ll share some of it here based on the SSC Tutor Assessment Rubric.

Approachability: I need to make better eye contact, not just with tutees, but in life. I used to be a lot worse about this but I still have room for improvement. Making good eye contact I believe is key to clear communication. I established a good rapport with my tutees, but at times I may have been a little too relaxed and joked around a little too much during tutoring sessions, but that was fun anyways.

Processing Time: This is what I need to work on most if I return to tutoring. I know I could have given students more time to figure material out on their own, but I was so anxious to explain I may have jumped the gun on their thinking process.

Learning skills: I really feel this was my strong point. I’m pretty good at providing useful memory tricks that are necessary in Biology and make learning a little more fun. My song for lipids, “Three fatty acids and a glyrerol!” seemed to be quite a hit. I also taught more effective highlighting and margin note-taking to make looking over reading a lot more productive.

Attitude: In general, I had a positive attitude about tutoring itself, but I know I did not have a positive attitude about all of the material being covered. Considering I kind of have my feet out the exit door for my Major in Biology, it was difficult to act like I still held a significant amount on interest on some of the less fascinating topics covered in General Biology. Hopefully if I tutor again, I’ll be tutoring something I really love, so I won’t have to act.

My greatest frustration with clients is that some of them come in completely unprepared and expect to learn the entire course in an hour appointment. While it’s frustrating for me to have to answer the demands of such clients, at the same time, I don’t want to write them off as lazy or unmotivated or slacking or anything negative, because part of me believes that maybe the client just can’t follow the teacher, or has trouble learning by himself or herself. So I’m not completely sure how to deal with this situation, because as it is, it’s stressful being the tutor and being depended on for all the right answers, and its doubly stressful trying to condense course-long material into an hour. At the same time, I’m not willing to give up completely on those clients, just in case they’re not actually lazy but just have trouble learning. I’m still working on developing an approach to this issue; unfortunately, it seems like I have a disproportionate number of these clients.

Tutor Cycle Steps:

I like the structure of the Master Tutor’s 12 steps, but it’s often hard to structure appointments as some students come in unprepared and I end up explaining 8 different things at different points during the session and not maintaining a clear focus through the session. So I feel that the steps don’t accommodate for tangents and side tracks that build on previous information, and makes it seem that deviating from a single focus is a bad thing. However, I find that, depending on the situation, exploring tangents and making sure that all different related topics are clearly understood, is beneficial in seeing the big picture for courses such as Politics. For instance, say a student just had a problem with understanding the realist perspective in International Relations, if the tutor and client were to go off on a tangent on, for instance war and power, and the historical basis of realism, and alternative perspectives to realism, I think that would be more beneficial to the student in understanding the role of realism as a whole, in the international arena, as opposed to just providing facts on the one perspective.

Step 4- Identify Thought Processes of Student: I think it’s pretty obvious that it’s hard to get inside the student’s head and figure out their thought processes. However, I find that it helps to ask the client to explain their thought process, and how they arrived at a particular conclusion. It also helps to work through some things, so to have a joint thought process, to figure out where it is that the client gets stuck.

Step 5- Set an Agenda:This is kind of what I was talking about earlier. I love the idea of being entirely focused and organized; however, even if the student has one particular concern, it’s really easy to uncover other areas that they don’t completely understand and be tempted to clarify those areas of confusion as well. I think it depends on a cost-benefit analysis of the individual situation and determining whether the client would most benefit from a clearly defined, specific agenda, or just an exploration of a core topic and related topics to achieve a better view of the big picture. Still, I try to implement this stem and set an agenda, even if I don’t always stick to it.

Step 6- Address the Task: This aspect is intrinsic in tutoring–as the focus of the tutoring session is established and the client asks his or her questions, I plan my approach to the problem. Basically, as soon as we’ve established what we want to cover, I go through that information systematically, asking the client questions or working through problems to make sure they’re following. The only problem I run into occasionally is the client has no background information on the topic, so I end up lecturing, and in these situations, in order to make sure the client is learning something, I ask them to implement the information somehow, for instance, by asking them to flow chart the information the whiteboard.

Steps 7 & 8- Have the Client Summarize the Content and Process: I think this step is interesting because it not only serves to the client by allowing them to cement their learning by reiterating the information they have gained, but also is a way for tutors to gauge their success in that particular appointment. I ask clients to summarize information at the end of the session, and listening to them, I realize any shortcomings I may have as a tutor, for instance I realize that maybe I should stay more focused, or maybe I ought to incorporate more application of information and not just lecture, into future sessions.

I really think that online tutorials are not the way to go for tutor training, largely because tutoring is a hands-on activity, and reading or performing an online tutorial isn’t going to really add anything to the experience. I’m not sure if that makes sense, but what I mean is, tutoring is face-to-face, so the only thing that would really improve tutoring ability would be to have a lot of experience, or to perform exercises that are more hands-on. For instance, tutor training, instead of discussion, at length, and not very interestingly, the techniques of proper listening in an online tutorial, it would be more fun and probably more beneficial to perform an exercise on selective listening, and how you say one thing but clients hear another. Also, it would be beneficial to have a tutor training exercise, where, instead of going through a tedious online presentation on different learning styles, we actually take the same information, split into groups, and present it in completely different learning styles. Personally, I know that, while I’m aware that different people learn better with different learning styles, I usually stick to my comfort zone of read-write, mostly because it comes naturally. I don’t think to structure the information in any other way because I don’t have any practice structuring it differently. If more tutor training workshops were established where I actually had to practice the different learning styles, it may actually come more easily to me when I’m actually tutoring and make a difference in the learning of the client. Overall, while the smartthinking tutorials gave some great information, I’m not entirely sure any of that information stuck with me, or will come to my aid when I’m actually tutoring.

Looking back on two semesters of tutoring, I’ve decided to respond to the original prompt posted by Susie on what my reasons for tutoring are. This post comes at a particularly interesting time because I was debating returning next semester. The appeal of tutoring is not in the money, nor in the prestige (every one wants to be Starbucks barista, but not really a tutor), but in the satisfaction I get from helping someone else understand something. I know it sounds cheesy, but truly, that lightbulb moment is the reason I tutor. It also doesn’t hurt that I’m getting some real-life experience in working with people, thereby developing my own interpersonal skills. I remember the first day I tutored–I was nervous, jittery and most likely didn’t get a lot of information across. With time, I’ve become more confident, I know my material better, and I’ve improved my communication skills. I’ve learned to listen, to be patient, to explain things in different ways so people with different learning styles can grasp information better and have improved in working with someone to achieve a common goal. Overall, looking back, I can’t think of a reason not to tutor.