Tutoring @ TJ’s

For attitude, approachability, and processing time on the rubric, I would give myself a 4. It was important to me from day one to be the kind of tutor students felt comfortable coming to and willing to ask any question or practice speaking in front of me because I know that learning a foreign language can be an embarrassing experience. I wanted the students to feel that I was not there to mock or make fun of their mistakes and allow them time to go through what they were doing. I did try to keep our time organized so that we wouldn’t spend too much time on minor issues, but I think I did well at giving them breathing space.

For Encourages/Supports, I give myself a three because I think I could have said “good job” or “that’s right” more times. A lot of times, after an appointment, I felt like I should have been more cheerful and star giving to the student. I also give myself a three for Fostering Independence because I think some students began to over rely on me, but others came to me only sporadically and they improved throughout the semester. This could be based more on an individual student’s willingness though, than my own efforts.

I think I can give myself a four on active Learning, scaffolding, modeling and verifying knowledge because we worked through examples together, I asked them questions to explain how they are to certain decisions, we went through examples. The sessions involved working through grammar concepts and identifying parts of sentences to explain structures and verb tenses. We almost always used the textbook or I would pull our the verb tense book from TJ’s library. I also taught students some of the tools available in Microsoft word. To some students who spoke spanish, I explained the grammar concepts in spanish because they were more relatable than english verb tenses. Although, my spanish is not very good, but it came to good use.

However, for attendance I give myself a two really for no other reason than my schedule was hectic and I tend to daydream or I get distracted and I forget what time of day it is. I was late several times and missed several appointments. I occasionally had to cancel due to scheduling conflicts. I complained about this on another blog : (

Overall, I had a great time tutoring. I realized how many components there are in a session after looking at this evaluation. It reinforces concepts we went over during tutor training at the beginning.