Journal 4 Self Evaluation
- 1.· Attitude and Approachability, and Encourages/Supports seem to intertwine and could probably be combined. Whether one is encouraging, supportive, or approachable directly involves one’s attitude. If their attitude is negative, they will not be very approachable and the support and encouragement will most likely be negative.
· Attendance could probably be excluded since some clients only come one time, or unless this is serious, it should be handled with administration rather than have the client evaluate it.
· Modeling could probably be combined with Learning Skills, because one skill you need in order to learn would be locating sources of information on one’s own.
· Keep Fosters Independence, Processing Time, Scaffolding, Active Learning, Verifies Knowledge, and Learning Skills
2. Verifies Knowledge: 3
I’m pretty good about asking open-ended questions and encouraging a student to try to answer questions on their own. I think I started out this semester as a teacher and ended as a tutor. By first checking to see how a client understood something, I could then figure out where my help was needed. It is important to figure out how much the student understands by having them try to write or conjugate something first, because sometimes they might tell you, “I don’t understand this at all,” but what is really happening is that they just haven’t figured out how to organize the information so that it will make sense to them. So you have to ask those open-ended questions and see how much the student already knows. Instead of simply explaining something on the broad spectrum, you can hone in on their weak spots. I have had trouble sometimes trying to figure out how to approach a student’s learning style, because sometimes they do very well, so you have to look at how they put information together, rather than just the information itself, because as I found out, you never know where that information is coming from when you walk in to a session. By making sure that this person understands what they are writing and speaking in Spanish, I can know that the information on their homework or paper is verifiable to what they actually know, and then we can move on to what they do not already know. It wasn’t until almost the end of this semester that I found the importance of having the student recap the information they had learned at the end of the session in order to see what they had retained from the session and to let them verify to themselves what they now understand. It was so important, I wish I had used it more, and will do so next semester.
Active Learning: 2-3
Here’s where it was important for me to stop trying to be the teacher, and to start tutoring. If you simply explain something exactly as the teacher had, you are not helping the student. I always tried to help to distinguish main ideas and details, we used their materials, and sometimes I would point them in the direction of which material to use, rather than having them decide which would be best, which I probably should have given them more of the wheel on that one, but most of the time they did figure that one out for themselves anyways. Sometimes I would accidentally over-explain a topic, even include information that might be helpful in the future, but not for the present, so it ended up just being confusing, and therefore I just said “scratch that.” I usually asked them what they were trying to say or how something would translate to them, to get them more involved in understanding what they were writing or saying, because you can write or say anything, but it may not always make sense to you. I think I have reached a point where I realize that having the student identify what and why they are doing something is more important that myself just giving them the reason. I will try more in the future to let them tell me where to find the information they are looking for, and if they really are not sure, I will point them in the right direction once, then, ask them to remember the last time if it comes up a second time.
Attitude: 4
Here is one that I am mentioning because, without the attitude I have, I would probably never have become a tutor for Spanish. I am always very positive about my role as a tutor, because I used to be the struggling student. I used to be in the shoes before me at every session. Spanish was down the block from my mind until my Freshman Year of college. I love Spanish now so much that I get excited about new words to use and new grammatical ways to use them. I want to spread my interest and passion for languages on to the clients I tutor by showing how interested I am in what they are learning about and by showing them that languages should be fun, not taxing. We use language every day to communicate and learn, and they build society and culture, and by learning other secondary languages we can expand universal communication. I know some of these students are just taking language for the requirement, but really, what you put into it and what you want out of it will be reflected in your attitude toward what you are learning, or in my case, tutoring.
