Due to the nature of the class I’m tutoring, most of my tutoring sessions tend to be like Ashleigh’s. In a perfect world, we would have been in every class our clients have been in, and know their material front and back. But from time to time a student comes [...]
…also known as dealing with difficult clients…or difficult situations. And assertiveness training… Knowing when a request is beyond the pale, not to be granted, comes with training and experience. What are the goals of the time you’re spending with clients? What activities will help the student reach those goals? The answers are quite commonsensical: better [...]
Hey new tutors and others who want a review of how to deal with difficult situations in your sessions… Originally I’d planned an “assertiveness training” session for this week, but I’d like to move it back one week, until Wed. 3/4. That is the last week before spring break, and in the second part of [...]
A lot of these go hand in hand. For instance, attitude and approachability could be one category because without a good attitude, you won’t be approachable and vice versa. Being welcoming and positive is the only way your client will feel comfortable working with you. I also feel that “fosters independence, verifies knowledge, and scaffolding” [...]
I was definitely grateful for the assertiveness training, as it helped me with one client in particular. I was friends with this client outside of tutoring, making it an especially delicate situation. I would schedule appointments outside of my normal hours to accommodate her needs, and she would often show up five to ten minutes [...]
I had a difficult situation when going over a first draft of a paper for a student. The student was a foreign student and was having a bit of difficulty with the English language. I found it difficult to correct all of his minor mistakes because it was obvious that he was embarrassed. He stopped [...]
I definitely had a few difficult clients throughout my semester tutoring. I think that because I was the lone tutor for most of the time, I was exposed to a lot more clients than a lot of other tutors. I can remember a few sessions where people came in the day before a huge research [...]
Although, I have never directly encountered negativity or aggressive behavior in my tutoring sessions, I found that sometimes I had to show assertiveness and persuasion. Such as when my client would appear to be in a hurry and not paying full attention to my explanations, I had to assign the student to a task that [...]
Step 4: Identify Thought Process She began by saying that she completely doesn’t understand the verb tenses that the teacher was going over in class, which she will be tested on in the final exam. She kept looking at her watch during the 30 minute session which told me that she is very impatient and [...]
Thankfully, I haven’t had a single negative tutoring session this semester. All of my clients have been very appreciative and respectful, and dedicated to understanding the material. There have been times when I’m not very sure of the answer to a question myself, but the client has never challenged me about it, and we usually [...]
Although I haven’t had too many appointments this semester, I think almost all of them went pretty well. I tried my best to make the students feel comfortable so they could think of me as a friend and not so much as a teaching-figure. This rapport has definitely proven beneficial in regards to the attitudes [...]
I have always had a problem with being assertive and saying no. I am a people pleaser and it is hard for me to hurt people’s feelings. However, from the tutor training and just overall experience dealing with clients, I have found a balance between being walked all over and being too assertive. I always [...]
Journal #2 I had a terrible session with a client. It was an hour long appointment and I’m not sure I helped her with much at all. I had already had a Stats II session that went well. I was comfortable with the material, but also the client, someone I already knew. The next Stats [...]
Julia Humphrey tutored a student today who was an outlier…way at the passive end of the active/passive continuum. She came with the book. But no notes. No printed-out powerpoints. No flash cards (though these two she said were in her room). She answered questions in monosyllables, until about the middle of the 40-minute session, where [...]
