Journal #4

I think the attitude and approachability and the encourages/supports categories could all be put together because they are all very similar. In this category I would give myself a 3. This semester I willingly helped out whoever approached me because I knew that as one of the tutors for my major this was my responsibility.

I also think that the verifies knowledge and active learning and fosters independence portions could be put together because they are also very similar. In this category I would give myself a 4, because I generally used open ended questions to get clients to tell me what they already knew about a subject. This was my favorite tactic because it works not only in essay writing situations but also in test taking situations.

Finally, I think that it is important to track attendance. This category is difficult for me to judge myself in because of my strange situation with tutor track, but I can say that I attended all of the appointments and group study sessions that I made without tutor track.

 

Journal #4 Self Evaluation

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.

 

Like pulling teeth: Julia H’s challenge

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 she ventured into phrases and simple sentences.  I was frustrated.  Julia was even moreso, of course.  After all, all I had to do was take notes, which after a bit turned into venting my own frustrations with this recalcitrant client: “Where are her notes? Why didn’t she bring her stuff?  She’s not writing anything down!”

So most of what Julia and I talked about afterward was how different she was from most other clients she’s had, and how to deal with the reluctant participant. I told Julia that this quiet client probably ended up quite satisfied with the session.  Passive students actually like it when they can just listen.  And she did participate a bit more at the end. But the bottom line was that she got Julia to do what she came for, I think: to do most of the work, to explain terms and effects and theories and give examples for all of them (which Julia did SO well.  I was captivated).  The student listened well, though we’re not sure how much she retained, since she wouldn’t give much back when asked.

If the student was really watching carefully, she would have seen a great model of reviewing from Julia: going through the book, looking at each graphic on the page, talking out loud about what it represented, searching for all the examples given in the surrounding paragraphs, connecting this page’s ideas with those of the previous three or four, or even the chapter or two before.

What Julia couldn’t model for her was comparing what was in the book with what was in the class notes she’d made or the powerpoints from the professor she said she printed out (both indications of what the professor thinks is most important).  She also couldn’t look at the flash cards that the student had supposedly made but left in her room.    Bummer.

I got the impression that the student had not really done much of the reading and hadn’t really made those flash cards, and if she had, they would have been very simplistic, maybe even from the glossary.  Not that helpful.  Or was I being too harsh?  I wondered aloud, with this astute PSY tutor, whether this student’s personality/learning style influenced her passivity?  Was she too timid to talk?  Is she one who takes much time to warm up to someone, to think through her answers?

We decided that a good thing to do with these reluctant clients is to make them more active from the get-go.  Here’s the list of what, in perfect 20-20 hindsight, Julia said she could have done to make this young woman be more engaged:  sit on the same side of the table with her, so they could look at the book together, neither one looking upside down; get her to read with Julia through passages in the book, to check her comprehension, to have her find what she thinks is important, and to verbalize what each graphic (visual summary of information) represents; to find all the examples in the text, see which ones make sense and discuss which do not (a major concern she voiced at the outset); have the student write down the terms/examples as they discussed them when looking through the book together; make a flash card or two as examples, even if she’d already done them, to get her to make them more sophisticated (with text and visuals and connections, etc.)

Would that student have liked that kind of session better?  Not sure.  But for long-term learning, it would have benefitted her more.  And we think she would have left feeling more confident of her knowledge.  And we would have felt much less frustrated.