Tutoring @ TJ’s

MO, 8/25 6:30-9:30 p.m. COMMON TRAINING for new tutors/writing consultants:

Follows the first Writing Center meeting. Pizza provided—you bring your VARK scores. (see below)

WE, 8/27 5:30-9:30 p.m. 1^st TUTOR STAFF MEETING (5:30-6:30) followed by next installment of CRASH TRAINING.

Sandwiches with new and veteran tutors before crash training. Bring your tentative tutoring schedules.

TH 8/28 or TU 9/2, 20-30 mins. between 12:30-2: do the TJ’s checklist (TutorTrac, people, places, things)

WE, 9/3: 2^nd TUTOR STAFF MEETING @ 5:30; Tutoring and writing consulting open for business

6:30-9 p.m.: Foreign language tutor training

SA, 9/6 10 a.m.-12 noon: Quantitative tutor training

SA, 9/6 12 noon-2:30: Writing intensive tutors—training with the Writing Center (they continue until 6)

BEFORE Monday 8/25 @ 5:30, go to www.vark-learn.com and take the VARK learning style inventory (called the questionnaire on the website). When taking it, remember that you can check more than one answer. This only takes about 10 minutes, but will give you some initial insight into your learning style. We’ll spend some time processing this information in common training.

I’m writing about writing consulting instead of economics because I haven’t had an econ tutoring appointment yet.  I don’t really do step 4 in writing consultations because we aren’t solving problems.  Sometimes I do step 4 if we’re trying to formulate a thesis and the student really doesn’t know what to do.  For step 5, I start off every consultation with the question “What are your chief concerns?” Once they answer the question, I set my agenda by doing whatever I need to in order to ensure that I cover their concerns in my appointment.  For step 6, I keep their concern in mind and pay extra special close attention to their areas of concern–unless it’s a brainstorming session.  If it’s a brainstorming session, then we just brainstorm.  For steps 7 and 8, I do not have the client summarize what they learned because that’s kind of hard to do with writing.  What I do is after I point out an error, I ask them if they can fix it the next time that error shows up in the paper.  If they fix it, I know they got it.  If they don’t I know I need to go over it again.

I have come to TJ’s to tutor for many reasons. While at first I was slightly hesitant, thinking that I would not have time for it and not particularly want to do it, I reflected on my options and decided to follow through with it. I saw this as an incredible opportunity to maintain my knowledge on the concept of statistics. There have been many classes in my academic career in which I have performed the well known, “data dump” at the end of the semester, completely forgetting all that I had learned. Now that I need to teach other students how to learn this material, however, I will need to study it and repeatedly perform exercises once again. If I cannot remember stats after this, then I might as well just give up on that subject! An additional reason why I am tutoring is to help other students in stressful or difficult situations. I have been through many situations when I simply do not understand the material, no matter how hard I study. I would eventually go to someone (not always a tutor) for help, and suddenly I’d understand. Amazing how that works. I am looking forward to doing the same thing for other friends and students. Helping someone else succeed is something in which I would take great pride. I am nervous for this semester and this opportunity, but hopefully it will be as fun as I am expecting. It’s going to be one interesting semester…

I found the Smarthinking.com tutorial to be a good extension of our first crash-training session.  One of the things I noticed in the OWL tutorial was that the tutor, Barbara, asked the student to explain the assignment, which was to write a process analysis paper.  Barbara asked the student to define process analysis, and although Barbara said she “should have known that,” I thought it was a good idea to make sure that the tutor and student were on the same page.  Barbara asked good, open-ended questions to get the student to open up, which I feel is one of the most important aspects of getting a tutoring session going.  Another technique that the tutor offered was giving a possible outline of the paper after they had discussed some points.  Barbara was very encouraging, without being to much of an obvious “cheerleader.”  I found these all of these techniques good and on point with what we discussed last week, and will try to employ them in my tutoring sessions.