For my co-tutoring session with Princess, we worked together to determine the best way to run this session. We came to the conclusion together that it would be too much to do it all once, so Princess worked with the tutee for the first half and then I took over for the second.
While I was quite nervous at first, I felt at ease the moment I began tutoring the tutee. We read through her paper together out loud. Once she heard everything spoken out loud, she was often able to catch herself where the sentence structure was awkward. There were a few mistakes she made within the paper multiple times, but after I pointed them out to her and explained how to fix them and why, she was catching them herself and fixing them before I had to say anything.
This experience was extremely rewarding to me as it felt like the best case scenario of what we’d discussed in class. Sure, we worked on grammar at her immediate request, but we ended up addressing many other writing tools that I believe ended up helping improve her writing. Although I know that I will no doubt end up in tutoring sessions where I’m not sure what the best approach is, I’m confident in my abilities to navigate the situation and even call upon other tutors in the Collab to help. It’s definitely comforting to know that I’m never alone in the Collab and I have other experienced tutors to ask questions to if need be.
One thing in particular I had always had some level anxiety about actually did occur in this session. I had always been a little nervous about helping tutees who are working on papers different from my area of expertise, but the session went smoothly despite the fact that her topic was social work. I think I learned from this session that writing is writing, and no matter what one is writing about, a good tutor can always provide input and help. Plus, I’ve become more familiar with APA format, or at least where to find the resources if I have questions myself about citing in APA. It’s comforting to know that even tutors don’t need to know everything-they just need to know the right place to look to find the information.
After this session, I feel a lot less nervous about working as a tutor. In fact, I’m really looking forward to the learning experiences that it can provide and I am eager to help my fellow students improve their writing and grow more confident in their own skills.
Kim,
As I was reading this I could connect your experiences with my own. The aspect of being nervous during the session is scary, knowing that the tutee might sense your hesitation and take it as a sign that it’s something wrong that they did. I found during my solo tutoring experience that I often asked the student if my advice helped them, or if they needed clarification or examples, and to my delight they understood what I was expressing (unless they were lying, which I hope not). The decision of cutting the co-tutoring session in half between Princess and yourself is beneficial. Since collaborating on a tutoring session requires planning (and time that we don’t have) watching the more experienced tutor first is rewarding and an advantage.
When you explained how the tutee could fix her mistakes, and when she immediately started spotting them afterwards without any help, is why tutoring is so important. It isn’t about showing off or bragging about being a tutor, but seeing the gratification within a tutee when they are able to understand a technique and discover more about themselves through their paper.