Visualized Session

I'm so nervous today! Today I start my very first tutoring session with a student from ENG 101. I have taken a class with this professor before so I know how he is. The first thing that would be done is our professor or their professor would introduce us when we first arrive there. After that, they would assign us a student. Some of the strategies I would be using are:

Focused Free Writing: free writing that has to do on their specific assignment
Looping: ask student to write for five minutes about the topic and then write one sentence on the most important idea and do the same thing for about two to three times. 
Point of View Mapping: student will be asked to draw a map, so they take a glance on the different points of view of their topic.
Twenty Questions: ask the students the questions that are listed in my book.

After I use some of these strategies, I will read their assignment and revise it together.

The things that I imagine that will happen is that the students will have a half way done draft. I will use some of the strategies to help the student finish his draft and have more ideas to add on to their draft. I believe it will end well, it would be good for the student because he will receive help and I will overcome my nervousness, and will do better the next tutoring session. 

Some of the challenges I believe I will face are probably that they student might not want the help, they might make things awkward, but hopefully those things don't occur and I have a smooth tutoring session. 

Week 3 & 4 Observation

Well I'm back to let your guys know how my other observations went, I did my observations three and four this time.

            In my third observations the tutor had only on tutee. This made the session different because usually the tutors I had observed, would have two tutee's. The guy had already handed his paper to his professor and was already graded. The tutee just wanted to know what went wrong. I believe this was great from his part to want to know what he did wrong. The tutor first looked at the feedback the professor had gave the tutee. The tutee didn't speak fluent English. I noticed that the tutor wasn't comfortable because of that, which made hate tutee not feel comfortable. The tutor kept making changed on the guys paper and the tutee just looked confused because he didn't know why the tutor kept making those changes. After he made the changed he told the tutee that he should just change his whole paper because it didn't make sense. I thought that it was mean from his part because the guy seemed so confused. The tutor just stood there quiet for about three minutes and was using his phone and was texting. I believe that it was rude. After that he tells the tutee just to make changes and leaves the little room and leave the tutor and me inside. This was one weird experience but I learned what not to do in my own tutoring session.

            In my fourth session it was okay. The tutor had two tutee's. I felt like he was saying unnecessary comments to both the tutee's; he kept assuming that the girl wasn't born here and that the boy didn't understand English so he kept talking slow for the guy to "understand". I know both the girl and boy felt uncomfortable, in result made me feel uncomfortable. He told boy of the tutee's that he works five minutes with one tutee and five minutes with the other tutee. He started working with the girl. He asked her what her paper was on and then he started revising the paper. He had also asked what she believe was wrong with it because if you come to the writing center there must be something wrong. The girl said she wanted him to revise past and present tense words. He made a commenting assuming that all Hispanics have trouble with that. It might be true or not but I feel like he should of not said that. After that he went to the boy and asked him what the paper was on and started revising it. The tutor was more serious with the boy than with the girl; he was a bit flirty with the girl. He didn't say much about the paper of both. He just gave a few suggestions. He did go off topic a couple of times which resulting that he didn't finish revising neither paper. He finished revising half of each paper. I believe that he should not make assumptions and should not get off topic because at the end of the session he was supposed to help the tutee's with their writing piece but he just helped them half way and to top it off both assignments were just one page and half double spaced, so imagine that!

            I learned a few things in these sessions, which makes me kind of nervous about started my own tutoring session. 

Week 1 & 2 Observation

Hey guys I'm back! I will guiding you guys rough my first and second observation in the writing center. The first time I had arrived there, I was really nervous! To be honest, I have never stepped a foot in that room; I have based by it a whole bunch of times but never went inside. Both of my observations in the writing center were quite interesting.

            In my first observation the tutor had two tutee. I was familiar with this because my classmates had shared some of their observations, so it didn't catch me off guard. First he walked both girls into his little room. He didn't introduce himself which I thought was rude. He went straight to asking what their paper was on, but he asked one girl first. The basically ignored the other girl while he was revising the girls paper. When he asked girl "A" what her paper was on she handed him the assignment sheet and the guy made a comment that it was boring. She also stated at she wanted him to check her grammar errors and he responded to her to never come in here just to check grammar, that he doesn't care about grammar. He had a point when he said that, I just believe he could of been more generous. She handed him her writing piece and as he was reading it he kept thinking out loud; for example he would say dam that's harsh, wow, oh my god, and so many other things. In my opinion he believe he should of kept those things to himself. While he was revising it he would ask her if she was sure this made sense and if it didn't make sense he would ask why and what would she do to fix it. I did like that method because he didn't simply say this is wrong and write this and that. He would make sure that she understood why it was wrong. In he middle of him revising, he went off task because he started asking both girls if they had seen some show in VH1. I believe that was wrong in his part because he was getting distracted instead of revising the paper. The tutee said so my paper and he went back to revising. When he finished revising the paper, he said I want to take a picture of this and show my friends. From that moment on, it got awkward and the girl said I'm leaving. He said wait, let me make sure you have everything you're suppose to have for this assignment and he read over the assignment paper again just to make sure. I believe his comment was wrong but it was good that he revised the assignment sheet to double check she had everything. After that, the girl left and he went to the next girl. The girl looked bored throughout half the session where he was helping the other tutee. He asked her to explain what her assignment was on because she didn't bring an assignment sheet. After she explained  he took her paper and started revising. I found it weird how this part of the session he simply wrote on the girls paper and said add this, take away this, and didn't explain to the girl why it was wrong. He finished revising it and told her that her paper was great and said bye. I felt weird leaving that session because a lot was going on. I did learn a lot from this session though.

             My second observation was even weirder! The tutor had two tutee's in this session as well. The tutor introduced me, herself, and both tutors to one another. I believed that was great from her part because she made me feel comfortable, unlike in the other session. Then the tutor asked the girl if she was okay and she started flipping over her math class. I believe it was wrong for the tutor to continue the conversation in math; the conversation literally went for 5-10 minutes. Those minutes were wasted. The boy was just sitting there looking at the tutor and girl. After that she goes to the boy and started reading his writing piece but didn't even check his assignment sheet or asked what his assignment was on. I believe that was wrong because the tutor should always have am idea on what the paper should be on. She told him he had a lot of grammar errors and handed him two sheets. I believe she did well in handing him two worksheets. She explained that he had to do those sheets while she talked with the girl. Again the girl started talking about math and the tutor kept talking back. Then the tutor goes back to the boy to check that he is doing both work sheets and then explains sentence structure and how his sentence structure isn't okay. After that, she goes back to girl, because she went to her  the girl was using her phone. The tutor said let me see what you need help with and the girl showed her what she had on her phone which was just the assignment the professor gave her. The girl just needed help with understanding the assignment. The tutor explained to her what she had to do and the girl said she would come back to her on another session. The girl left and the tutor went to the boy but the session had finished and told the boy that his paper was great.   

            Overall both sessions went okay. I learned a lot from observing these sessions to help me when I do my own tutoring.

Blog Video Review

Good morning guys! Hope you guys are having a good morning. What my morning consist of is answering a question that my professor assigned my class and i: "Name a couple useful - and not so useful - strategies for tutoring that appeared in the videos we watched this week.".  As a class we saw three videos: Difficult Situations, The Texting Student, and Plagiarism and Tutoring. I will provide you guys the answer to this question based on these videos.

- Useful:
(Video: Difficult Situations): What was useful that I saw in this video was that the tutor was trying to calm down the tutee because he was over reacting about how he felt that the professor didn't like the tutee. I feel like this is useful because the tutor could of over reacted himself and just finish the session or leave, but instead he tried talking to the tutee to calm him down. Another thing that was useful was that the tutor tried helping the tutee even though it was a math assignment.

(Video: The Texting Student): What I found useful was that the tutor was trying to make noises to try and make the tutee notice that it bothered him that she was using her phone in the session. This was useful because sometimes you don't know how to approach someone when you don't like what they are doing.

(Video: Plagiarism and Tutoring): What I found helpful was that the tutor didn't over react that the girl didn't have any citations. On the other hand, the tutor was suggesting to add the citations because it would be considered plagiarism. 

- Not So Useful:
(Video: Difficult Situations): What wasn't so useful from this video was that he didn't seem strict about the session. I know the tutee was complaining about his professor not liking him but the tutor could of said that he isn't here for personal things but to help him with his paper; or he could of asked the tutee to come back or take a bathroom break to calm down and come back to work on his assignment.

(Video: The Texting Student): What wasn't so useful from this video was that the tutor didn't actually ask the tutor to stop using the phone. I felt that if the tutor would have asked to stop using the phone, the session would have gone better and they would have also went over the paper a bit more.

(Video: Plagiarism and Tutoring): What wasn't so useful from this video was when the tutor told the tutee "Its excepted at a college level", that wasn't useful in my opinion because the tutor just judged the tutee and could of made them feel bad. A tutor is there to help and suggest,  not judge and hurt. Also, what wasn't useful was that the tutor just let go the last tutee leave, instead of trying to stop her to help her or make her understand that she was plagiarism and pointing out the rules from the college stating that she shouldn't plagiarize. 

Well these are the few things I found useful and not so useful, HAVE A GREAT DAY GUYS!

Blog Questions

Hello guys! Well, this is my first blog of the semester, kind of nervous. Last week my professor gave my class two questions to answer:

  - What makes a tutorial successful and what are we looking for as we begin our observations next week?

  - What are the common points between what makes for good 'teaching' and what makes for 'good writing'?

I will provide you guys my answers to these questions.

1. In my opinion what makes a tutorial successful is when both the tutor and tutee feel comfortable; there shouldn't be tension between both peers. But at the same time you shouldn't feel that comfortable where you guys go off topic and go on asking questions or talking about your personal life that doesn't have to do with the paper the tutee had brought into the tutoring session. The tutor and tutee should feel comfortable to a certain extent. They should both feel comfortable to be able to revise the paper together. There are a couple of things I will be observing next week in the writing center. Some of the things I will be looking at are the ways the tutor talks to the tutee and he/she approaches the writer when they find something wrong with their paper. I will also observe how the tutor gives suggestions to the writer and how and what questions to ask regarding their work piece. 

2. Some of the common points that makes a 'good teaching' and what makes a 'good writing' is:

      - get involved in the subject (because if you get involved in the subject even if you don't know much about the subject, the relationship between tutor and tutee would be mutual which would make the tutoring session smother.)

      - strict but friendly (because you can not be so friendly with the tutee because you might go off topic in the tutoring session; you should be strict so the tutee takes you serious because most likely you as the tutor, the tutee might be around the same age as you.)

      - good communicators (because you both have to communicate in order to revise the work piece together, it should be a A & B conversation, not just A or just B.)

      - listens and responds (because this relates to being good communicators. Especially as a tutor, you have to be able to listen and respond to the tutees questions.)

Well, these are my responds towards both questions my professor assigned. Have a GREAT day guys!