Tutor Training
I just had an epiphany. At work tonight, in the writing center, I was trained in the best way I have been so far. Things were slow when one student came in wanting help with a Political Science paper. Dason volunteered to be his tutor. Because it was so slow and I forgot my zip disc with my homework on it, I decided that while writing emails I would listen to the session and see how Dason did it. (I didn't do my observation writeup on it because I just wrote it the day before.) Anywho, the session lasted about 45 minutes. The student kept saying how helpful Dason was being. About ten minutes later a new student walked in. It was my turn to be the tutor, so he got stuck with me. I asked him what his assignment was and he explained the exact same assignment that Dason's tutee had. In fact, my student and Dason's were in the same class. This was by far the best session I have had as a tutor. By mirroring just about everything Dason did in his session, not only was I able to better help my student but I felt the most comfortable I have ever felt in a tutoring session.
I think this gives some insight as to how we might train new tutors in the future. I think we might be able to plan situations like this so a new tutor can see what a real session might be like before he ever gets in one alone. Before we started our jobs as tutors we attended one week of class and mock-tutored a few papers. This was very helpful but it wasn't the most helpful for me. Maybe it was for the other tutors; we did learn in a CRLA class that not all people learn the same way. I guess what I'm trying to say is that as part of the tutor training process it would be nice to figure out a way that a new tutor could observe an experienced tutor tutor a student from a certain class with a specific assignment and then, right after the session, be assigned to tutor a new student in the same class with the same assignment. By training in this way, new tutors will be more confident than if we continue to, after only a week of analyzing papers, leave them on their own to tutor in real sessions. Maybe an alternate way of training would be to require that the new tutor do a tutor observation on an experienced tutor before they are allowed to do a session on their own.
Just an idea.
I think this gives some insight as to how we might train new tutors in the future. I think we might be able to plan situations like this so a new tutor can see what a real session might be like before he ever gets in one alone. Before we started our jobs as tutors we attended one week of class and mock-tutored a few papers. This was very helpful but it wasn't the most helpful for me. Maybe it was for the other tutors; we did learn in a CRLA class that not all people learn the same way. I guess what I'm trying to say is that as part of the tutor training process it would be nice to figure out a way that a new tutor could observe an experienced tutor tutor a student from a certain class with a specific assignment and then, right after the session, be assigned to tutor a new student in the same class with the same assignment. By training in this way, new tutors will be more confident than if we continue to, after only a week of analyzing papers, leave them on their own to tutor in real sessions. Maybe an alternate way of training would be to require that the new tutor do a tutor observation on an experienced tutor before they are allowed to do a session on their own.
Just an idea.
posted by Anonymous at 9:38 PM
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