no reluctant tutees

I actually have not had any reluctant tutees yet. I have had some difficult sessions. I had one tutee who would talk and give a few ideas, but I could tell he just wanted me to give him the right answers. I had trouble getting him to answer my questions, but he was not reluctant to talk. He just dodged my questions by saying that he did not understand the material. He suggested that I read the material because it was really short, and then he thought I would give him the answers that I discovered from the text.

Another slightly different session presented a few problems. I felt that my tutee might have had ADD. I did not ask him or say anything about it, but I felt that he kept getting off track. I tried to keep him focused on the material, and I could tell he was trying to keep focus by the different questions he asked. Sometimes he would talk about the problems he has with English, and then he would talk about good and bad teachers. I tried to sympathize but still keep on task, and I did have a problem with that. I can sympathize and I can get back on task, but I don’t make the transition very smooth. I am not sure if it is a big deal to transition smoothly. If that is an important trait to learn, then I am worried about that.

Something that I would have problems with is asking the right leading questions-especially when I do not know the answer or even a good direction. I have not mastered the quality of getting to deeper meaning in my own papers, so how am I supposed to lead another student on that path when the path is unclear to me? I don’t want to lead anyone in the wrong direction. And, I know that I hate going in for help and discovering that I know more than the person helping me, so I am terrified that someone will think the same of me. I can just imagine a good student coming in for help on the “bigger idea” he or she needs to connect to in the paper. That student actually has an idea of what to say, but does not know how to say it-or does not know the idea is actually there. I would not know how to draw that out. I do not know how to ask leading questions that help the tutee make bigger connections. I just know that the tutee will walk out disappointed that I was not a good help but rather a waste of time. I know how that feels and I do not want any of the people I tutor feel like that because of me.

I am also concerned about taking over the session. I feel that I can take over sessions easily with an actively participating tutee, but if I have a silent tutee that agrees with everything I say, I can see me forgetting the boundaries and doing the work for the tutee. It is so easy to cross the lines with a tutoring session because the students come in asking for help, and tutors are happy to give help. In fact, we like helping so much that we do a lot of the work so that the product looks good. This gives the illusion of help, but the student did not learn much, so really we did not help as much as we could have.