My First Tutoring Session

Nervous is an understatement of how I felt waiting outside the room.  The more I waited the more nervous I became.  After sitting down and introducing myself to the two tutees a bit of the nervousness went away.  Not all of it but most of it.  I had two students both of them ready to work.  I spoke to the student I was not going to be working with first and told him to read over whatever he wanted me to work on with him and to make sure that he was happy with his work.  I told him to jot down anything he might want to change, add or develop on.  I turned to the student that I was going to work with and asked him to see the assignment.  After reviewing the assignment, I read his response.  He made sure to let me know he was still in the middle of working on it.  For the most part what he had done already was good.  He just needed help developing some more ideas.  I had never seen the movie "The Matrix" and by reading what he wrote I kind of grasp the concept of the movie.  He had come up with a great example but never connected it to "The Matrix" so I asked him to make the connection while I worked with the other tutee.  Right before I turned to work with the other student he asked me if I had any ideas on how he could come up with ideas.  We spoke about how he can draw from personal experiences and from things going on around him.  He didn't seem very confident and I made sure to tell him that confidence was so important.  I pulled out an example CATW prompt I had and we went over that quickly we read it together and I asked him to give me examples of what he might possibly write given that prompt.  At first he couldn't really come up with anything but once I gave him an example he was able to come up with a few on his own.  He looked a little relived after this.  I then began working with the second student.  This student had excellent ideas.  He made wonderful connections between the movie "The Matrix"

Observation Three

During my third observation, I observed a tutor with two students.  Both students had completely different things to work on.  The tutor was extremely kind, introduced himself to both the tutees and myself.  One of the students had never been to the writing center and as unsure of what was going to happen.  He took a few minutes to explain exactly what the student should expect during the session.  He was very attentive to both students and mad sure to give both of them the same amount of time.  He had the first time student read over her paper and make last minute changes while he worked with the first student.  He had previously worked with the first student so he was well aware of her struggle with English.  He spoke very slow and made sure she understood everything.  She didn't have a paper to go over, but had a previously paper she had worked on with the tutor and comments from her professor.  Apparently the student had problems with summarizing things.  The tutor wrote down on a piece of paper different techniques that student can use when creating a summary.  The student had a reading that she needed to summarize, together they picked out main ideas of the first paragraph.  The tutor asked the student if she felt comfortable to try doing the same thing they had both done with the first paragraph with the second and third while he worked with the other student.  The student said she'd try.  I liked how the tutor listed out different techniques for the student to look back on just in case she forgot about what to do.  I noticed the student going back to the list a few times, to make sure she was doing it correctly.
With the second student the tutor decided for them to read the paper out loud together.  The want over the HOC first.  After reading the introduction, the tutor asked the student what her thesis was.  The student was not clear as to what a thesis was.  The tutor explained to her what it was.  The tutor decided to read on and told the student to jot down the main idea of each paragraph and then they would work on putting that into a thesis.  During the session the tutor also helped the student learn how to break down the professors prompt in order to make sure that she is answering all the questions that the professor asked.  Because this student had a great paper, the tutor took the time to explain little things that he thought were important such as a body paragraph structure.  The explain what made up a paragraph.  He also wrote this down that way the student had this to overlook whenever she was unsure. 
This was on of my favorite tutoring sessions.  I felt like the tutor really wanted both students to take a lot away from this session.  He wrote things down for them so that they could take it with them and look back on it.  He constantly asked the students throughout the session if they understood what he was saying.  The collaborated with them but also taught them some things. 

Observation Two

During my second week of observation I observed two different tutors.  With the first tutor, the first student failed to bring his assignment with him.  The tutor made sure that the student understood how important it was that the assignment be bought into the lab.  The prompt is needed in order for the tutor to make sure the student is answering all of the professors questions.  This student struggled a great deal with word form.  Many times throughout his paper he would use a word in it's noun form instead of the verb form and so on.  The student and tutor collaborated together by going through the paper and correcting the students errors with word form.  After the completed this the tutor gave the student work sheets to take home and work on.  I really liked that fact that the tutor did this.  The tutor assured the student that with practice he would eventually get the right word forms.  There was definitely a language barrier.  Both the tutor and student had accents and many times throughout the session the student became frustrated because he was unable to get his points across and at times did not understand the tutor.  For the most part the students paper was good, and whatever parts the tutor felt were weaker, both him and the student worked together to make it better.  They brainstormed together to come up with better points.  The tutor made sure to push the student to read as much as possible.  He wanted the student to know that to improve yourself as a writer, you must be a reader.  This made so much sense to me, and when the tutor said it you could tell that the student realized the truth to it. 
With the second student the tutor had worked with him prior to this session.  The student handed in a paper and bought it back with some feedback from his professor.  The tutor read the paper and read the professors comments.  The student had already made some changes so they went over those changes and made sure that the student answered the professors concerns.  This student had already done must of the work on his own and just wanted a tutor to read over his paper.  They worked on the conclusion together.