Here's Alexxxxxxx

Hey kids!

This week Stephen and I went into a little more detail about his sessions. I asked him how he handled his introverted weekly student. He told me that he got her to open up by becoming more conversational with her. He would start the sessions just by getting her to talk about random things. He also continues to stress that he is also a student. Once she realized this she started to open up more. He told me he generally tries to begin his sessions with a little bit of small talk to get the students more comfortable with him. I told him as long as this small talk doesn't eat up most of the session it can be a useful tactic to make students feel more comfortable in a session.

He is a little bit intimidated because a new weekly student has signed up with him. She apparently has caused a few tutors some troubles in the past. I showed him how to look up students in time trade and how to look at notes from past sessions. He also may talk to a few of the tutors that have worked with this student so he can gain a true sense of what it may be like. From what I understand this student just seems to be very stubborn and I told him maybe by using his opening up tactics he may be a bit more successful with this student.

Also he expressed concern because he had a drop in student who only had grammar issues. I told him that it's ok to help a student with comma, and punctuation issues. I encouraged him to try to hone in on the consistant grammar issues within a paper and make it a "teaching moment". Use the white board, create examples, make them think. Sometimes if the student's thoughts and ideas are sound one needs to look to grammar if that's the only thing bringing the writer down.

Alrighty catch y'all on the flip side!!


Alex

Kendraaaaa

I had my second mentor meeting with Kathryn today. She informed me that she has her first weekly student on Mondays!! So, with that being said, we collaborated on how the session went. Kathryn stated that it didn’t go well because her student had the sense of not wanting to be there. This student had already had two classes where she was required to attend sessions at the WC. Her student left early because she didn’t want to brainstorm for her new assignment because she had just received it. With that assignment she had to find a source, so Kathryn did everything from going online and using resources to advising her to talk to a librarian. Kathryn felt that she was resistant. When the session ended and Kathryn filled out the session report, she heard back from the teacher saying that this particular student was behind in class and should have had writing assignments to work on. I handled this by telling Kathryn that it was not her responsibility to have already known that. She did everything she could to make the session “happen.”

Kathryn had a second session with a student who had a onetime appointment. The student wanted to work on her grammar (because she was never taught in school), so Kathryn went online and researched definitions, etc. She asked on how to handle this because she never had a student come in who just wants to work on grammar. I suggested to her that when students want to come in to work on grammar that you do research online or go to the reference room. I encouraged her to print out worksheets and work on them in a collaborative way.
Overall, Kathryn is doing great and seems to feel really comfortable in the space. She still gets nervous at times, but she is doing well!

Thanks Ya’ll!
Kendra

Kendra's 2nd post

Hey all!
Today, I met with my new mentee Keenan. I have never met him before,(I KNOW!) so I took this time to get to know one another. After discussing biographies of each other, I asked him how his sessions are going. Keenan has two weekly students, both of which are older than him. He was worried that they would look at him differently since he is younger than them (almost as if they had seniority over him). I explained that we are students as well, we may be called consultants, but we are here to learn too. After that discussion, I asked how the sessions were overall - he said that they were good and he felt comfortable tutoring. Since his previous mentor was Brian, I plan on sitting in on one of his sessions (most likely his weekly apt. on Wed. @ 4)just to get a feel for his style.
After collaborating over sessions, etc., I encouraged him to ask questions or express his concerns to me or any other mentor/tutor.
Murrr,
Kendra

Second Session

Hey all,

Because I am terrible with computers, the first post that I wrote went to the wrong blog (sorry). Anyway, I just had my second mentor session with Tim. It went rather well, in my humble opinion. We talked for a little while about one of his students that has cerebral palsy. For that session he said that the student needs to do everything on a laptop because he cannot write things down on paper. My suggestion for that was to tell the student that he should bring in a flash drive for the remainder of the session. The reason for this would be so that Tim could write comments on the student's paper in the notes section of Word. That way, the student would be able to take the comments and edits with him and work with a more manageable medium.

After talking about that situation, we got to talking, at length, about ESL students and how to handle a session with them. We talked about how it is no different from a regular session in that every single ESL session will go differently based on the student's grasp of the English language. I used an example from one of my recent sessions to illustrate the points and techniques that I told him about. (If anyone disagrees with me, let me know) When I approach an ESL session, I generally give the student more than I would an English speaker (just for reference). I then go through the rest of the mistakes (grammatical or otherwise) and have them figure out how to fix them based on the rules we just discussed or had previously discussed in past sessions.

This was really all we talked about this session. Little by little, we will tackle issues, questions, or situations as they arise until we have covered a wide variety of topics. (I know this is in the wrong spot, but deal with it) Usually (by that I mean the two sessions we've had) when we start the session, we talk about sessions we have had recently and what went well, or didn't, and why we thought so. That's it for now.

Gannon and Blog

Last Monday, I mentored Mike, my old protege. Since I've been his mentor for the past semester, we lept right in to his experiences thus far as a tutor.

I feel as though he could use some work in appearing confident and in control around tutees. I had observed him asking a student's name in order to find out if she was his tutee. The encounter felt awkward - it went something like this:

Mike: Hey, what's your name?
Tutee: Jane Smith.

Mike then turned away from her without explaining why he'd asked her name, while the student looked on confusedly. I feel that little courtesy things are really important in giving the Learning Studio an accessible, non-threatening feel. I suggested to him a different way of encountering potential tutees:

Mike: Hello, are you here for the writing center?
Tutee: Yes.
Mike: Do you know who you're meeting with? Would you happen to be with a "Michael"?
Tutee: No, I think I'm with someone named "Gannon."
Mike: Oh! I see. Well, I am not Gannon, but I'm sure the brilliant and prolific Gannon Reedy will be out in one moment to fill your brain with glorious tutoring.

Something like that. To his credit, that had been the first time he'd ever asked a student on the orange couch, so naturally he was a bit rusty.

And so we spent some time going over these important wee details, which I think don't necessarily need to be taught in classrooms and theory books, but are great for mentor-mentee conferencing.

We also discussed what one should do if a student comes in with an paper that is only OK but is so riddled with grammar errors that it is very difficult to understand. I run into this problem a bit myself and often wonder what I should do. We decided that it is more important for the paper to be understood, so focusing on grammar would be the most important thing to do in this circumstance.

Gannon and Blog

Hello, folks!

I mentored Jo last Thursday on the orange couch - I kept everything pretty informal, figuring that I should get to know her better in order for my mentoring to be successful. Although she didn't have to many questions, we spent time reviewing a tutoring session she'd had recently. She was concerned that she might not have given the student enough information in order to keep from over-directing the session. I recommended that if a student truly does not know the correct answer, the best thing to do is to explain very clearly what should be done and why so that nothing is confusing or ambiguous. We spent much of the next hour talking about her major and whatnot.

This week I plan on delving into more tutoring goodness - asking hypothetical questions and the like.

heyrow everybody!!!! It's Alex's first blog post!!!

I met with Stephen for the first time this week. He's been doing a rockstar job of tutoring. He only has one weekly student on Fridays and he is really happy with how he has gotten her to open up tremendously in the first few weeks of the semester. He doesn't seem to be having any problems with Time Trade or anything like that. With the writing center being significantly slower this semester I have been able to get to know many of the new tutors and I think they all are starting to open up about their experiences tutoring.

Wahoo!!!!

kendra's first blog post...booyah.

Hey Everyone!

Today was the first mentor meeting I had with Kathryn. I've been keeping tabs on her since she began tutoring on her own - she also has come to me with concerns, etc. Since she has been entered in time trade, she has been getting students. We collaborated about the two sessions she had (both drop-ins with scholarship essays). Kathryn said one session went really well, and the other was not so good - however, she does feel more comfortable since she experienced two very different sessions.

I have also talked with other mentees to see how their sessions have been going and all seem to feel comfortable tutoring.

That's all folks - Have a good weekend!
Kendra