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
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Alex,
ReplyDeleteSome nice detail on this blog! Keep up the good work! Great advice on looking into archived notes on this student--continue encouraging Stephen in his session work. As far as working on grammar w/students online sources and the resource room are great references to use during any session. Consider co-tutoring, and/or observing Stephen's sessions to gauge his progress as a tutor in the remaining weeks.
Steve
I definitely agree about the small-talk. As long as it's not impeding on the session too much, it really helps! I've gotten a lot of my shyer and/or less-enthusiastic students to participate more just by purposely getting a little off-topic for a couple minutes. Once they find that, say, we both like zombie movies or eat at the same restaurant all the time, they suddenly feel a lot more relaxed. It's a great technique, in my opinion, and a lot of times ends up coming around full-circle and contributing to the session as a whole.
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