My First Time Tutoring

            After my first time tutoring I realized that this isn’t as easy as it looks. Nerves are running and adrenaline is pushing throw your body and you’re thinking to yourself I really don’t want to mess this up. People typically in human nature tend to feel nervous throughout life when experiencing anything for the first time. The objective is to not let those nerves get the best of you and to focus on the task at hand.

            In my first experience tutoring a lot of thoughts ran through my head. I wanted to do the best I could which in a way made me very unfocused. My tutee and I introduced ourselves at first and then decided to get down to business. I chose to stick to simple strategies that I’ve learned in past weeks through readings and class discussions and even from what I’ve observed in my four sessions at the tutoring center. The tactics I used were to stick with the HOCs (high order concerns) and to leave all spelling errors till the very end. I quickly discussed the objective of the paper that was due with the tutee and then asked him simply what his thesis was. The advice I gave him was to “always have a strong thesis statement, and have the evidence to support it”. This student had an issue with using quotations so I chose to skim through the article with him. He had a couple quotes in his writing but they were a little bit out of context. His main issue was his structure and the order of his ideas. We then took a separate sheet of paper and wrote down all the ideas that he had about the topic in bullet form. In doing so we were able to get a clearer understanding of what he wanted/had to say on the topic. After doing so, we put together a strong thesis statement and organized the order of which he wanted to put his ideas. Finally we concluded by restating our thesis and main ideas and tried to leave the reader in quench for more.

            As can be seen, we are all human and even tutors can be nervous and lost sometimes even if they are the ones there to help. By getting comfortable and sticking to what I know and have learned I was able to help this student and making improvements into his work. My goal through this entire experience was to leave this student with something that they could keep with them for the future and to have him learn something more than what he expected to. By showing him how to focus on structure and a strong thesis, as well as teaching him what High Order Concerns and Low Order Concerns were I felt more accomplished than just simply helping him and fixing only one paper.