ENG 099 Tutoring

Tutoring Prof. Alexander's students was very different than my previous tutoring for the ENG 101 students. To start, this time all the students had their papers with them, mostly because the professor handed them out to them but still, it was helpful having students who came equipped with their assignments and feedback ready. I began with just one student, a young lady who's main issues with her assignment was the repetitiveness of her ideas, and the placement. After reading through her professor's comments, and then reading her assignment myself, I realized that she had not come up with three separate ideas like her assignment asked of her. I began to ask her questions regarding the article she was discussing, and saw that she was having trouble still coming up with ideas. So I asked her to look over her article and look over her paper briefly, and see what sounded similar and what sounded different, and see where she could maybe separate or come up with new ideas. The majority of my session with her was a little difficult, I don't think she was quite as receptive as I needed her to be so her ideas could flow. Around the time I got her to jot down 5-6 ideas like her assignment suggested, I got a second student, so I left her to think about these ideas, which she would like to expand on, how she would like to place them, and maybe up with a few "main idea" sentences to help her focus.

My second student's energy was much better than the first.  He was much more receptive and had already come up with some ideas, his issue just seemed to be expanding on them and expressing them because English was not his first language. He actually didn't have much on his original assignment, however he had already jotted down a few ideas, so what I did was ask him questions to try to expand what he was trying to express. He had some really great ideas, and I kept reassuring him that he was on a great start by coming up with these, and I got him to jot down a few sentences for each of his ideas, and because we were short on time because he had come in late, I had him write down some keywords and key ideas so he wouldn't forget what he was trying to say.

 By the time I had gotten both my students to finish up these tasks and answer their questions, time was up. I left each with a plan. My female student was to further expand and find the proper placing on her three ideas and make sure it didn't sound repetitive, and my second was to use his keywords and key ideas to turn his few sentences into a full paragraph of about 3-4 sentences. I thanked both of them, and they thanked me, which made me feel good and like I helped. I came out of there feeling good about my session, like I did somehow help and they would be able to use the concepts I suggested to pass their CATW. I hoped that my probing and open ended questions would be something they would think about when it came time for them to take their tests. I didn't name any strategies to them, but I hoped they would remember the ones I used and put them to good use when it came time for them to take the test.

Reactions

The idea of privatizing schools is becoming widely popular across the nation, leaving many feeling helpless as large corporations such as ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) take control of the destiny of our public school system. To give a brief description of what ALEC does, they are a corporate-funded partnership between huge global corporations and state legislators who vote behind closed doors in attempts to change state laws to better benefit their members. ALEC has an entire committee dedicated just to public schools, working with these huge global corporations, many of who have never educated a soul in their lifetime, to adjust schools to their needs. A major issue coming up is the idea of slowly but surely demolishing the public school system and privatizing them, which would in turn leave hundreds to thousands of public school educators, principles and even supervisors jobless, and bring in inexperienced six-week trainees to take on their jobs and drill students with test-based materials in order to benefit these corporations. Their idea is to turn the public school system into a business, with complete disregard to how this may affect the students. They are students after all, not factory workers who can simply adapt to an overnight change on how their education is being presented, especially when that change seems to have none of their interests at heart, they are being used to make profits for these huge global companies and their partners in crime, ALEC.

Fourth Session

During my final observation, I observed a tutor who was working with two students in one session, and with another observer besides myself. She didn't specify how she would divide the time she spent with each, she just began with a student she was already familiar with and began to read her paper to herself, since the paper had already been handed and graded by the professor. Throughout her reading her paper on bailouts regarding the bank systems and such, she agrees with many of the points the student has made, and when she is done reading she only suggests that at some points the student has gotten off topic and redirects some of those points into arguments that fit better. The student then shows her a revised version of this paper and the tutor reads through a bit and then tells her this version is much better. She asks her questions such as what a bailout is, what it was supposed to do, what it really did and so on. After asking her these questions she asks her to expand on those answers and leaves her to create stronger arguments based on that.

The other student's paper is about not just texting and driving, but about how talking on the phone even with a headset while driving should be banned. She looks over his paper and his assignment task and asks him what he thinks it should be about before explaining that his paper is great, has good quotes and statistics, but that his main assignment is to discuss what legal bans and laws they can make to impose for this issue. She suggests focusing on the law aspect and also suggests some slight reorganizing of his ideas. Overall I believe what made this a good session was how knowledgeable the tutor was on both subjects the students were discussing. I think her questions really helped each student either expand or focus their ideas, creating a successful session.

Live Tutoring Observation

During my first live tutoring session, my student unfortunately did not have her gentrification paper with her. She asked me to wait while she ran to print it, but after almost 40 minutes she came back and said the line was too long and she couldn't print it out for me. So for the remaining 15 minutes that we had together, I asked her what ideas and arguments she had so far in her paper. She couldn't really remember much of what she had written, which made it difficult to assess how she was doing. I asked her if she could give me a general summary of her thesis and some of her paragraphs, and she was unable to tell me what her thesis was about, but she gave me little tidbits from her other main paragraphs, so I just helped her sort some of her ideas together. I felt like I couldn't do much without her paper being there and her lack of memory, so I asked if she had her readings. She showed me a few of them and let me read them myself when I asked her what they were about, and I tried to work together with her on what points she could use in her paper to strengthen her arguments. The last thing I found to work on with her was finally to have her tell me what a "reintegration" sentence is, and what she had come up with because her professor wanted her to use one. She flipped through her notes and showed me what she had written down as a definition for reintegration, and together we agreed that somewhere in the conclusion she should add it in to mainly summarize and focus on her argument.
During the session I tried to take down some notes here and there, and also tried to come up with a plan of action for when I left. I wrote down a few things for her such as reorganizing common ideas together, making a clearer thesis and argument if she felt they were a bit fuzzy, and coming up with a good reintegration sentence. Overall it was a difficult session, I found it hard to find things to talk to her about because her paper was not in front of me and she didn't remember enough of what she wrote for me to really help her as much as I wish I could have.

Third Session

      During my third session, I observed a tutor whose first words to the student and I were that during his last few sessions where an observer had been present, the student had been less receptive to criticism and help and he was certain that it was because someone else was present. After that he read through the students paper and the professor's comments to himself, which took a little long. I wondered why he didn't read it aloud with the student, but then realized it was probably because the student had already handed it in, so making it a better paper was probably more about adjusting it to the professor's comments. When he finally starts talking to the student, he suggests moving some things around. He finds certain sentences in one part of the paper that he feels would fit better in another paragraph.
     What was really good about this tutor was that he had done this particular assignment before, and had actually taken that same class as the student, and was really knowledgeable about the subject. He was able to offer a lot of different ways to think about her writing, and would occasionally throw out there how he liked how she had worded a specific sentence or so out there. Overall I didn't think this tutor came out particularly as the friendliest or the most engaging, however I think in his own way he was able to help the student and she came out with better insight thanks to his knowledge and also a plan of action regarding how she could fix this paper.

Second Session

      During this week's session, it was particularly busy, so I observed a tutor who took on two Eng 101 students at the same time. Both of these students had recently come to the US, therefore English was their second language. The way the tutor decided to take on the task was to switch from each student every five minutes or so. He introduced himself, and got to know his students a small bit before getting into their assignments. He starts with a student who has come from Haiti, whose first languages are French and Creole. He reads through her assignment and asks her a little about what it is about, and then goes through a few lines with her. Some of the words she uses are used incorrectly, because in French they would make sense to use them that way, but in English they don't sound correct. He asks her to ask herself in what language she is thinking, whether in French or English, and then try to figure out which language she is trying to translate to. He expresses to her that the paper is on its way to looking and sounding great, now she just needs to use words that fit better. He says he leaves her with this task while he switches to the other student, a young man from Egypt.
       The student's main focus based on peer reviewing is that he had too many run-on's. The tutor reads through some of his paper, and finds that the student is a great writer, but yes, his entire paper is made up on run-on's which also create unnecessary mega-paragaraphs. So the tutor explains to him that he is already a great writer, and doesn't need to make his sentences so complicated to express what he wants to say. He says to use his confidence as a great writer to simplify some of his points and sentences. He also helps him turn his huge introduction into a two paragraphs, and says that he can find a third one, but leaves that up to the student while he switches back to the other one. Throughout the session, I think he did a great job switching back and forth and always leaving the other some kind of task. When something he thought could benefit both students came up, like a simple paragraph structure worksheet he gave them, he would have both look up and listen in. He would also include me and show me how it could be beneficial to use that method or tool during a session. I believe I observed a very successful session, where I felt the timing was fair for each student. The student with run-on's felt that he was so helpful that he asked if he could stay or when he could come back for another session with this tutor.

First Session

During my first observation I observed an older tutor, who was helping a student he already had met last semester and so he was familiar with her background. He began the session by asking her how she did since the last time they sat down together and so on. After those questions, he asked her what they would be working on today and the piece that the student needed help with was not an actual paper, but an assignment to observe a child for her psychology class and describe in detail how the child behaves. The tutor went step by step through the assignments instructions with the student, and then began to look over what she had come up with so far. He focused on two major things, her grammar and use of tense, and the amount of detail she was providing. Throughout her entire assignment, the tutor helped the student adjust all that she had written into only one tense, past tense, instead of the various she had down. What he primarily focused and ecouraged with many questions was the details of what she had observed. For example, she had written "the child sits at the table and does homework". The tutor encouraged her to describe what kind of homework, "Was she coloring? Reading? What was she reading? Did she write anything? What did she write with?" and so on. Looking back onto today and previous class discussions, I realized the tutor was using a lot of what he have discussed, collaborative learning, talk and write, and so on. His use of questions helped improve her assignment and by the end of it she left very satisfied and said she felt ready to type out her assignment with the changes made and felt more confident in receiving a good grade on it.