Alexias' Case Study

Before this class I have never thought about tutoring and or becoming a tutor. Tutoring was something that I received for science and math when I was in high school. I could not grasp what was going on in class and I was not passing my exams. The individual one on one instruction helped me to understand what I needed to pass my exams and the class. This semester I was able to experience and observe a trained tutor help students, and then I myself, became a peer tutor.  I can proudly say that throughout this semester in class and during my observations, tutoring skills is not all I acquired from this learning experience. Tutoring students in the writing center observing and then tutoring students myself has taught me to be an extremely versatile and relatable person when it comes to tutoring, education and learning in general. By versatile I mean, being able to adapt to any person place or thing when dealing with education. What I mean by relatable, is enabling the student to understand that I know and recognize where the student is coming from.

There are so many people that are so eager to learn and become successful in life. They come to college to do just that. Everyone wants to enhance their education so they can get that high paying job and become successful. With that they can support themselves, their family and live a comfortable life. Before all that can happen, help is always needed to ensure this process. Over this class I observed four different tutors and tutoring sessions. One of my sessions I observed Oscar. He had a session with two students from the same class, which was ENG 101. The reason they were there was to receive corrections on their citations/reference page for the online articles and books they used in their papers. Another session I observed Bill. Bill is a professor here at LAGCC teaching ENG 101, 102, & 103, he also teaches at BMCC. Bill is tutoring one student that comes to him on a regular basis. In this session she came in for grammatical help with fragments and complete sentences. In a different session I oversaw Julianna. In this tutoring session she as well had two people she had to tutor. One girl needed help with her scholarship essay, and the other needed help with her research paper. And I finally observed Maria. Maria tutored two students at a time. One student had a resume that she needed revised, and checked over for format, grammatical and punctuation errors.

And the other was a long term student that she had been working with for over two years who was doing an analysis paper. On my last tutoring session, I helped a girl named Annomoyah who needed final preparation for the CATW exam she is taking tomorrow. In our session I was able to help her with many things, best as I could. The first thing we worked on was the essay she wrote which was responding to a certain passage about the nation being distracted with technology. We started correcting the essay and when I realized it did not really hit the key points that it needed to, I immediately stopped and took out the CATW material I had to better help her understand exactly what she needed to do. From there everything went extremely smooth. I explained and went over the proper structure including the introduction, body and conclusion.

The main thing I focused on was making sure she wrote more than 411 words. The way I did that was by breaking down each paragraph. I explained a thesis and what a topic sentence was and how to include them in her paper. I showed her how to underline the most important ideas in the paragraphs and use that information in her written paragraphs as her examples. I explained that she should give her opinion and uses the ideas from the paragraphs to explain her points. She got the hang of it and realized that the more she explained the more she was writing. And the more she wrote the better her essay was going to be. For the thesis, 3-body paragraphs and conclusion, I made Annoyamah find and paraphrase her topic sentences directly from the passage, and still adding her own ideas and twists to the paragraph. When it came to the conclusion I told her to sum up her essay restating her thesis. In closing, I told her to find a way to solve this problem of the nation being distracted by technology. And then explain how if this problem is not corrected how it will affect the world socially and culturally. She totally understood what I was telling her and I feel she will hopefully remember and use this strategy so she can write a “5” essay.

I know she will definitely remember this strategy that I showed her because I gave her the CATW handouts that described “5, 4, 3, 2 and 1” papers so she knows what to do and not to do tomorrow. I also helped her make a list of the details she needed to follow so she can definitely pass. When I say details I mean, her structure such as having an intro, body and conclusion, sentence clarity, and making sure she summarizes the passage. As well as giving her own experience or ideas to the paragraph. Lastly, I went over grammar and punctuation, and told her not to stress it too much, but to make sure she reads over her work so she can catch her mistakes. The most important thing I stressed to Annoyamah was to understand that she knew what she was doing because she has been writing the whole semester, among other things. My quick pep talk seemed to work because she seemed so much more confident leaving then when she came in, and that made me proud to be a peer tutor.

All of these students came to the Writing Center wanting to receive help with assignments they did not understand or do correctly or papers that needed revision. All of the tutors that I observed served a purpose and helped each student to the best of their ability. They had great tone body language, and they seemed genuinely interested in helping. They did not really use any specific tutoring strategies from the Tutoring Writing book.  This was probably because all of the students that came already knew exactly what they needed help with.  When I did my two tutoring sessions it was somewhat the same.

With my first session I worked with an Eng 99 student by the name of Paula.  Now she had a specific assignment that she wanted to work on, but she did not have a hard copy the assignment. Since she did not have her assignment, I improvised and helped her best I could with what she had to work with. I corrected and went over her first written paragraphs about the movie The Matrix, staring Keanu Reeves where she summarized the film. After that she opened up and explained to me that she was confused with the whole essay structure. So I took our time and explained that to her. I broke the structure down explaining the intro, thesis body, and conclusion. I also gave her help hints to help her when writing her future papers. I even showed her one of my old Eng 220 essay so she could see a prime example of how an acceptable essay looked.

In my second session I had a regular English class student. She needed a tutor but since all of the other tutors were taken, they let me take her. I really enjoyed our session and it was at the end when I realized that I really could do this whole tutoring thing. She just needed me to help her revise her essay and make it not so colloquial, especially when it came to how it flowed. English was her second language, and the paper was written as if she was talking to me. I revised the whole paper with her. I helped her rewrite her ideas and let her do most of the correcting with me just there for the support and final overseeing of it to make sure it was a better paper than what she came in with. We went over her grammar and entire essay structure. I pointed out what topic sentences were and gave her the option of having them in all of her body paragraphs. With this, anyone and everyone would be able to read her paper and fully understand what she was discussing. We conversed, laughed and I learned some things I did not know from her, just as she did me. In the end, she seemed really satisfied and I am really glad I was able to experience that.  This session showed me that being modest, and patient and open to anything can take you a long way. I was constantly questing myself and doubting that I was doing everything the way I was supposed to.  I really wanted to help her and have the same content feeling about her paper I would have if I saw a regular tutor. And I feel I did just that, and from that session among others, I realized why the Writing Center is so effective and is always so crowded.

During theses individual one-on-one sessions these tutors have time to either just do their job, or really try and help someone. I am figuring by the enormous amount of people that go there they are really helping these students. A lot of these tutors build relationships with these students so they feel completely comfortable and able to express whatever is on their mind. That is why so many people have favorite tutors because many of these tutors allow students to do so. These tutoring sessions are not just helping students with papers. They are teaching writing across the cultural divides. So many students are coming from different education cultures and have different backgrounds and are not the best writers, readers. But with this help they are able to understand, comprehend and improve in something that they might have been very weak in. Being able to succeed in something that you once could not is an excellent feeling, I know from personal experience.

I myself perfect, instead I feel I have gotten better over time. When I was in high school I was a great writer compared to many of my classmates. I went to high school across the street from Baisly Projects in South Jamaica, Queens.  This neighborhood was not the finest, and the school was not zoned so the students from all of the five boroughs there. The environment was challenging and there were many obstacles that I had to overcome, but I did what I had to do. I cannot say the same for many other students that went there. Half did not graduate. Kozol wrote in her essay Savage Inequalities, that “The number of students of all races who drop out between 9^th and 12^th grade, and do not return, never finish school” I can completely contest to this because I experienced it first hand. Some of my friends, and friends-friends, became statistics, and I swore that would not be me. Some people do not understand the struggle that minorities everywhere face, especially when it come to education.

Not everyone is driven, and has a supportive family to stay on top of them to make sure they succeed. I was lucky, because I had my mom, and from young she instilled great morals and values and all that focused around education.  I believe that just because I live in a poor neighborhood does not mean I have to be a protégé of it. Over the years I have learned that you have to go hard or go home. You have to be determined and focused and know what you want. You also have to understand that you have to deal with a lot to get to where you really want to be. The same thing goes for all these students that attend the Writing Center. These students are taking the necessary steps to improve their education.

 In conclusion I can say this: this tutoring experience has taught me how to be an effective tutor. When I say effective, I imply having the ability to teach and understand that you can be taught as well. A tutor should always  having the ability to relate and maybe become somewhat personal with their student. This experience actually has also made me want to teach even more, because I really loved the feeling of knowing I helped someone. Tutors have to be flexible and willing to help students that really want to be helped. Tutors are supposed to care about the intellectual and personal development of their students. To do that you have to be able to relate, and not be judgmental of them, who they are and what they might or might not know. This tutoring experience has opened my eyes to so much more than just tutoring.  I have an open mind to anything and everything and I am willing and wanting to help anyone that wants it. Education is something that anyone and everyone should get, regardless of where you come from or where you are living now. This class and the tutoring sessions that I observed have really helped me understand the entire aspect when it comes to teaching and writing as a whole. The strategies that I have learned, and the one-on-one experience I had is not just meaningful in itself. These skills and techniques will help me in my overall teaching and writing career, as well as my everyday life. McAndrew and Reigstad stated that “writing is a tool for learning” and that is so true. In essence, if you are not a versatile person, you might not excel as much as you want to with your future ventures.