Throughout my career I have taken on several roles including teacher, trainer, and tutor. I have enjoyed all three roles and started wondering why I love, and am so fascinated with, my role as a tutor.
Thinking back on my tutoring experience over the last couple of years I realized the role is multidimensional, and the goals and objectives are very different for each student. As a tutor, I am not making assumptions about what the student needs to learn. I do not have a standard curriculum that I want each student to learn. What do I do?
During our first meeting, my goal is to learn something about the students’ interests and more about what they want or need from tutoring.
I take my knowledge and experience, sort through it, and determine how I can best help the students meet their goals.
This requires identifying specific information I have, understanding how I can convey it while capitalizing on each student’s interests and learning style, presenting it in a way the student will be able to apply the information, and verifying the student can achieve his or her desired outcomes.
So instead of starting with “This is what I want you to learn” I start with “What do you need to learn and how can I help you achieve your goals in a way you will find interesting?”. This may sound like a very nuanced and nitpicky difference, but it is not. What it ultimately means is that as a tutor I do not take a predefined lesson out to students and expect them to learn from it. I customize tutoring to fit the learning objectives within the context of the students’ interests. This can be challenging because...
Every student is different
This is true regardless of the content area (e.g., creative writing, English as a second language, or math). As an example, consider the fact that I currently tutor three 5th-grade creative writing students. Each one has her own unique interests and needs.
One of the girls has four brothers, so she likes to play, and write about, sports. She wrote an impressive script for an announcer at a baseball game, including all the correct terminology for the sport of baseball.
An aspiring astrophysicist is extremely knowledgeable about NASA, planets, asteroids, and black holes. She is currently writing her own chapter book about characters in a mystical and magical land.
The world traveler draws from her experience in numerous countries and her imagination to create engaging fiction stories. She once wrote a paper comparing the climate, cleanliness, and culture of various locations around the world.
Taking a lesson to these students saying, “These are the five elements of a good story – now write a story about the pickle ball” would limit their creativity. Not all students know, or care, about pickle ball. Many would spend their time researching pickle ball instead of working on creating a good story. Instead, after learning about the students’ interests, I encourage them to write about whatever they want to write about and then help them shape and mold the writing to meet the standards for a good story.
For example, I asked one student if she ever imagined a fantasy world, and if so what was it like? She told me in great detail how she would get to the Daydream World, a place people go when they daydream. She described what it looked like, the people she imagined interacting with, and how she returned from the Daydream World. We then talked about the elements of a good story (i.e., characters, setting, plot, conflict or drama, and resolution) and how she included them all in her story. We then immediately went on to discuss the importance of character development and imagery.
As my creative writing students work, I constantly engage them in these kinds of conversations. I explain the elements of a good story and ask them how they have included them in their story. We discuss why the elements are important and what types of changes they think should be made to strengthen specific elements in their stories. When they edit their stories, I ask them what they think, and they explain how the changes they made improve the story. If they do not see the obvious, I ask them, “Do you think it might help to <insert whatever changes seem appropriate>?” and we talk about it. They get very engaged in the process. They learn the elements of a good story, the importance of logic and flow, how to create sensual imagery, and how to connect the introduction to the end of the story.
Regardless of the subject matter, conducting lessons in this way not only keeps the students engaged because they select the content, but it also provides positive feedback on their initial attempt at the assignment (e.g., first draft of a story) and helps build confidence.
I helped a student with a learning disability learn math by focusing on the kinds of bills (e.g., $5, $10, $20) she received in birthday cards that year. She learned to count her money and eventually used her knowledge to decide whether to buy a dress. She ultimately decided not to buy the dress she liked because she did not want to give up so many $20 bills.
I worked with a man that lives on a farm. Counting the number of animals on the farm (and the number of chickens lost to a fox) gave us relevant addition and subtraction problems. Knowing the number of chickens and the average number of eggs laid by each chicken on a daily basis gave us a useful multiplication problem.
While conducting conversation tutoring with a student from India learning English as a second language, the student was very shy the first session and answered my questions with one-word answers. As she got comfortable with the fine art of asking me questions, and hearing my answers, she gained enough confidence to spend an entire hour telling me about the culture and traditions in India and sharing pictures and stories about her home town.
As I work through lessons with my students and we discuss the issues related to learning objectives, I remind the students how they did something similar during earlier assignments (e.g., how they introduced an earlier story, how they counted by 20s, or what they told me about life in their home country). Taking this approach also helps them see patterns in the process. I have used this same approach with a variety of content areas. I let the students drive the content of the lessons to keep them engaged while I create the exercises and activities that can be used to achieve learning objectives. The successes are very personal, and they are proud of their accomplishments. These are all very impressive students that learn quickly and amaze me every day.
