I feel weird about writing this entry, because I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus, especially a tutor who I think has the tutee’s best interests at heart, and who tried her best to help. I also don’t know that my interpretation of what I saw was valid, or matched up with what the tutor or tutee might have to say about the session. I’m talking about subjective things like body language. They sat next to each other but the body language wasn’t great. The tutee rolled her eyes a lot. The two of them both seemed frustrated at times. The tutor seemed bored at times and condescending at others. At one point the tutee looked at me and subtly asked what time it was, as if all she wanted was to get out of there. This is all subject to my interpretation. Neither of them said anything nasty or confrontational or demeaning. I don’t want to condemn anybody for something I might be wrong about. But I don’t feel like what I witnessed was a very good session
We’ve discussed the sessions we watch with each other in class but we’ve all been pretty careful about not mentioning names of the tutors. So I don’t know if the person I observed yesterday was the one we’ve taken to calling “the quiet tutor” or not, but she was very quiet. She addressed both lower order concerns and higher order concerns. But I felt the lower order concerns were over-emphasized and I didn’t think either the lower order concerns or the higher order concerns were addressed effectively.
As for the lower order concerns, the tutees first language was not English. She was worried about taking the CATW and the paper she brought in was all marked up with grammatical errors. They spent several minutes going over the errors that were marked up but in the end, the majority of the help the tutor offered amounted to, “So fix all those things.”
The assignment the tutee had brought with her was to respond to the first chapter of a book she was reading for class, guided by three or four questions provided by the professor, in an argumentative thesis driven essay. What she had written was really more of a summary, and it was all one very long paragraph. So the tutor told her she needed to write an introduction and asked, “Do you know what I mean by an introduction?” The tutee said she did and they left it at that. They didn’t really discuss the intro or bounce ideas back and forth for what she might write. The tutor told her she needed a thesis, asked if she knew what a thesis was, got a yes, and left it at that. She told her she needed to write body paragraphs each driven by one idea, drew a diagram of what she meant and handed it to the tutee. But what she handed her was basically a stack of empty rectangles on an 8.5”x11” sheet of paper. This is what you ought to write: five rectangles. Then she told the tutee to work on it for her own for a few minutes. The tutee then sat there, trying to think of something to write for quite a while. She didn’t make much progress and seemed frustrated and bored.
I know I’m being very critical and that’s really not what I want. I felt like the tutor just could have done a much better job. The tutor pointed out to the student that she didn’t think the tutee had understood the chapter they read. But she just told her to read it again. They never discussed it. She never asked her any questions. She told her tutee that she needed to work on addressing the assignment questions better but they didn’t discuss them ever. She didn’t ask any leading questions. She didn’t ask the tutee to answer them to her then and there during their discussion
They worked on another assignment she had brought in with her, about nutrition, and a proposal to stop allowing food stamp recipients to use them to purchase soda. They discussed it briefly and the tutee had some really intelligent things to say about the issue. But the tutor didn’t really respond to them. She just kind of let that moment pass. It was as if she wasn’t really listening at all
It reminded me of my own negative experiences in public school. It seemed as if the tutor just didn’t understand what the tutee was trying to express, not because of a language barrier, but because she wasn’t really listening to her.
It wasn’t all negative. They did cover two assignments. They did work together for the entire hour. The tutor did make it clear the tutee needed to have an intro, a thesis, body paragraphs and a conclusion; and she told her she should start with an outline. But again, even then, she asked, “Do you know what an outline is?” got a yes, and left it at that. They never discussed it or why it might be useful or how to use an outline.
I keep saying I don’t want to be overly critical and I honestly don’t. I know from experience how easy it is for people to be critical of you when you’re doing a job theydon’t really understand. I don’t want to do that to this woman. But I really can’t think of much that was very good. And there is a lot I can think of that was, at least in my opinion, pretty bad.
We’ve discussed the sessions we watch with each other in class but we’ve all been pretty careful about not mentioning names of the tutors. So I don’t know if the person I observed yesterday was the one we’ve taken to calling “the quiet tutor” or not, but she was very quiet. She addressed both lower order concerns and higher order concerns. But I felt the lower order concerns were over-emphasized and I didn’t think either the lower order concerns or the higher order concerns were addressed effectively.
As for the lower order concerns, the tutees first language was not English. She was worried about taking the CATW and the paper she brought in was all marked up with grammatical errors. They spent several minutes going over the errors that were marked up but in the end, the majority of the help the tutor offered amounted to, “So fix all those things.”
The assignment the tutee had brought with her was to respond to the first chapter of a book she was reading for class, guided by three or four questions provided by the professor, in an argumentative thesis driven essay. What she had written was really more of a summary, and it was all one very long paragraph. So the tutor told her she needed to write an introduction and asked, “Do you know what I mean by an introduction?” The tutee said she did and they left it at that. They didn’t really discuss the intro or bounce ideas back and forth for what she might write. The tutor told her she needed a thesis, asked if she knew what a thesis was, got a yes, and left it at that. She told her she needed to write body paragraphs each driven by one idea, drew a diagram of what she meant and handed it to the tutee. But what she handed her was basically a stack of empty rectangles on an 8.5”x11” sheet of paper. This is what you ought to write: five rectangles. Then she told the tutee to work on it for her own for a few minutes. The tutee then sat there, trying to think of something to write for quite a while. She didn’t make much progress and seemed frustrated and bored.
I know I’m being very critical and that’s really not what I want. I felt like the tutor just could have done a much better job. The tutor pointed out to the student that she didn’t think the tutee had understood the chapter they read. But she just told her to read it again. They never discussed it. She never asked her any questions. She told her tutee that she needed to work on addressing the assignment questions better but they didn’t discuss them ever. She didn’t ask any leading questions. She didn’t ask the tutee to answer them to her then and there during their discussion
They worked on another assignment she had brought in with her, about nutrition, and a proposal to stop allowing food stamp recipients to use them to purchase soda. They discussed it briefly and the tutee had some really intelligent things to say about the issue. But the tutor didn’t really respond to them. She just kind of let that moment pass. It was as if she wasn’t really listening at all
It reminded me of my own negative experiences in public school. It seemed as if the tutor just didn’t understand what the tutee was trying to express, not because of a language barrier, but because she wasn’t really listening to her.
It wasn’t all negative. They did cover two assignments. They did work together for the entire hour. The tutor did make it clear the tutee needed to have an intro, a thesis, body paragraphs and a conclusion; and she told her she should start with an outline. But again, even then, she asked, “Do you know what an outline is?” got a yes, and left it at that. They never discussed it or why it might be useful or how to use an outline.
I keep saying I don’t want to be overly critical and I honestly don’t. I know from experience how easy it is for people to be critical of you when you’re doing a job theydon’t really understand. I don’t want to do that to this woman. But I really can’t think of much that was very good. And there is a lot I can think of that was, at least in my opinion, pretty bad.
That was hard to read and I hope I never have to observe something similar. You are clear enough but the situation is just awful. I wonder if some tutors fall into LOC mode as a sort of safety net because they are not comfortable giving HOC feedback. Could it be that our presence is making these tutors nervous and that's why so many are seeing the LOC check list trotted out?
ReplyDeleteI don't know. Maybe? It seemed more like she was just phoning it in. Like there was a checklist she was going down of the things she knew she had to do, but that just mentioning them was enough. You need an intro. Check. You need a thesis. Check. She mentioned those things but never really discussed them or helped her with them.
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