Tutoring Philosophy Statement
The beauty of peer tutoring comes through the unique relationships which can be gained between a tutee and a tutor, and I strive to create a comfortable learning environment for each student I meet. Tutoring allows students to grow and try out new techniques to supplement their own personal writing processes. Hence, I promote tutee-led tutoring methods, because I want to motivate and help the student develop their critical thinking skills, so they can decipher what works best for them. Every student has individual strengths and weaknesses, so tutoring sessions should be personable depending on what they need.
I do not want them to see myself as some sort of superior, but as a fellow peer who simply has knowledge from my own similar past experiences. This is why my meetings always start with a simple question: “How are you doing?” I want students to know that not only do I care about their well being, but I want to gauge a bit of how they are feeling in their academic journey so far.
However, many students do come into the Writing Studio with a fear of writing, and they can become petrified at the site of an open-ended prompt. Therefore, I also tend to start sessions by asking my students questions about the assignment, the class, and the secondary works they are using, so that they verbally can communicate their goals and visualize what they plan to put on to the page, before they even begin writing. This also helps me to think of advice or techniques that may work for their specific situation and personality, and it builds a sense of comfort.
Additionally, I prioritize scaffolded tutoring methods over prescriptive. I have found that simply giving a solution to a student’s problem leads to them making the same issues time and time again, since they did not have to critically think of how to identify or solve it on their own. What scaffolded tutoring requires is allowing students to come to their own conclusions and solutions through proper prompts, inquiry questions, and suggestions. We give them the tools, and we can tell them how to use it, but we cannot do the revisions for them; the students must begin using these tools on their own, so they are equipped to utilize them in the future. After all, an English tutor’s true mission is to help students become better writers, not to necessarily make “better” essays and products.
Sometimes, students do come in and ask me for help with grammar, and they expect me to proofread and edit their work. This occurs with many students who are not comfortable with their English skills, such as foreign exchange students. Therefore, I instead aim to teach them the grammatical concept they may be consistently getting wrong, because I want them to be able to pinpoint and fix this error on their own. For instance, many students do not remember or know what a subject or predicate is, and hence, they end up making multiple fragments or comma splices. If I explain sentence structures and how independent clauses work versus dependents, then the student can check their own work in the future to ensure it is a complete statement. This means that sometimes my tutoring sessions may involve moments more similar to teaching, as I break down key concepts that are fundamental to clarity and cohesion.
Tutoring methods should be as individual as the tutees we see every single day. I strive to create bonds with my students to promote their continued presence in the Georgia State Writing Studio. The Writing Studio is a prime environment for academically engaging, exciting conversations, and I aspire to have these enlightening dialogues within every tutoring meeting. This experience has helped not only the students but has led to me developing as a well-rounded individual who gets to hear a wide range of perspectives: the tutoring experience is a mutually beneficial interaction that coincides with intellectual growth from both parties.
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