Tutoring Portfolio

Relevant Experience

1. Georgia State University— Writing Studio Tutor
   • August 2023- Present
     • Co-facilitating Faculty/Staff iCollege/UX Workshop for Dec. 2024
     • One of the Writing for National Award Initiative Tutors which serves to help students organize and build admission materials for graduate schools and the job market.
2. SWCA Conference Presentation 2024: “Writing Center Methods in Empowering Students with Anxiety”
3. Brenau University— Primary Writing Center Tutor for the IFARHU program
   • Summer of 2022
     • Tutored valedictorians of various schools from the country of Panama on essay writing and English speech, including the visually impaired/blind for which English was a second language to.
4. Brenau University— Writing Center Professional Tutor
   • June 2022- July 2024
     • Assisted undergraduate and graduate students through the WCOnline platform on various academic writing forms, particularly with psychology and nursing graduate students.
5. Brenau University— Writing Center Undergraduate Tutor
   • August 2020- May 2022

My Accessibility Statement

I once had a visually impaired client tell me that she did not regard her impairment as a “disability”, but it is just one of her weaknesses, just like any of the weaknesses or strengths you or I may have. This sentiment changed my perspective on my accessibility practices in tutoring: everyone needs and deserves their own personable experience in the Writing Studio, regardless of whether they disclose a disability or need to me or the university. Thus, I take any requests my students make, and I do whatever I can to fit what learning style or technology works best with them. If I notice a client is uncomfortable or confused by the mode of tutoring, then I switch my approach appropriately and try out different methods with them. This could include deciding to facilitate online appointments purely through The Write Chat feature instead of verbal communication or utilizing services like Google Documents instead of the WC Online interface. The style of tutoring I take also can shift based on the responses I am receiving from my client; for instance, I may switch to a more directed tutoring session if the client is not responding to my prompts, and I can give advice through examples and outside resources to inspire them on what direction they could take for future edits.

One of my passions in Writing Center studies is not only working to help those with physical or visible disabilities, but also those who may have internal/mental impairments. For the 2024 SWCA conference, I presented findings on social and Writing anxiety and gave suggestions which tutors may implement in order to help students who may present or disclose anxiety symptoms. I created a handout which includes methods such as promoting directed free writing practice in sessions, encouraging the student for the work they have already accomplished, making realistic standards, suggesting therapeutic writing practices outside of schoolwork, and even advising the student to step away from their assignment and viewing it the next day with a refreshed mind, unless time constraints do not allow for this. Anxiety, in particular, is a growing disability in the college population, and it is imperative that tutors receive training in accessibility techniques for all groups, including this one.

However, the aspect of tutoring I hope to contribute to our studio most of all is a welcoming environment. According to researchers from James Cook University (2022), disabled students may feel afraid to seek academic help for numerous reasons, primarily from fear of stigma and lack of knowledge on available services. Hence, I stand by the importance of facilitating numerous outreach initiatives with all of our staff, making it clear to students what exactly we do as peer-tutors and growing positive bonds with our college community. After all, the first step to a beneficial tutoring session is simply getting the student to sign up.

I, as a tutor, work to present and be as kind, open, patient, and receptive to make all clients feel heard as they work through their individual learning journeys. All students deserve access to services which develop their skills and understandings, so I will continue to grow and adapt as well as I work with our diverse student body.

Works Cited

Bornschlegl, Madeleine, and Nerina Jane Caltabiano. “Increasing Accessibility to Academic Support in Higher Education for Diverse Student Cohorts.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry,
vol. 10, no. 1, Jan. 2022, pp. 1–18. EBSCOhost,search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=eue&AN=155796771&site=eds-live&scope=site.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/empowering-students-through-student-choice-voice-dr-dinesh-chauhan-elbmc/ (image below)

 

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.

https://incomehub-your.one//?u=bt1k60t&o=xqt63qn&t=cid:11005&cid=11005-14814-202411190013188191 (image below)

 

Interaction with Writing Center Scholarship

Stephen North is accredited to the most famous phrase which university Writing Centers live by: “The Writing Center is to produce better writers, not better writing” (438). Writing Centers today tend to be more focused on helping students develop and master their own unique writing processes, rather than trying to make a perfect essay. Therefore, it is vital that Writing Centers maintain a no-proofreading policy to not only maintain this priority, but also to avoid instances that could be considered as cheating. However, multiple students who visit these centers have questions and concerns about their grammar and mechanics, particularly amongst those who have a different first language then English. I have received different advice across the Writing Centers I have been employed at for addressing these types of issues. Brenau University suggests that I fix and explain one example of a grammatical error, and I then should describe to the student how I was able to find and fix that issue. They then should be able to go through, with the tutor watching and guiding, while they fix these errors on their own. On the other hand, Lanier Technical College emphasized working with a hierarchy of priorities, so that idea creation, development, and organization always remained central to the appointment. Then, if they did need a lot of help with grammar, the tutor should then suggest a grammar service such as Grammarly to the student which they could use in their spare time. Plagiarism seemed to be a bigger concern and prevalent problem at the latter institute amongst their student body, which is why we even strayed away from anything that could be interpreted as editing. Both of these methods have worked, but I have always wondered: is there a better way to address grammatical issues with students so that they can learn from these mistakes? How can we make students more confident in their English skills, especially for foreign students who are still learning some fundamental language skills which can interfere with clarity?

Juhi Kim brings up this issue in her essay, “Learning or cheating: Proofreading for the work of writing instruction during tutorials”, where she recounts that many of her peer tutors do admit to proofreading to some degree for grammar-focused appointments. This is because when they turn away students who ask for proofreading to fix their errors, then “the simple misunderstanding of the work of the Writing Center can become a disappointment and can sometimes develop even further into tension during tutorials between the tutor and the tutee” (Kim 141). Hence, it is never beneficial to tell the student that the Writing Studio cannot help them at all, since this could deter them from future appointments. If they proceed with the appointment, they can become frustrated with the lack of progress in their requested area, even if they are actually developing other skills through the conversation-based, process focused appointment.

Kim conducts a study to see the differences in instructional methods where proofreading can be considered cheating and where it is not breaking these policies. This is a qualitative study done with 25 tutors from an anonymous, major midwestern university where they recorded both types of sessions. Kim identifies two different ways proofreading could be incorporated into a meeting: as a routine automated work or as the main work of instruction. I mainly use the first method, so as I am reading a student’s work, I will point out any major grammatical issues and explain it to the student while I am looking for major areas to discuss (such as structure or idea development). Both of these methods however can be used appropriately, as long as “their talk and interactions to solve the problem were engaged collaboratively with their participa[nts], particularly with the tutee’s participation for the interactive engagement, the proofreading practice becomes learning” (144).

This is why it is important that the tutor engages the tutee in a conversation to solve each of their grammatical errors. It should not be a prescriptive method, where the tutor simply gives the solution. Instead, the tutor should help the student come to their own solution that can fix their error. Thus, I have made my own method which I will implement for all of my meetings to ensure that I am helping the student learn, and not cheat.

1. First, the tutor should point out the issue to the student (either after they complete reading, or while they are reading).
2. The tutor then should explain WHY this is an error in either grammar or mechanics.
3. Next, the tutor should ask the student how they would solve this problem.
4. This then leads to a small discussion where the tutor either confirms the tutee’s solution or gives potential clarification or examples if the tutee’s solution does not appropriately solve the error.

This instructional process helps the student exercise their problem-solving skills as well, and critically think about the error which they have made repeatedly. Kim’s breakdown of example conversations from other tutors illuminated to me how to streamline my own tutoring process when it comes to helping students through grammatical issues. I have debated for a long time whether I should even mention grammar in sessions, so this source has resolved and confirmed to me that there are ethical ways to approach this subject, as long as the tutor uses a method which interacts and engages the student.

 

https://graduate.gsu.edu/current/writing-support/ (image below)

Works Cited

Kim, Juhi. “Learning or cheating?: Proofreading for the work of writing instruction during tutorials.” The Journal of Language Teaching and Learning, vol. 12, no. 2, June 2022, 138-155.

North, Stephen. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” College English, vol. 46, no. 5, 1984, pp. 443-446.