LaGuardia Tutoring Writing 2012: Observation One Assignment

LaGuardia Tutoring Writing 2012: Observation One Assignment: For the next 15-20 minutes, please reflect on your observation in the Writing Center. Write a professional blog (first-person is fine!) that...

              The experience went exactly how i expected it to go. The tutor introduced herself to the students one by one and i sat in a chair and observed what was about to begin. The tutor first started by focusing her attention on one student then switching to the other student. As the first student was starting she asked some simple questions What was the purpose of your essay? What do you think you need to improve on? and Do you have your prompt on you? So as the butterflies dispersed from my stomach i began to take notes on the conversation between the tutor and student. She established the basic rules and procedures that the student needed to know for example she cannot proofread but improvise on the weak points of the essay. I observed the way the tutor was by position, she was seated in an upright position as expected and used hand gestures to make it more professional. My thoughts on this experience brought up many ideas in my head as to how my first experience would go teaching a student and helping them on their assignment. I was particularly interested how she balanced time for both students, while addressing the most important issues like improvisation on the thesis and how to structure the essay in an organized manner. The tutor used many of the ideas we studied in class, but the ones that really JUMPED out at me were collaborative teaching and teacher centered tutoring. They performed collaboratively when the tutor had finished skimming the rough draft and began asking questions to what it was that the prompt specifically asked, because the student had forgotten it at home. So they began discussing the topic which was " My Role Model " and then they eventually established a sequence of events that should reflect the assignment. The teacher avoided what we talked about in the reading known as false praise and gave small compliments that really struck her as unique and authentic. Besides the context of our class work i found many things effective and ineffective. The ineffective thing that really seemed to deteriorate the act of tutor was the constant attention to grammatical and subject very agreement. It kind of discouraged the student by making them think that they were not going to be able to finish the paper by the deadline, but then the teacher encouraged her. I thought that the process of motivating a student was very beneficial as it helped them to bring force a sense of confidence in the student. Overall it was a very new experience and i look forward to seeing how other teachers use methods to help other students.