Aurora
Though she had hoped to develop Aurora from a writer struggling with sentence structure to a confident communicator tackling more local issues, this tutor found she had to scrap her initial action plan. The tutor concludes that the weak spot in the sessions was not the student's lack of motivation, as she originally felt, but her own strategy. She found it most useful to refrain from pointing out Aurora's errors and to remain tacit at times, allowing the reticent tutee's communication to unfold naturally, at its own pace, without persistent motivation/prodding.
D.K.
This tutee, transplanted from Korea, suffered from having a very stunted English background, including no ESL courses, as his parents feared this would provide him an unnecessary "crutch." D.K. was barraged by stressors once he arrived to SFSU as well. Faced with a tough composition course, his first essay was returned to him ungraded and with so few marks on it, not even D.K.s tutor understood what the teacher wanted. The tutor learned, much like the tutor above, that often the best course of action is to refrain from excessive commentary, and to encourage the tutee to persevere.
Robert
Robert, a first-generation college student steeped in African American Vernacular English (AAVE), had been sent for tutoring after failing his JEPET. The tutor surmises Robert might have felt self-conscious about discussing his process in the earshot of strangers in the room. In addition to this, my take is that he may have felt controlled by "the system" after being "judged" by his teacher, and was only coming to tutoring as a kind of "punishment." This seems apparent since his teacher and the tutor were offering to help him -- for free -- yet he failed to show up on time or, occasionally, at all. When he did, he was usually incommunicado, unwilling or unable to "buy in" to the program. Like both tutors above, this tutor had to adjust his standards, stop being so "innovative" with devices like reverse outlines, and simply assist the tutee in inching along at his own pace. Considering the force of resistance coming from the tutee, I was impressed that the tutor was able to simply adapt, and not take it personally. If I had been in this situation with Robert at ETC, I would have immediately reserved one of the sound-proof rooms for tutoring; in fact, this is my preference in general, since we're dealing with sensitive information and even more sensitive people.
Justin
The tutor had been prepared to work on reading and writing strategies, but found all the tutee required was polishing up his essays. His only significant "handicaps" were his lack of control with regard to academic tone (he haphazardly tossed in vernacular) and a quirky misuse of pronouns. This tutor's biggest lesson, he says, is that he ought to have communicated with Justin's teacher, since, on more than one occasion, the prompts for Justin's essays were quite vague.
My Two Cents
Speaking from a bit of experience teaching and tutoring, I sympathize with the frustrations of these tutors. Most teachers' primary dream, I believe, is to perform mini-miracles, helping the crippled to walk again, no matter the demands on the teacher. The melancholy reality is that our stellar students don't really need our help, the needy ones may not accept it, and our best laid plans may have to be remolded till they don't resemble the originals. If there's a solitary thread running through these disparate tutoring cases, it's that our tutees are very likely going to surprise us. They'll throw us off guard and force us to shift our agenda to fit theirs. In a sense, one has to smile at this. Having overhauled our pedagogy, discarding teaching "product" for teaching "process," having soaked up years of reading/writing research, and amassed admirable "toolboxes" to help our students, what matters most in the end is, not our clever stategies, but that we're present, we're compassionate and ready to adapt in any way that serves our students' progress.
Tutor Case Studies -- Guidline Ideas
What seems useful is what I find in the better case studies we're reading. We should include background on the student where it's relevant, as well as the tutor's level of experience. If one tutee is an eye learner from China and another is an ear learner from South Central L.A., this is worth noting. Also, we ought to note any external stressors that may be challenging the student. We need to note the tutee's attitude, motivation level and self-discipline. Most of all, we have to discuss the student's progress in context to his course load over the term, especially in relation to the "prompt" of the tutee's teacher, that is, what issues we were asked to remedy through tutoring.
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