My first solo tutoring session went much better than expected! I was very nervous about tutoring on my own but my mentor Casey really made me feel more confident about my potential to be a helpful tutor. 

I scheduled my hours on Fridays from 10:00-11:30; today I was surprised by how quickly the time flew by. My first appointment was an hour with a group of three engineering students working on their senior project. They came to me with something they were calling "phase one" of their assignment. It was essentially a 30 page proposal of how they planned on solving a hypothetical problem presented to them by their teacher. Two of the three students were international from Panama City and wanted to let me know ahead of time that their grammar and spelling might need some attention. They did have quite a few mistakes including improper verb tenses and several misspelled words, which they almost always noticed and corrected as we read the paper together. I know that we are not supposed to really focus on grammar and the like but I could tell it was something they were concerned about and appreciated being made aware of the mistakes. Is this ok to do? Are we perhaps supposed to approach grammar and spelling differently when it comes to international students? Despite these small corrections the paper itself was well done and easy to understand. One of the students explained to me that the paper had to be written in a way that would be accessible to all readers, not just other engineering majors. I believe they were very thorough and the paper was off to a good start. 

My second appointment was only half an hour with an ENC1101 student. The assignment required her to pick a song that she identified with and write a sort of analytical essay. The teacher provided them with a few question to answer such as the origin of the song, if it came about during any social movements, how the student specifically identifies with it, and so on. She had started a rough draft with just a couple paragraphs that we workshopped together. She was having trouble coming up with a strong thesis statement but once we read through the paper together I was able to point out to her the topics that she had already begun to discuss and encouraged her to build her thesis statement around those ideas. 

I really love the collaborative aspect of peer-tutoring and I can tell that something as simple as having a conversation about what the student has written can boost his/her confidence in the writing process.