This last week of shadowing Holly was the perfect preparation for my upcoming journey in peer tutoring. I had my first opportunity to co-tutor with Holly, and I found myself helping two students. The first was an engineering student working on a very technological paper, the second a health student working on a paper regarding the correlation between health and race (specifically Asian descent).
The first paper mainly needed minor grammatical corrections, and with Holly's help, I was able to point out some mistakes that needed revision. The engineering student was very grateful. Holly let me take the reigns completely with the second session, and I felt it went very well. The student needed assistance with her paper as far as making points in her paper related to her thesis (which was already relatively strong), and making better connections with the actual articles. Considering I am not a health student, I felt that I was still able to guide her in the direction she was trying to go by figuring out exactly what she was trying to convey in her paper. I felt very good about the session and even better after consulting with Holly on things I did well and things I needed to work on regarding my tutoring style. She advised me to continue with positive feedback and encouragement, and to focus on what the professor's expectations are. She also advised me to try letting the tutee work through some mistakes with a more hands-on approach. If I have learned anything with Holly these past few weeks, it would be that guiding, yet still allowing a student to find their own answers is the best way to tutor somebody, because in the end it's all about learning. Holly opened my eyes to how wonderful a successful tutoring session and comfortable interaction between a tutor and their tutee can really be.
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