11/11/15

I did not tutor today because of the holiday.  Instead, I'm just going to talk about my fears going into tutoring and how I'm dealing with them.  I'm a pretty shy person initially, so my main fear going into tutoring was that I wouldn't be able to connect with the student or that I wouldn't have anything to say.  When I was co-tutoring, my mentor always introduced me and started the conversation with the student.  It was kind of hard imagining myself doing that, and to be fair, I did a pretty terrible job of it the first time.  In my first tutoring session, the student was planning on turning in the paper in just a couple of hours.  She seemed pretty anxious to get out of there quickly, so it was awkward and hard for me to build a connection with her.  In the last couple of tutoring sessions, I've had students who are just looking to brainstorm.  For me, this has made it easier to build a connection.  The students are literally coming there to just talk about their project.  Most of the time it doesn't really matter what I say, as long as I can get them talking, the ideas start flowing.  I've found myself saying, "well I don't know if that really helps..." in my tutoring sessions, and every time each student has replied, "honestly just talking about my project has given me several more ideas than I walked in with."  This is encouraging.  I've realized that I don't have to understand their project the first time they describe it to me.  The more questions I ask about it, the more they have to explain it.  Normally, this ends up with them understanding their project even better just from explaining it to me.  I've also really been impressed with some of the projects the students come in with.  A lot of these projects are very creative and they really bring out passion within the students.  I've met some really knowledgeable students who just needed stimulation.  All it takes is a little prodding and questioning for these students to open up.  When they leave happily, I relax a little more each time.