Reflection 11/13

This week I did not have to tutor in the RWC due to the holiday. However, I just have a few things I wanted to discuss regarding my least few sessions.

Last week, I had dealt with a student who did not come in with a rubric. I asked her to explain the project to me and she simply said, “Just a research paper on anything.” I knew there was probably more to the rubric, but she kept saying “research paper.” Instead of wasting more time pressing for details that she was unwilling to give, we started to read her paper aloud. In the session, we discussed various things regarding her citations and also sentence formatting. Towards the end of the appointment, probably five minutes left or less, she said, “Well, I have to do an annotated bibliography.” I was livid. We had wasted the entire appointment on this “research paper” when she had to do an annotated bibliography. Basically, her entire paper was done incorrectly. What do I do in situations like that?

Another question, which I had briefly mentioned in my reflection last week, was how do I politely tell students to LEAVE? I say our session time is up and that they will do well, but all of my tutees keep talking and not moving. What are some polite things to say to them to get them to leave? I feel weird saying my next appointment is here when, in fact, I have no idea whether the next person is here. I also don’t want to be pushy because I want the student to want to return to the RWC in the future.

Finally, I was wondering if in class we can do “pretend” tutoring sessions? Like have one of us bring in a rough draft of something and have another student go over it with us. We could even do that with our papers for Project 3. I know we’re doing a lot of stuff to help us with Project 3, but I am trying to intern for the RWC next semester and having these practice sessions with each other would be extremely beneficial. That way we can all share our ideas with each other and give advice as to how a session should be.