I can’t find the words to say how
nervous I had felt before I had begun the tutoring session. Everything that I could
possibly think of became difficult to understand. As if everything I had
learned erase cleaned from my mind. I wanted my tutee to learn something from
me. I wanted to guide my tutee in the right direction. I was so nervous that I
started to re-read the "Tutoring and Writing" handbook all over again. I thought
this would help me refresh my memory. My classmate could see my eyes beginning
to close as I passed through the state of almost fainting. The pressure became
too high, the coldest room became the hottest room in the matter of minutes,
and my temper started to increase. My classmate was telling me to stay calm and
I just kept breathing very harshly to the extreme measures. As the Professor
walked into the classroom, I knew it was time to break all the nerves out of
sight. I did not want her to see how terribly pail I looked or think that I was
not ready to do this. I was ready to begin the tutoring session. Everything was
happening so quickly and I was just trying to adjust to the new setting within
my own head.
The next thing I knew, I was
assigned to my tutee. His name is Henry and judging by his image and profile,
he looked as if he did not want to be here working with me. I did as I always
do when I see a trouble student. I smile a lot and talk about my accomplishments
so that he knows exactly what I am capable of. I quickly came back to my senses
and ask him what have you been working on? He pulled out a CATW paper essay on “Bundle
of Trouble”. I than asked if he had a written draft on this particular piece of
essay and he had told me that he was absent for the day they wrote about it.
Automatically my first thought came to mind and it was “When a Writer needs
help finding a Topic” from the book. We quickly conversed about the reading I was
unable to get much out of him so I tried another method. I had him free write
for ten minutes about whatever comes to mind about the reading. As he was
writing, I was re-reading the CATW essay again to myself. I am the kind of
person that needs to re-read more than once. It helps me make better judgment
on what I could do next for him. Ten minutes have gone by and he was still
writing his thoughts down. I did not want to stop him because I felt that he
was learning from this. I couldn’t help to smile in the moment because I was so
happy to see that he was doing so much better in expressing his ideas. I could see
his mood change as he was writing. He was in his moment and I gave him another
ten more minutes to finish his thoughts. After those minutes have passed, I quickly
reviewed his writing. I could tell that he had an understanding of the piece although
I had found another issue in his writing.
This issue may possibly be
another reason on why he may have failed the entrance exam. His sentence
structure is completely unheard of from at least in my perspective. He loses
the true meaning within his one sentence. I could see the same issue being done
repeatedly throughout his entire paper. He does not use any conjunctions (and,
but, so, etc.) or articles (The or As) to support a subject and verb in the
sentence. If anything, he needs to take an entire course on linguistics because
this will help improve his essay writing. The next time I see him on Tuesday, I
will bring my dictionary and linguistics book so he knows exactly how to write
a better sentence.
Now that I have a better idea on
how he writes, I than moved back on to the CATW essay. We read the paper once
together and then we went back to re-read the essay again. I told him that we
are going to make some side notes on each paragraph we have read this time. We
read one paragraph and he took notes, than we read another paragraph than took
more notes, and so on and so forth. I told him to gather all the note so that
he could tell me in his own words what the author is trying to say. He did
outstanding when he gathered all the information together into a summery. Since
we ran out of time, I left him with a little homework assignment. I told him
the next time I see him on Tuesday, I would like a summery on the author’s
perspective so that way we could compare it to the previous writing u made for
twenty minutes. He was very pleased with the session and I asked him if he
learned anything and his response was a yes.
After the tutoring session, I’ve
learned within myself that there is much needed work to be done. I want to
better improve my verbal skills because it was very hard not to stutter. I
stutter when I am nervous and I hope to overcome those fears one day. Although
I felt the tutoring session went very well and I am going to be looking forward
in the next one. I have a better plan now that I understand where the tutee is
coming from. Hopefully my tutee Henry would be thinking the same way as well.
My best recommendation to all tutors who are nervous is to never hold back on what you’re truly capable of.
If we hold back, there will be a lot of lost information that could have been
said sooner rather than later. Overcome the fear and shine to your fullest.
