After observing my third tutoring session I am beginning to see how every tutoring session is an unique experience. I am beginning to understand the chaos theory of tutoring writing. This time a student comes in for tutoring and has not yet started her essay. She tells the tutor that she needs a lot of help. He then tells her that's not a problem and asks her for her assignment. He begins to read the assignment to himself silently. Its a long assignment and I think he reads it twice for a better understanding.
After reading through the assignment he begins to talk to her about the essay and explain what it is asking of her. The assignment is on the topic of racism and stereotyping. The tutor beings to talk about his ideas on the subject. He gives many examples on the subject but talks very fast, So fast that I don't think the students could understand what he was saying because I know I didn't. He also had a strong accent so that made it even harder to understand what he was saying. This goes on for like ten of fifteen minutes and the student just listens and does not say anything. He does not leave much room for her input, only enough for a yes or no response. This reminds me of the teacher centered tutoring style where the tutor is in complete control of the session. Also throughout his long lecture they did not write anything down. He is basically teaching her and has not even tried to structure an essay or create a thesis from which to start.
The session then gets interrupted when a woman comes in and ask the tutor a question and they talk for a minute or two. Afterwards he continues to talk to the student about her paper and lets her give her input this time along with her ideas. This is much better but they still have not attempted to write any of these good ideas down on paper. As the session is coming to an end he instructs her to read the assignment as well as the readings that go with the assignment that she has not done yet. Then to come back after she has did the reading so they could continue to work on her essay. The session ends early.
I feel like this session did not go well from beginning to end. The fact that they did not write anything down at all makes me think that the session was a waste of valuable time. I also think that this was an example of responding to late when the tutor told her to come back in the future, especially after not getting much done in the session to begin with. In all I think I learned a lot from this experience and I look forward to my fourth tutoring observation.
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