Tutoring Experience: What I Learned Through It

 

I don't know about anyone else in the class, but I walked into my tutoring session with a wrong perspective. I met her in the fishbowl with the thought that I had some things to teach this girl. As a freshman, she could gain a lot from me reading over her paper and giving her feedback. I had an arrogance about my skills and thought that she needed my help. How wrong I was.

 

Kylea came into our session with an essay that made me rethink my skills... in a good way. She was a great listener and tried to grasp the few things that I noticed could use some help, but her paper completely exceeded my expectations. After reading other past examples of WIFYS students' papers in class, I had a negative opinion of what I would see in hers. Thankfully, though, she brought her paper to life and conveyed her point extremely well.

 

I asked Kylea what they were to write about, and she said a place that was either important to them or had a special meaning. She chose to write about her grandma's house and all of the family gatherings, whether for holidays or for Sunday meals, that took place there. The amount of description she had in her essay was AMAZING!! She truly made me feel like I was part of the family by being able to relive those moments with her. The color words she used to describe how her grandmother's house looked and the brilliant sun that shone across the grass and pine trees in her backyard put the reader in the home. She went on to lay out the extravagant meals her family had (mainly several different kinds of Spanish food and desserts that I won't even try to spell for the fact that I know I will butcher them). She recalled how she was taught to cook a certain dish that is now her responsibility to make for the family and how she would spend the night with her grandmother. She had a great conclusion where she revealed to the reader the safety and security she feels in her grandmother's home and how special it will always be to her.

 

Now, just from my sporadic recall of her essay, I think you can get the idea of how great the content of her essay was. While she did a great job telling the story, she had a few mechanical errors in her essay that are pretty common. Comma usage was a big pattern that I noticed throughout her work. Thinking back on how much I struggled with commas and learning where to put them gave me the ability to relate to Kylea and reassure her that it is a common mistake for writers. She specifically excluded them in a few main areas: 1. after introductory phrases 2. before and after modifiers 3. before her conjunctions. After marking where they should go and explaining why they go there (because you pause when speaking there, because the modifier adds details that are necessary, because you have joined 2 sentences together), I believe that she understood and could make the changes in the future on her own. In her introduction paragraph, she had some repetitious syntax, mainly starting sentences with "It's" or "The" rather than changing them up for some variety. I was VERY pleased when she asked how she could change them to sound better (it reassured me that she was paying attention and genuinely cared about what I had to say). I was able to walk her through one example where she could take out some extra words and combine sentences to get rid of the repetition (it was a very fulfilling teacher moment!). Other than a few spelling errors and other minor mistakes, these were the main patterns I saw in Kylea's essay.

 

I was so happy to be able to work with her because I felt like she taught me more than what I was able to teach her. She brought to light several of the aspects of grading essays that we've been discussing in class (pointing out the good things you see, finding error patterns, great content with poor mechanics), so she enabled me to address these situations in real life circumstances. She far exceeded my expectations, and I am excited to see how she may grow from this experience like I have.