TUTORING REFLECTION

In my 15 weeks as a volunteer math tutor in the Academic Skills Center at Mesa College, my primary mission was to help students stretch their minds so that they could absorb and apply mathematical concepts to a variety of problems.  I believe I largely accomplished my mission, but my tutees were not the only ones who benefitted from our work together.  I benefitted as well, in ways that have already begun to inform and enrich my own academic life.

      For one thing, my experiences as a tutor fueled my appetite for learning – not only new concepts, but old ones as well.  I found that if I was to succeed as a tutor, I had to re-learn material that I had not thought about in some time – for example, the various Algebra-based factoring methods that I learned in Math 46 and Math 96.  Before each tutoring shift, I made it a point to spend time browsing my old notes from previous semesters so that the basic concepts would be fresh in my mind and I wouldn't fumble for answers.  This was important for two reasons:  It ensured that my tutees were getting the help that they needed, and gave them confidence that they were in fact getting it.  Without the latter, the former would have been far more difficult to achieve.

      In addition to preparing fully for each tutoring session, it quickly became a point of pride for me to end each session secure in the knowledge that I had made a difference, no matter how small, for that student.  Having been a tutee myself in the past, I was painfully aware of how frustrating and hopeless it could be for my tutees to reach the end of a session without a breakthrough of some kind.  I realized that this could sap their confidence and make it harder for them to overcome their perceived limitations.  Truth be told, my own ego was on the line as well: Like a new employee eager to prove herself, I craved positive feedback from my tutees, whether delivered through a heartfelt thank you or through something as simple as an appreciative nod.

      Although not all of my tutees benefitted equally from my help, one who stood out was a Trigonometry student who could not figure out how to read and label a unit circle (I'll call her "Sandra"). Sandra knew how to add and subtract the radiant values, but got lost when it came to plotting their locations in the unit circle.  I walked Sandra through the process and, by the time we were finished, she was able to easily convert degrees to radiants and plot and label a blank unit circle in its entirety.  What impressed me the most about Sandra was that she wasn't looking to me for a quick fix to a homework problem.  Instead, she struggled to understand the concepts and methodology so that she could apply them to future problem sets of increasing complexity.  It reminded me of the old proverb, "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day; teach him how to fish, and he'll eat for a lifetime." Sandra was so giddy with excitement over her newly acquired know-how that she couldn't wait to tackle the remaining problems on her own.

      Unfortunately, not every tutee was as conscientious as Sandra. There were others who were less interested in learning than they were in having someone else do their homework for them. More times than I care to remember, a student would arrive with pages and pages of problem sets and ask me to hurriedly solve as many problems of different types as I could in the limited time available so that the student could take care of the remaining ones simply by replicating what I had done.  They did not ask questions, let alone open their minds to grapple with the concepts. I would try to draw them in by explaining my thinking process every step of the way, but in the end, I could not teach these students to fish.

            As mentioned above, I initially prepared for my tutoring sessions by going over old class notes and other materials to make sure I did not let my tutees down.  But by my third week of tutoring, I had hit my rhythm and found that I no longer had to brush up on the basics as often.  This freed me to focus on honing my tutoring skills and customizing my approach to each individual student based on what I believed would work best for that student. I realized that no two minds work in exactly the same way, so it was not realistic to expect all of my tutees to work through problems in exactly the same way as their peers.  To be effective, I had to adapt to my individual tutees’ peculiarities and learning styles.  I learned to quickly spot whatever was causing them to struggle so that I could brainstorm with them on alternative approaches that might work better.

            If anything surprised me about my tutoring experience, it was the extent to which I, as the tutor, learned from my own tutees how to conceptualize problems in novel ways.  I had grown accustomed to relying on the problem-solving methods I learned from my professors, with little exposure to the different methods and devices employed by others to arrive at the same results.  Having my tutees show me how they went about solving a problem not only enabled me to see what they might be doing wrong, but also allowed me to troubleshoot my own methods and sometimes to improve on them.  By viewing problems through the students’ eyes, I saw not only the flaws in their approaches, but also the advantages.  I realized that there is no one method that works for everybody, and that analyzing problems from different vantage points can multiply the number of avenues available to solve them.

            Although brief, my experience as a tutor this semester has already begun to make me a better student and, I hope, a better person.  It has driven home the importance of maintaining an open mind when looking for ways to solve new math problems.  It has strengthened my empathy for the struggles faced by many students in mastering concepts that are often elusive.  Best of all, it has left me with precious memories of those moments when I helped my tutees emerge from the fog and see their way to a solution with newfound confidence.