Thursday

Making Tutoring Creative!

Hello Tutors! I think that by making the learning process more interesting, enjoyable, and creative for our students, who we tutor is the key for a successful learning experience. Tutoring should be creative! Of course, how creative we are depends on the student's learning style. Creativity means that we ask the students what do they think is the answer to their question? If they are on the right track, we can ask them to expand on their answer by asking them to provide example(s). If they are on the wrong track, a tutor should provide hint(s) and then, let the student figure out the final answer. Like Courtney said at the meetings, we are there to facilitate the learning experience and not give out answers to all of the questions. It's a team effort. A tutor and a student are a team. A tutor is trying to figure out what learning method will be the most suitable for this student and a student makes sure that he or she understands the material very well. So, let's open up our creativity and therefore, make tutoring creative! Also, we should motivate the students by saying, "Keep on working hard." "Success is a journey, not a destination."

considering kindness

So late the other night (I couldn’t sleep, as usual) I was listening to a radio discussion with one of the authors of a new book called Leading with Kindness: How Good People Consistently Get Superior Results. In the context of business management, he talked about ways we all can use “kindness” to motivate, support, recognize, adapt and grow. Much of their management/leadership ideas are based on psychological theory—essentially, that people are more productive when we treat them with caring, fairness and honesty, but that kindness does not also equal weakness or lack of discipline. Pretty logical, I think.

Since so much of what we do in the ARC is leading and teaching by example, I wonder if we begin to think about how we can lead with kindness—understanding, compassion, acceptance—then can we enhance the way we tutor? So much of our tutoring pedagogy already includes much of what these writers are proposing, so tutoring fits right in to this philosophy of helping others to help themselves—giving others the tools they need to succeed on their own.

While I’m not proposing that we begin to think about our tutees as employees, our students as products, and what we do as a business, I do think that we can glean something from these ideas that can open our tutoring horizons and offer us fresh ways to examine what we do.

For example, we can consider what brings our students in to our center and what keeps them engaged. Then, what can we do to help them grow and become better learners. In addition, thinking about the cross-cultural implications of practicing kindness, especially in a Center like ours, can be invaluable.

So anyway, if you’re interested in reading or hearing more about these ideas, you can check out this website:
http://www.thirteen.org/leadingwithkindness/essays/the-power-of-kindness. Or you can listen to a webcast with the authors here: http://www.amanet.org/editorial/webcast/archive/2008/leading-with-kindness/index.htm