prodigal tutor

I always LOVE when our alumni tutors keep in touch, especially when they come back to visit. I want to welcome back our own Nishat Mirza, on Weds., Nov. 26, for a floating, open discussion session. She is now completing her first semester at Drexel University's College of Medicine in Philly.

She'll be here to talk with students about going to medical school: how to get in, what the options are, Drexel's Pathway to Medical School program, and her own experience at Drexel.

Please invite your students to come to speak with her. She'll be here from 11am-4pm. So tell them to drop in at any time during those hours.

It'll also be a great time for us all to catch up. See you there!

turning techie

Here's a great article about bringing technology into the classroom. I think it's worth thinking about how we can use technology in our center to help our students learn. So many of them are very savvy when it comes to texting, emailing and IM-ing. How can we use those things to improve what we do? As we talked about in our last Common Time, we've been working with the Math Dept to offer ALEKS, a self-paced, online math tutorial, to more of our students. I'd like to offer more.

So I wonder if any of you have ideas about how we can infuse more technology into what we do.

http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/Departments/Elementary/Default.aspx?article=TeensBetterWriters

the demands of tutoring

In furtherance of our on-going discussion from our last Common Time about "demanding" and/or "manipulative" students, here's a great response and some words of wisdom from a tutor on the Dangling Modifier's website. While most of our students are engaged and excited to be part of our center, a few of them continue to require extra effort from us.

We're not the only ones who are challenged by these situations, so we should keep in mind that discussion is one way for us to mediate and navigate these moments. By remaining sensitive to our tutees' needs, we keep ourselves open to understanding why they behave the way they do.

As I always say, tutoring goes far beyond covering course content. We are cheerleaders, coaches, mentors, friends, role models, sherpas, and listeners.

what happens in vegas...

Hi everyone, we're back from the IWCA/NCPTW conference; it was great. It was my first time in Vegas, and it was all that I expected. Actually, since the visit coincided with Halloween, the bright lights seemed even more sinister. I was hoping to get out of town to see the desert, but the conference was non-stop. Great sessions, great connections. It's so good to see that we're part of a much larger community of tutoring centers across the country (indeed, the world...it's an international conference).

The thing I appreciated most of all was the large number of tutors who attended. It was so nice to get tutors' perspectives on the important work that we do.

Special kudos go out to our very own Michelle "Solly" Solomon for her conference poster presentation entitled “Sociology as Training: The Sociology Being Used In Tutoring Reflection & Analysis.” Michelle did an exceptional job and represented our University beautifully. Yay, Solly! We all need some celebratory mint chocolate brownies, don't you think?

Hopefully, we can get her to share her experience and ideas with us all very soon.

See you all tomorrow at Common Time!
Courtney