Shifting Gears
After teaching a Current Events class for Literacy for Life for five years or so, I’ve decided to shift gears – to give up this class and find a learner who has requested one-to-one tutoring. I have several reasons for doing this.
I’ve done this for a few years and I’m a little tired of it.
The schedule is a little inflexible; I can always miss a class if I need to, but doing so involves canceling the class, which I sometimes feel bad about.
I find myself talking about the same things over and over as I teach the class. I have a constantly changing group of learners, and I need to review things I’ve already talked about in order to bring the new folks up to speed.
I miss the one-to-one interaction I have had with learners in the past, and I’d like to experience that again.
The Current Events class involves weekly preparation – and although it doesn’t take much time, it does take a little. In a one-to-one tutoring situation, the learner is doing most of the work and I’m facilitating.
Probably most significantly — it’s rewarding to celebrate when the learner achieves the goal we’ve been working toward.
So 10 days ago I emailed the people who run the program and let them know that I didn’t want to teach this course again after this semester is over (the middle of June) and that I would like to be paired with a learner who is waiting for a tutor. The program always has learners on a waitlist, so I knew that this would not be a problem.
I heard back from them within a few hours. Two women named Mary are my contacts in the program. Mary #1 runs the class scheduling, so she now knows that she has to find someone else to teach this class for the fall. She was gracious in acquiescing to this – which comes as no surprise, because I have always had positive interactions with the people who run this program. She forwarded my email to Mary #2 who works with learner assessment and placement with tutors.
I reminded Mary #2 about tutoring I had done in the past – Citizenship, GRE, various licensure programs, general English language assistance – and told her that I’d be willing to do any of these again. After another round of emails, we had confirmed that I was generally available any day of the week and that, although I preferred mornings to afternoons, I could do an afternoon if that’s what’s needed. I also told her I wanted to tutor in person rather than through Zoom.
I expect to hear from Mary #2 soon and be offered the opportunity to be paired with a learner whose needs fit my skill set. I’m best with people who have a kind of mid-range English language facility; I don’t know how to teach someone who really doesn’t speak much English at all. Once Mary pairs me with a learner, we’ll have an introductory meeting, where we figure out what the learner wants to accomplish and how I think I can help him/her get there. We’ll figure out a meeting time and then we’ll begin. Sometimes tutors and learners communicate only through the program office, but I have always found it easier to text back and forth as we arrange our meetings. Sometimes one of us has to cancel on short notice, or a traffic or other transportation situation gets in the way, and we can arrange to meet at another time if necessary.
I almost always meet with my learners in the LFL offices in the School of Education. The suite of offices has one large room with multiple tutoring stations; each station has two chairs and a desktop with a computer, so a tutor and learner can work together on either paper or computer-based assignments. The room is lined with shelves housing a reference and instructional library, so materials are always at hand. Learners and tutors can both check materials out of this library. Over time, however, I have purchased a lot of the materials I used in most of my tutoring.
I had one learner a few years ago who liked to meet with me in the local bookstore coffeeshop. We brought our laptops, got coffee, and worked and chatted. It was a delightful experience and I treasure the relationship we developed. I wrote about her in my April 24 essay “It Didn’t Have to Be This Way.”
Tutoring one-to-one offers almost unlimited flexibility. As I mentioned, it’s easy to make a minor or temporary change in meeting times. It’s also easier to venture to other locations. I’ve met my learners in coffee shops and at the local community college library. I have given learners tours of the local public library, so they learn to use this facility to advance the education of their families along with their own progress. I have taken them on tours of Colonial Williamsburg. We have taken walks in parks and visited historic sites. The options are limitless.
I’m looking forward to my new pairing. I’ll let you know what happens.