I’m grateful that I haven’t had a lot of issues during my sessions so far. I think the biggest one that I’ve been facing is mandatory attendance. A lot of students only came to my sessions because they were required to meet with me for a portion of their overall grade. While many of my students still cooperated during the sessions, a few of them made it clear that they didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to just let them off the hook, like the book says, so I tried making the best of these sessions. We talked about the project, and I tried asking a lot of questions, mostly about why they thought of writing about a certain major or if they had any past experience with subjects pertaining to the major. I felt like having a personal discussion with the students who were genuinely forced to attend at least got them thinking about what to write about for their paper and why. While I don’t necessarily agree with making tutoring sessions mandatory, for a freshman-centric class, a professor almost needs to in order to get students on the right track. I did find myself getting somewhat frustrated by this, but as the book says “Not everyone is meant to be helped”. Another problem I’ve faced is just having a few students either complain about their classes in general or other professors. I tried my best to stay professional while also validating their frustrations, but I don’t know if I helped these students in the best way. I tried to let them know that being frustrated with a class/professor was normal and that I would feel this way too sometimes, but I encouraged them to have a discussion with the professors about specific problems that they were facing. I feel like this is one of the only things you can really do in that situation. While I haven’t faced an issue involving students with learning disabilities, I found that the advice the book gave was very helpful. As the stigma surrounding learning disabilities and mental illnesses decreases, more students are getting diagnosed and receiving the help they need. Regardless, this means that tutors/writing fellows need to be prepared to help students in ways that can meet their specific needs.
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