Many of the community needs in Boston center around the city’s youth and the desire for additional academic support. As such, a significant number of service-learning students are engaged in service that involves tutoring at after or in-school programs throughout the city. Building resources for our students to use so that they can serve confidently is an important aspect of our program.
S-LTA Katie Elliot asked her First-Year Writing students to respond to Street Team member Ben Sanders’s tutoring pro-tips. Each Tuesday, we’ll post their responses here!
Tyler Nicholson, BS Biology 2020
After having my first shift at the O’ Bryant, I definitely agree with the three pro tips that Ben wrote about in his blog. Like Ben, I was initially super nervous going into the O’ Bryant for the first time. After the students arrived, I initially didn’t know what to do with myself. I just stood there awkwardly for a few minutes trying to figure out how I approached the students without feeling like I was intruding or pestering. It took me a few minutes to realize that I had to take the initiative and step out of my comfort zone and just approach some of the students and introduce myself. I ended up sitting down with two students and just throwing myself out there and it ended up being the best decision of my day.
I think that if I was to add another protip, it would be to lay the foundation for a relationship with the students right off the bat. Some of the best conversations I had with the students I met today were not about literature or their writing processes, but about their college aspirations and what classes they like/ don’t like. I had a really nice conversation with them where we found a ton of similarities between us, from our mutual dislike of all things mathematics to our medicinal goals. Having a common ground right from the start made the conversation flow much smoother when it came to working through the ideas in their papers and made all of us feel more at ease.
S-LOG 