To Teach or Not to Teach!

I’m currently attending school to be an elementary school teacher so getting the chance to be around students seemed like it would be interesting to me.  It seemed like the perfect opportunity to gain experience and references for my future job.  Before I started tutoring at Peabody I thought to myself, “Okay either this will better prepare you to be a teacher or it will give you time to change majors early on.” 

While tutoring I have learned that sometimes students get easily distracted even by things from the reading.   When this happens you have to remind them of the task at hand and keep them focused.  Also as a tutor it is important to know your student.  If a second grade student is struggling with higher level books you wouldn’t choose a fifth grade book for him or her to read you would choose one appropriate to her grade level.  Yet if you have another second grader who reads beyond his or her grade level you may choose a higher level book in order to challenge that student.  Another thing that will always come in handy when dealing with children is patience.  Sometimes I had to remind myself that my student isn’t my age so I should slow down with the exercises.

The students who I tutor enjoyed playing word games.  If they knew the word you could see the excitement on their faces or if they couldn’t quite pronounce it you could see the confusion.  As a tutor that would be the time I would step in and slowly help them say the word.  When we didn’t play games we would read a book and talk about the illustrations that corresponded with them.  Sometimes we would read a book and if there were no pictures my student would get bored so I noticed that children like pictures.  They seem to make the reading experience more fun.

Well, I’m still an education major so that must tell you that I enjoyed my tutoring experience.  My students may have thought that I was only helping them, but they don’t know how much they helped me.

Amber Williams
Class of 2015