David-TP2

WHERE IS MY TUTOR?!?!?

On Friday I was able to meet my tutoring partner Majdi.  I met Majdi initially in the foundations course that I observed.  After the class had ended he asked me if I would be his tutor and because I needed some more tutoring hours I said of course.  We exchanged information and all seemed well, which is why I was confused to hear on Thursday that he had asked Ramin “Where’s my tutor?!!?”. 

After hearing this Vicky Ledbetter approached me the next day asking me if I was Majdi’s tutoring partner.  I told her yes and she confirmed that is what she thought.  Apparently Majdi was still looking for a tutor because he was telling everybody that I was his conversation partner not a tutoring partner.  I thought to myself “I already have plenty of conversation partners” so needless to say I was pretty anxious to get this one cleared up. 

Later that night I called him to setup a time to meet, and let me just say that a conversation with a foundation student is very difficult over the phone.  Finally we got it straight that we would be meeting on Friday for tutoring partners.  When I arrived we started talking and he asked if we were conversation partners or tutoring partners.  I told him that we were tutoring partners and he said that was ok but he also wanted to converse as well, which I wasn’t sure about because of how many other meetings a week I already have.  I told him I would only be available once a week and he almost demanded that we meet twice a week.  I told him I would look at my schedule and get back to him, which he didn’t really understand and was wanting a meeting schedule right then and there. 

Needless to say I learned a lot about boundaries during this meeting.  I was almost shocked at how unlike my other partners Ladji and Alena who viewed my time as a privilege, it seemed as he viewed my time as a right.  After getting this cleared up and some firmness on my part we sketch out a tentative meeting plan and boundaries of our meetings.  After this we went for a walk and we worked on vocabulary and pronunciation of words with an American accent, which he really desires to have.  What I didn’t really expect is that with a foundations student it is really hard to place whether you are having a tutoring meeting or a conversation meeting because they do not have much to go on so the meeting is constantly teaching and attempting to get a point across. 

Overall I learned how important it is to set boundaries with your tutees and to make sure they understand your expectations as well as theirs.  And also to make sure theirs of you are at least reasonable.