By: Elizabeth Grissom

I’ve noticed that during tutoring students don’t usually know what they need help with or you have to ask questions and really understand what the student needs help with and how to properly help them without giving away too much. It is frustrating for me because I want to help them but I don’t just want to give them the answer I want them to do it themselves so they can better understand it. This experience has really changed my view on teaching and how much teachers have to do to provide for their students. I couldn’t imagine being a teacher full time and I have a new appreciation for my professors and teachers and how hard they work to provide us with an education. One thing about tutoring that has helped me is when I work with students and help them with issues they may have with writing overall it improves my own writing because I am constantly thinking of ways to explain how to improve their writing and just the repetition of that helps make my own writing better.

My goal for service learning is to improve the way I talk to students and find new ways to articulate my words in a way they can better understand. I have a lot of trouble explaining things because I understand it perfectly in my head but when I have to try to explain it to someone else it comes out in a way I feel can confuse students. One thing I learned about the community of Asheville is that the students really care about their school and they care about their work too. One of the first people I tutored was writing a letter to the people who deal with the bus routes because her bus route changed and she started missing her club’s meetings. This letter was really important for her and she was just a freshman, it’s really nice to see young students inspired to learn and improve themselves for the better and I think it is a very good idea to have a writing center in a high school. Personally, if I had a writing center in my high school I think I would have been a much better writer.