by Hylend Grit

1.       What stands out to you most from your work as a tutor so far? What was especially interesting, surprising, rewarding, or even frustrating? 

As a writing center assistant, I feel most surprised by the way kids react to having a college student talking to them. It’s funny the way kids may only be a year younger though listen to what I’m saying as if I were their elder.

2.       How has your service-learning experience influenced your understanding of writing? The writing process? Of teaching and learning?

 This has changed the way I look at writing by seeing similarities in my old writing with the younger students. I feel I can see my own growth by watching theirs. By helping students, it has definitely made me more aware of my writing process.

3.       What are your service-learning goals for the future?  What do you hope to accomplish as you continue your work as a tutor at Asheville High School?

 I would like to get to teach more students in the future, I have really enjoyed working with writing and helping other students learn to write. As I continue my tutoring at AHS I hope to get to work on more college essays as that was extremely fun. I hope to do this because these felt like my most influential meetings.

I feel that tutoring has influenced my personal growth in many different ways. The most notable change is the way different people work through a paper,  it really allowed me to see how other’s brains think and their instinctual vocabulary of every student. Because of seeing this, I have attempted to change my traditional sentence structure and vocabulary to more suit UNCA rather than high school. I often use almost a mental template for my writing and seeing others do the same made me want to improve my own.