by Jacob Hunt

I am happy to write that even though I only got to meet with one of my students twice, I still found the experience fulfilling. I did try to email the student with whom I have not met but received no response. The student I did meet with wanted to get to work as soon as he logged on, which was a surprise to me. From what I gathered from other tutors, their tutees did not really want to work, so when my tutee wanted to get started immediately, I was thrilled. I did not have to conduct any introduction activities to help him start writing because he was already zealous to work on his college essay. The experience, though virtual, of helping a student write was amazing. I got to know him more as I read his essay – which was practically finished – and the more time I spent with him.

I not only learned about my tutee, but I also learned things about myself, particularly that I knew more than I thought I did, which is a comfort when trying to instruct others. The experience also taught me how to put what I learned in the classroom into practice. During my sessions, I had my notebook from LANG 396 open, so I could glance over to see what the best course of action would be to move forward in the session; this helped greatly during the session. I realized when I was tutoring that being overprepared is very rewarding because I never know what all I will need. Also, helping this student put me back into the mindset of being a teacher. Since I am mostly studying at school right now, I feel that I have mostly been in a student mindset because I have not had much teaching experience in schools this semester. When tutoring my student, I again felt the excitement of instructing someone, which is amazing.

One of the main reasons that I want to teach is the students. I deeply care for each one, and want to see them succeed, no matter who they are or where they come from. I did not get to see what my tutee looked like because he was working on a desktop and did not have a camera. I made sure to be understanding because I did not know what his situation was. I am not sure if this is the case for this student, but there will be low-income students in my future classroom who don’t have many things we consider commodities like a webcam, so having seen this in my service-learning experience was good foreshadowing of what my future students may be experiencing. I not only need to be prepared to have low-income students in my class, but I also need to be prepared to have students who do not show up or do their work. The experience of sitting and waiting for students to log onto the Google Meet forced me to prepare more tutoring lesson plans, and think of things that the students need if they are finished with their college writing like looking for scholarships, teaching them the different types of financial aid, or telling them about moving into college in hopes to ease their minds and nerves.

I would also like to note that I thought that the Asheville High School personnel and the mandatory training session were very professional. Overall, though I did not see much of my tutees, I found the experience very beneficial and hope to tutor again sometime soon in the future.