by Ethan Gardner

tutoring for me has been quite the experience due to the fact that I am not a writer. These students come to me for help and I feel as if i am uncapable of helping them and that i am wasting their time at times. However this has been a learning experience for me and has truly shown me how essential tutors are in a students life. I have personally went to get tutoring on a few subjects and each time i have went i have learned more than before i went. As i progress towards my goal in my college career I would like to create a club for students who are going through what i am going through now. I believe that this could be a comforting thing during the week. This also could be a good chance to possibly tutor students who are perhaps struggling in their studies as i am. I believe in giving people the chance that maybe i don’t see right now but i would want it to be readily available for any student. If this experience has shown me anything it would be that each writing style is similar in some ways but more different in others. This can be compared to the way that we talk. You and I do not talk the same nor do we act the same we have similarities but not exact matches. This is how i have seen writing to be in these past few months that i have been tutoring other students. You may have the same book topic however your writing style can be as different as black and white. Personally i believe that this has made me a better writing in the fact that i can see things in my own writing that i couldn’t catch before. This I believe has shown many things towards my improvement as a writer.

by MichaelAnne Briggs

Throughout my tutoring experience, what stood out to me the most was that I got a lot better at it. In the beginning I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to help or suggest something that wasn’t helpful or effective. But as the weeks went on, I got more comfortable with myself and with the students. I began to become more confident in my advice in writing. It was a little frustrating when students did not communicate whether or not I was being helpful. For instance, when a student would “oh okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you”, it was super rewarding knowing that I was able to help them get where they needed to be. So, when I couldn’t tell what I was saying was getting through to them, it stressed me out a bit. It was also frustrating when someone would sign up for a meeting with a completed college essay a week before the deadline to submit the application. Especially if the essay wasn’t that good. I felt like they really didn’t want my help. I think they just wanted another person to say that it was good to confirm what they already thought. It also hard to give critics or suggestions because I feel like that would just stress them out.

This experience taught me that teaching or tutoring gets easier through experience. Although I completed my 20 hours, I would say my goals for the future as a tutor for Asheville High School is to get even better at it. I am excited to see where it could take me with more experience. The service learning influenced my personal growth by making me more confident. Just speaking to another person and helping them for 15-30 minutes helped me grow a lot.

by Zak Jordan

Between now and our last service reflection, I would say that I’ve only tutored a handful of students. Not too many students have been signing up for the Monday and Wednesday 7-8pm slot, but the ones that do are mostly seeking revision and possible final touches to add to their writing. It is pretty simple to aid them with this, the process mostly consists of grammar correction and formulating better word flow. 

At this point, what really stands out to me from my tutoring is how easy it has become for me and how much I’ve learned from it. Firstly, I believe that I have gotten pretty comfortable with the tutoring process through all of my work with the Asheville High students. Starting off, I was a little nervous and unsure of what to do, but now I can review and revise papers on a whim. It not only makes me a better tutor, but it has enhanced my revision process for my own work as well. Secondly, I have learned much about different writing styles and unique approaches to topics. This mostly comes from working with different students, but through seeing multiple approaches and perspectives in writing, I have developed a better sense of how to write objectively and from different perspectives.

When I do tutor in the future, whether it be in a public setting like this semester, or even with a friend, I believe the experience I’ve gathered over the course of these past few months will enhance my ability to help and aid other writers. My goals would be to: 1) offer multiple propositions to the writer when “fixing” major parts of the paper, but ultimately let the writer chose how to go about “fixing” in a way that is still their voice and writing, and 2) offer more direct advice with grammar and writing “rules” while addressing minor parts of the paper. These are pretty basic concepts, but I’ve found them to be very effective when I implemented them in my tutoring sessions.

I personally feel I’ve grown better as a writer, but also better as a communicator. Through my tutoring, I’ve became more comprehensible and formulated when speaking, especially in a learning/teaching environment. I am glad that this has occurred, and I think it will greatly aid me for not only the rest of my college career, but for my entire life. Being a good writer and communicator is key to success in the world, and I am glad to have grown in both of these areas over the semester.

by Yates Hockaday

Something that stands out to me so far in tutoring is how smart these students are and how willing they are to learn and get better at writing. Tutoring has helped me better understand what I need to look for in my own papers when I write and try to make sure I have every small detail like quotes, page numbers, font, spacing and other stuff perfected to the best of my ability before I turn my paper in. I hope to make people’s life’s better, I’m not the smartest and don’t bring the most value to someone needed help on an English paper, but hopefully the people I tutor can feel the positive energy I have and hopefully makes their day better. Service learning has influenced my growth as a person in being able to speak to strangers that I would have never met in the first place and be able to have a conversation that not only makes my day better, but hopefully makes their day better too.

by Jamie Daniels

The thing that stood out to me the most was the students’ different writing styles. I love how they all have their own little traits that make them stand out from other students’ papers. I think the only thing that bothered me was whenever I would tutor a student and they didn’t take it seriously or just came completely unprepared. For example, I tutored a student who signed up so they could get extra credit. When they joined they pretty much had nothing done, so I had a difficult time helping them since there was nothing to work from. But other than that this was a pleasant experience that I learned so much from.

The biggest takeaway for me from this experience was learning how to be more patient. I’m known for being superbly impatient, so naturally, I had to face that challenge and learn how to have more control over my emotions. Another thing that I‘ve learned from the sessions is how complex writing can be. I feel like writing is something that can never be perfected, as humans change and adapt to their surroundings so does writing.

Some of my service-learning goals for the future are to tutor more students from different schools, mainly my old high school. I just feel like if I can lend a helping hand it should be for them. Since I know from experience how difficult it is at that school to get help. 

This experience has helped me mature and learn how to communicate with people who are younger than me. With me maturing I was able to recognize more of my bad habits and learn how to change them or at least improve on them. For example, I noticed that I tend to completely zone out in the middle of conversations. I was only able to notice this when I nearly zoned out during the middle of a session. I was thankfully able to stop myself but anytime before that I never would’ve noticed. And that was just one of the many bad habits that I was able to recognize. 

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. 

by Madelyn Alexander

I have had the opportunity to help a lot of senior students with their college applications. I LOOOOVE doing this! It takes me back to my senior year which wasn’t too long ago when I was in their exact position. And I love that I know exactly how to help them and what to say. It has also given me the chance to get to know these students more personally. It almost makes me want to become a teacher myself because I enjoy helping student academically and getting to know them through their academic work SO MUCH. But hat is besides the point. One thing that really sticks out to me is how much I’ve seen recurring students’ writing improve. It makes me feel like I am ACTUALLY helping them long term instead of with just one assignment.

My experiences in service learning so far has shown me just how fluid the writing process is. I see that the same student might approach similar writing assignments in different ways. I see how one bit of advice can help a student in the future. And I have also seen how a students attitude towards different types of writing can change and how to be responsive and understanding of that.

As I continue my volunteer work at Asheville High, I am excited to see these students continue to improve their writing skills and ability. I love seeing their confidence grow and I love when they mention a piece of advice or correction I’ve given them in the past and how they apply it currently or with future writing assignments (kinda selfish, I know). My goal is to continue improving my tutoring skills and to work harder to help students in their writing by improving my teaching methods and delivery of my critiques and advice. I want to find more ways to instill academic confidence in them. One encouraging sentence or phrase can go along way!

My service learning experience lately has shown me that A LOT of Asheville students are applying to colleges in North Carolina alone. This was not particularly common at my high school, and for me personally, after high school, I wanted to go far away from Chicago and experience a completely different environment. It makes me wonder why they choose to stay in their state, not that there’s anything wrong with it, because it is less expensive and such. I am just curious.

As for my personal growth, I want to keep finding ways to help others. Maybe my next service adventure will be with communities that are older than me. I love the elderly and I think they wouldn’t mind some companionship right now.

by Kai Moskow

It has been increasingly obvious to me that a significant amount of students requesting tutoring from the writing center all have similar questions on writing. This might be due to the shift writing can undergo from being a very specific process to a more ambiguous one in higher-level courses. It can be sometimes frustrating to me to give advice to tutors, because I have a hard time telling if the advice or help I’m giving is resonating, being absorbed, or understood by the student, and I constantly have to ask if the student understand to confirm that I’m doing my job to the best of my ability, and saying those similar phrases over and over again can seem a bit too scripted to me.

After my initial experiences of tutoring, I don’t think my understanding of writing or the writing process has changed much. Teaching has become a more understandable concept to me, and I’m more confident in saying that I’m don’t explicitly enjoy it, but I can do it if I find myself in a situation in which it is necessary. I want to continue being a tutor for the writing center as I have now found a new confidence within myself of my writing abilities, and being paid to tutor during the Spring semester seems like a valuable form of employment to me.

Personally, I may have become more attuned to people’s thoughts during my work as a tutor, but I still have a long way to go. I also may have gotten slightly better at multitasking, as I am often looking at multiple things at once to tell the students my ideas using notes I have already written. During this entire next year, I plan to improve my empathetic and understanding skills, and, most importantly, my teamwork skills, as they are the most important skills in modern society and I am currently quite bad at teamwork, at least in my view.

by Amanda Thach

What stands out to you the most from your work as a tutor so far? What stood out to me was how I was able to help the students in my own way even though I’m not a great writer myself. The small tips that I gave to the students didn’t seem very helpful but to them it was kind of like a lot because they were able to use those tips to better their paper and that was what stood out to me, that in writing there’s always room for improvement even if the paper seems perfect. Another thing that was interesting was how working with each student was a different experience and it is both a learning experience for the student and also myself because I’m met with different viewpoints and different topics but it is also rewarding at the end of the day. 

How was your service learning experience influenced by your understanding of writing? My service learning experience influenced my understanding of writing because I understand now that writing can never be perfect but with little revisions built up it can become a better piece. I have learned many things throughout my experience working with students. My experience has also influenced my understanding of teaching because I can now see how tutors who work at the writing center what they are presented with, that it’s different every time and it can be challenging so I respect what they do and also the teachers. We gotta give it to the  english teachers because they are dealt with so many different students and perspectives and the teachers have to cater to their unique writing style but also provide room for improvement and make comments and revisions.

What are your service learning goals for the future? My service learning goals for the future is to help more students online because it feels nice to help people but also I have used some of the tips from their writing to better my writing. My other service learning goals for the future working as a tutor for Asheville high school is to become more better at my own writing as well while tutoring the students by picking up many skills and knowledge through that experience.

How has your service learning experience influenced your personal growth? My service learning experience has influenced my personal growth because when seeing the students writing, I noticed that there could be a lot of things to revise even if their paper seems like it’s perfect. I also look at my own writing and it may seem perfect to me but having another set of eyes read my paper is helpful because sometimes I might miss something or something doesn’t make sense in my writing.