Tips 4 Tutoring!

WRITTEN BY KRISTINE YAMBAO

ILLUSTRATED BY CASSANDRA CHANG & CHARLOTTE CHANG

When I got hired as a tutor at OASIS, I never would have thought that I would be starting a session by playing a few rounds of Color Block on Roblox with a tutee. But here I am, still employed and now working as a math facilitator for two calculus workshops. 

An activity like this sounds out of place for tutoring chemistry. Some might say it’s unproductive and unnecessary, but I promise that ten minutes of Roblox is an integral part of my teaching style. Hear me out!

“I don’t expect you to be perfect… I don’t look for straight A’s… But can you teach?” – My Very Cool Supportive Boss Swaggor.

One thing to keep in mind is that asking for help is a vulnerable position to be in. Initially, a lot of tutors will be more concerned about how well they know the content they are teaching. Do I remember what molecular orbital theory is? Can I tutor for this class if I don’t know the Gibbs Free Energy equations right away? But being an effective tutor is rarely about content. It’s about the space you create for your tutee! 

For a lot of people, it can feel uncomfortable to ask for help, especially if they are hardwired to be independent. As a tutor, you demand a level of respect for your time and personal boundaries. In fact, it is encouraged that you do so to help yourself out! But let’s say a classmate or underclassman asks for help. Putting yourself in a role that is overly domineering might make it hard for the person you are tutoring to be in that vulnerable position.

Much like making a new friend, establishing your role as a tutor can hold that same initial awkwardness. Neither party knows the flow of the conversation, and both are too scared to stray in the wrong direction or be perceived as weird and off-putting. Either way, they want the interaction to go well, but they aren’t sure how.

In a situation where you’re just randomly assigned a tutee, it is important to break the ice to get over that initial awkwardness. Again, part of being a tutor is providing a space where students can be vulnerable. Asking for help, giving wrong answers, and getting over learning bumps is not something everyone is comfortable doing in front of people (let alone, a stranger)!

Icebreakers can be done with random questions, short games, or even a relaxing activity. My personal favorite is persuading my tutees to join me in a game of Mancala, but other tutors might color pictures with their students, pose the classic “how would you survive a zombie apocalypse?” scenario, or play a word game. 

When you’ve gotten over that awkward stage, it is significantly easier to connect with your tutee, but you still have to maintain the safe space that you’ve created. One way to do this is to continue getting to know your tutee with an informal conversation before getting to work. 

Another way to maintain the space is through your language. Initially, when we think of language, we think of gendered terms, pronouns, and being conscious of topics such as race and ethnicity. But we also need to expand this to general interactions. Trade the phrase “No, this is wrong” for “You’re in the right area” or even “Maybe let’s think about it in a different way.” You can swap “This class is so impossibly hard…” with “This class is difficult, but you can definitely get through it with some extra time and care.”

This is something that is learned over time and constantly improved upon! Sometimes we say things without thinking, and other times, we might not even realize that the way we word things could be a bit… upsetting. Changing your language requires a lot of personal consciousness, but it also may be the most helpful strategy when navigating interactions with other people. 

So far, I discussed connection and empathy, both of which are extremely important. Tutoring is a very socially interactive job and a great way to develop your soft skills, which is useful for future careers and personal life.  But it can also be an outlet for creativity.

When tutoring for the sciences, conceptualizing certain topics can be a challenge. While pulling up a simulation may be helpful, the tutee might still have no idea how different variables relate to each other. This is where reframing concepts comes into play. You can use analogies, model the concept with physical objects, or relate it to your tutees’ interests. This not only helps them understand the topic better, but also keeps them engaged in their learning. 

Overall, teaching someone science should be a creative activity. You don’t have to be stuck in the same ways of teaching by drawing a diagram and solving a few problems together. You might even discover that you have your own unique teaching style. 

In addition, people have different study habits, and being presented with a new topic in the form of anything that’s not a lecture may help. Personally, I love teaching the ideal gas law because I use the analogy of people being crowded in a musty room. While I add the foulest descriptions for fun, the analogy itself helps people conceptualize the relationships demonstrated by PV=nRT. Other times, I use my Mancala board to help them visualize certain topics such as entropy, and ask them related questions about Gibbs Free Energy equations. Instead of solving practice problems, the tutoring session becomes more of a conversation related to the subject.

Another thing I do is link supplemental YouTube videos in a master document. For conceptual videos, I encourage tutees to watch the video explanation without taking notes at least once to let the content sink in. This way, they have other resources to go to other than campus-provided ones or their professor.

Above all else, creating a safe space for a student may also require your own vulnerability. Often, people feel more comfortable opening up themselves if you reciprocate. 

When I was a first year, I struggled a lot with my classes, adjusting to life eight hours away from home, and not having a full-on community to fall back on other than my suitemates. I considered transferring out of UC San Diego and was on academic probation for a little bit. These memories aren’t too pleasant, but they are experiences that I try to be very transparent about. Being able to relate to them might calm their doubts about themselves and their abilities. 

The best trait you can have as a tutor is empathy. And sometimes one of the things that connects you and your student together is Roblox after they take a 9 A.M. midterm.