selecting tutors -Reply

[GLENDA CONWAY <CONWAYG@UM.MONTEVALLO.EDU>]

Mickey,

You have a dilemma!  How reassuring.  

I had an experience with hiring a tutor with some similarities to the
young lady you described in your post.  I hired her after my chair, excited
about this entering English major coming in with 60-odd hours of AP
credit, brought her to my office & said (in front of both of us) that she
thought I should talk to "Jane" about working in the Writing Center.  Under
that pressure, I found Jane a few open hours and told her about the
training meetings.

Jane was 17 & had skipped a grade or two at her private,
selective-admission school.  I'm not sure why Jane had chosen to attend
a public liberal arts school; but I would guess it was for personal rather
than for academic reasons.  

To not drag this out, Jane was not a good tutor.  She didn't seem to take
what she was supposed to learn from training into the center.  I would
overhear her "telling" students what to do, with a voice and tone that
was more authoritative and weary (You need to change this to....)  than
collaborative and interested (Can you explain to me what you mean
here?).  There were social problems as well--Jane spent most of her WC
time facing a computer screen (she seemed not to have paid attention to
the section on "professionalism" during our training either), rarely
greeting the students who entered, also not interacting with the WC
staff, who, from what I gathered, didn't feel they had anything in
common.  

While I was deciding what kind of approach I was going to take to talk to
Jane about her work, she simultaneously neglected to return her
preference form for the next semester.  I took the weasel's way out.  I
didn't solicit return of the form; nor did I talk to her about her style.

This story (which I've not really dealt with until now) has turned out to be
longer than I meant it to be in this medium.  I do think your other tutors' or
prospective tutors' potential to relate to this young woman (regardless of
her age) is definitely an important consideration.  I really think their sense
of her will parallel your clients' experience if she were to become a tutor.

I know that the lesson I've learned here is more about knowing the
prospective tutor socially (directly or through another teacher's or tutor's
recommendation) before I hire, than it is about finding a way to talk to a
weak tutor about her work.  I think I can avoid the latter if I put more
emphasis on the former.

Glenda Conway
Department of English
University of Montevallo
Montevallo AL 35115
205 665-6425
conwayg@um.montevallo.edu