Peer Tutoring
My Involvement
I got to work as a Peer Tutor within the Learning Commons at UC for the Fall Semester of 2023. As a peer tutor, I hosted one-hour sessions for individuals seeking assistance in courses such as Calculus, Biology, and Chemistry. In the sessions, I would aid the students with practice problems, review practice exams, and explain concepts pertaining to confusion they faced within their course. I used critical thinking and effective communication with the students to help get to the answers and expand on their learning through active learning. I attended monthly meetings with the other peer tutors to discuss how everything was going and to reflect on the skills we were using within our sessions to ensure we continued to work on our own personal attributes. We had an observation meeting that determined our work which also helped to access how tutoring was going and strengths and weaknesses within the session.
My Learning...
Peer tutoring taught me many professional and personal skills that I can continue working on and keep with me throughout my academic life. I learned to enhance my communication skills, through teamwork with other peer tutors during a monthly meeting, or between myself and the student within the session. Effectively communicating became important to learn how to adapt to a student's learning style and be able to talk through the concepts they are learning in a way that they would understand. These skills help me navigate through professional conversations as I begin to apply for internships for the Summer as well. Further, I learned about critical thinking in a new way. Numerous times a student would have a question where I did not know the answer and we both worked to critically think about how to attack the question, whether that was breaking it down, using context clues, drawing on past content, or looking through notes, I had to keep thinking about how to best find the answer for the student. Critical thinking is a huge skill within the scientific field, and life as a whole, and was a great skill to continue working on as I grew in this position. I learned a lot more about time management while in this job as well. From being a full-time student, trying to facilitate a social life, and putting in 10 hours a week for the peer tutoring job, it became difficult at times to balance everything. Learning to rely on a planner and schedule out my days, while also providing myself grace if I did not meet everything I wanted to accomplish that day was important for me keeping steady. A huge lesson was giving myself grace, as often I find myself being too hard on myself and getting down when I can't get every little thing done in a day I wish to. Knowing I have tomorrow and can redirect my schedule to get my necessities in place kept me balanced and addressed that it was okay to have flexibility in my life, rather than living it completely rigid.
Overall, strengthening both these practical and personal skills taught me the value of working within the students who attended sessions, refurbishing skills that could always use practice, yet also addressing how personally I can continue to grow.
While I did switch positions within the Learning Commons after that semester, I became a Learning Assistant in Biology where I continue to use the skills I learned from my peer tutoring position. As much as I enjoyed tutoring, for my future of trying to attend graduate school for Genetic Counseling, having experience as a Learning Assistant was important to me for continuing to assist students though this time within a classroom setting compared to an one-on-one session. I was under the impression that tutoring would be a simple task, though I did find myself struggling often and having to reflect on my own classwork to help the students. It helped me to understand the importance of being prepared, something that I hope to take to my future careers. I hope to continue to assist students well within this new position, though it is less involvement, being a peer that can help a student who may be confused would mean a lot. I emphasize being a resource that can facilitate assistance to others and help represent the practice of active learning, and continuing to do that is something that I look forward to for my future.