1. Encountering the Tutee: Dealing with Difficult Situations Greg Cohoon, Irvin Lucero, Gene Munar, Tuyettrinh Nguyen, Mary Deen, and Chris Boyter December 4, 2008 California State Polytechnic University, Pomona

2. Quiet and Unresponsive Tutee Difficult to determine exactly what the tutee is confused about because of their lack of physical or verbal communication. Difficult the gauge their understanding level of the material.

3. Quiet and Unresponsive Tutee Tutors must learn to tolerate silence. When communication stops or is at a standstill, wait thirty seconds. Someone is bound to talk. It takes time to formulate a thoughtful response. It may help to ask the tutee why they are stuck or ask them to summarize the material. Keep talking until a light glows in their eyes. Be enthusiastic!

4. Distrustful Tutees Apprehensive Reluctant to accept help Adamant that your answer is wrong Discredit your help and knowledge Immediately ask other tutors for help. Characteristics of Distrustful Tutees

5. Distrustful Tutees Prove your method is correct ◦ Show evidence from notes or a book ◦ Walk the tutee through a derivation of the ideas used in solving the problem ◦ Have the tutee try similar problems and show that the answers are similar Suggest other learning resources ◦ Internet, Articles, Books, Teachers, and other Tutors Don’t take it personally Handling Distrusting Tutees

6. Argumentative After getting past the first impression stage and begin tutoring an argumentative tutee, there may be a couple specific issues to overcome; ◦ Challenging tutee: a tutee who does not respect your knowledge of the subject. ◦ Personality trait: The tutee may strongly misunderstand concepts and feel they are not being heard or understood. Tutoring may turn into a debate between the tutor and the tutee.

7. Argumentative Resolutions & Strategies ◦ Establish expectations and ground-rules. ◦ It is best to use non-hostile statements. ◦ Focus on behavior, not attitude. Some students may appear to have the worst attitude when in fact they may have a learning disability. We should never criticize before we know the facts. We can change behavior. ◦ Establish credibility: explain the concept a couple times to the tutee and then explain its future relevance. One leadership tactic is to first disorient someone and then show him or her you know the way.  An alternate method is to indicate past success of similar situations. ◦ Allow the tutee to vent his or her frustrations.

8. Understanding Helper The tutee is enthusiastic about coming to MaSH and everything you say. They retain the information you give them and applies it to their work. In the future, they can be found helping other students in MaSH with the very same advise you gave them.

9. Understanding Helper These are generally the best tutees and are the easiest to work with. However, some things to look out for is: ◦ Assess if they are saying “yes” because they truly understand what you are telling them and not because they want to make a good impression. ◦ On the part of the tutor, don’t give this tutee preferential treatment just because they are easy to work with.

10. Tutor/tutee Friendships A light atmosphere leads the tutee to feeling comfortable to share weaknesses, troubles, and feelings about their classes. The tutee develops trust for a particular tutor, leading them to seek that tutor’s help over other tutors. This helps develop a trust/dependant relationship.

11. Tutor/tutee Friendships Pros ◦ The tutor knows the tutee’s strengths and weaknesses. ◦ The tutee is easier to work with and thus they learn faster. ◦ The retain the information given to them better. Cons ◦ They seek you outside of MaSH (on-campus, email, etc.) ◦ The tutee may expect preferential treatment. This situation can lead to a needy or possessive tutee

12. Needy and Possessive The tutee comes in for help with a long list of problems He/she does not allow the tutor to leave and help other tutees. They only seek help answering the problems from the tutor and doesn’t want an explanation.

13. Needy and Possessive Establish your expectations from the tutee and firmly state ground-rules. Give the tutee something they can work on by themselves. ◦ This should be something that helps them understand the problem and grants you enough time to help other tutees.

14. Adult Tutees over 30 Friendly Willing to Learn Need more attention as they understand less basic concepts from not being in school for some time

15. Adult Tutees over 30 Although grouping people working on similar assignments is usually encouraged, some adult tutees will need more attention to get a foundation understanding without other tutees just giving their work group answers Embrace their willingness to learn and give a short lecture on subject pertaining to homework and have them work on problems by themselves

16. How to Tell If Adult Tutee needs Individual or Group Tutoring Section 5.1 of Tutoring Manual