A Tutor Weighs In!

Making a Personal Connection in a Group of Students
by Liz Latwin


As a tutor who focuses mainly on test prep, my tutoring experience usually involves trying to get a student to feel comfortable with and prepared for standardized tests like the SSAT and SAT. One of the most rewarding aspects for me about one-on-one tutoring is being able to personalize something as impersonal as a standardized test. Helping students find ways to have the test make sense to them is a unique and exciting challenge. I have employed techniques to personalize the test including "Gossip Girl" centric vocabulary lessons, sport analogies, and the website www.celebrityenglish.com (a great website where you learn how to correct the grammatical errors of celebrities). I also employ empathy; as an attorney, my career path has been filled with standardized tests. I understand how difficult, tedious, and painful test prep can be, and I have found that my students like that I don't try to sugarcoat the process. I can attest to the success of the techniques I teach because I have used many of them myself.

This past fall, I taught an SSAT preparation class with another EC tutor. Our goal was to give as close an approximation as possible to private tutoring for a class of 15 kids. While I went in to the class with the lofty goal of making a personal connection with each student and finding a way to personalize the class for each member of the group, I realized soon after the first class that this goal was impossible. Two hours a week with the group was not enough time to get the basics across, much less find ways to get through to each student. Some of the kids made it clear that they didn't want to spend their Saturday mornings preparing for the SSATs. Others kids were too shy in a large class to admit they weren't catching on to concepts other kids seemed to grasp.

By the end of the class's run, some kids felt comfortable enough to ask questions in class and seek extra help. The class as a whole had an "A-ha!" moment when we played a root words game (perhaps because the winners of the game got candy prizes). But there were certainly a few kids who I could never get through to in any way; but there were also a few who seemed to really benefit from the instruction and internalize the material. It was humbling to realize that my goal of making the studying for the SSATs a relatable process for the whole class would never be achieved. Not achieving this goal didn't make the class any less rewarding or successful, but it did make me rethink how I try to relate to a large group of people. One take away from my approach was that with this kind of class, a micro and macro approach to personalizing the test might be the best way to make connections, if not personal, but intellectual.