From the Publisher
Inside each of us is the promise of a tutor. If you've ever taught a child to tie her shoe, or helped a friend with his homework, or even helped a stranger understand a posted sign, you have it in you to empower others through learning. Tutors are allowed to do what teachers and parents are often not able to do. They can be patient, observe, question, support, challenge, and applaud. They can move towards nurturing the true and total intelligence of their tutees. Learning to tutor is simply overcoming fears, sharing and acquiring knowledge, and appreciating the potential and wisdom in each other.
Tutoring Matters is the authoritative manual for both the aspiring and seasoned tutor. Using the firsthand experiences of over one hundred new and experienced tutors, this long-awaited guide often chapters on attitudes and anxieties, teaching techniques, and building relationships It educates the tutor on how to handle and appreciate social and language differences: how to use other adults-teachers, administrators, parents, employers-to a student's advantage; and, when your student or circumstances determine that it's time, how to put a positive and supportive end to the tutor-tutee relationship.
Written by experienced tutors and tutoring educators, Tutoring Matters celebrates-and provides just the right l tools for-an individualized and successful tutoring relationship and shows just how much you can learn-about the world and yourself-through teaching others.
What People Are Saying
Walter R. Allen
This book offers a scholarly and practical perspective on tutoring both as an art and [as a] science. It is a must read for those who hope to be effective tutors, for those who intend to establish serious tutorial programs, for educators and policy makers.
(Walter R. Allen, Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, UCLA)
Richard Cone
I believe that tutoring is distinguished from teaching by the nature of the personal relationship that is built between the tutor and his or her charge. This book makes that point with crystal clarity.
(Richard Cone, Joint Educational Project, University of Southern California)
Mark A. Chesler
The most practical, concrete, appealing and intellectually coherent preparation material I have seen. We will use it, not only in our school tutorial program, but also in our work with juvenile detention systems and the homeless.
(Mark A. Chesler, Community Service Learning Programs, University of Michigan)
Helen S. Astin
...A much needed book for everyone who is called upon to assist others in the process of learning and discovery...I for one found much of value for my own work, even after 30 years of teaching....
(Helen S. Astin, University of California, Los Angeles )
Robert W. Maloy
Essential strategies; key insights. A 'must have' sourcebook for literacy tutors.
(Robert W. Maloy, co-author of The Essential Career Guide to Becoming a Middle and High School Teacher and Schools for an Information Age)
Sonia M. Nieto
The authors do more than prepare tutors to teach; through poignant vignettes and judicious advice, they prepare tutors to form relationships and, in the process, to learn more about themselves.
(Sonia M. Nieto, University of Massachusetts)
Selma R. Zimmerman
This book targets and solves the many relationship problems between tutors and clients with insight and sensitivity.
(Selma R. Zimmerman, New York City Board of Education)
Wilbur Rippy
What the novice tutor needs is reassurance. That is exactly what Tutoring Matters offers through the accounts of others and the concrete details that are so clearly presented in this book. Well done!
(Wilbur Rippy, New York's Bank Street College of Education)