Thursday, January 26, 2006

Hmmm...

I've been asked to run one of the PASS sessions next trimester for ENGL111. It's like a supplementary tutorial, but run by students that took the course the year before. We're supposed to be less scary or something.

Pros:
1. I'd get to warp naive young minds.
2. It would be teaching experience of a sort.
3. There's Chaucer's "Miller's Tale" which is one of his funnier (and smuttier) offerings. "The Rape of the Lock" was quite fun as well.

Cons:
1. There's Malory's version of King Arthur, which I hated with a white hot passion.
2. The money isn't fantastically great. But then it's only an hour a week, so it's more of a token anyway.

I must think on this.
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5 comments:

three monkeys said...

I agree with Mash. Do it. :-)

I did lots of tutoring in my university days and always enjoyed it and the skills you pick up are worth having.

9:58 pm
Anonymous said...

Have you done any tutoring before?

10:54 am
Stephanie said...

No. My sister does one-on-one tutoring at Massey and says that she really enjoys it, so I'm leaning towards yes, just so I can see if I like it or not.
I do think it's ironic though - that was the course on which I spent the least time and got the worst grade.

1:08 pm
Edward Sargisson said...

You know, my housemaster from Southwell had an interesting and very useful life motto, "Make the most of all your opportunities."

It always been something I've attempted to follow although in some notable areas the attempts are few and far between.

However, given that it's an hour a week I can't see a good reason for your *not* doing it.

You'll get to sit down with a pile of newbies and dispense knowledge with your amazing wit and acuity. You'll get a bit of experience teaching and get to work out if you enjoy it or not. Whatever the result you'll end up with another piece of information about yourself.

What's not to like?

If you end up hating it then you never have to do it again.

7:14 pm
Anonymous said...

You will also get money :-)

All my experience of tutoring is with technical subjects (comp sci, maths). My very first stand-up-tutorial (as opposed to just hanging out in a lab helping people) was entirely using material prepared by the lecturer, so that made things a lot easier.

I hated any form of public speaking at school, but I found tutoring different, primarily because I knew what I was talking about. Plus, in many ways, I didn't actually need to know as much as the students. Depending on the topic, I could handwave tricky areas, whereas the students needed to get them exactly right :-)

Of course, arts tutoring is no doubt different. But I'd still say go for it. Just be careful about letting students find you when you're not being paid to help them..

7:12 pm

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