Discuss and praise

Hi everybody!

• Discuss. The questioning and the promotion of self-correction should lead into elaborated discussions. This will help to establish deeper and wider understanding in the tutee.

• Praise. Most tutors do not praise their tutees as much as they think they do. Most tutors also criticize their tutees more than they think they do. Try to observe your own tutoring behavior carefully. Tutoring is a private situation that should be within a context of trust. Embarrassment about giving and receiving praise publicly should not be a problem. So give more praise!

• When to praise. Praise for success with particularly hard problems or tasks. Praise for self-correction. Praise for increasing time-span without error. Praise for effort as well as success when the tutee is struggling. Praise ‘better efforts’ even if still not quite right. Praise increasing tutee independence. At the end of the session, give praise for the whole session. Write some praise on any record of the session.

• Effective praise. Praise specifying the reason for it—say exactly what the tutee has done well. Vary the praise—use as many different praise words as you can think of. See if your tutee can think of some more! Praise as if you mean it—sound and look pleased! Smile, at least

This is a great and accurate post!! Fikry, I love your posts always so good!

Wow, this is a very useful post for wanna-be tutors! I will take your advice in consideration! Thanks for sharing from your teaching experience, Fikry!

You make me blush little girl! remind me of a kind- hearted little lass in an old novel. guess ..who was she.

:)

Well, there are many “kind-hearted lasses” in many “old novels”… I can’t guess, but hope you’ll tell me! :D

Fikry, you’ve single-handedly convinced the whole team at eduFire that we need to roll out some tools that give all of you the chance to blog on eduFire. This is really good stuff!! :)

Hi Sandra!
King lear’s youngest daughter.

Team blog, I like it Jon.

Great advice Fikry! Praise is important, as is some constructive criticism. Awesome idea Jon!

A blog would be AWESOME!! Thanks Jon and Fikry

Fikry – Cordelia? Never though I was like her, but thank you! :)

Jon – a blog would be fabulous! Thanks!

I wonder: how much better can this site get?

Blog idea is really cool. We could have a team blog or perhaps give tutors the tools to blog individually (or perhaps both with the best posts from the tutor blogs ending up on the team blog). This won’t be something we’ll be able to roll out super soon but please keep posting your thoughts here and the more demand there is for it of course the higher priority we’ll assign to it.

@Sandra – Your guess is as good as mine but needless to say I hope the answer is “A lot, lot better.” :)

Well, I will be definitely looking forward to that, in this case! :)

I love the blog idea!

Onward and upward! :)

I just would like to add a little something about children and praise. I took a child care provider class once and one thing that really struck home was all about praise and children under the age of 7 if I remember the age correctly. It is important that when you for example are exploring an art project with a child that you allow the child to work without guidance but only simple instruction at the beginning. Then when the child shows the artwork to you at any point it is not wise to praise them on how good it looks or how good they are doing. What this does is teach the child to now draw to please you and not for themselves. This really struck home to me because my daughter at the time was an artsy fartsy type, she was 5, and always looked to me for my approval of her work. Quite often I found that when I liked something she would duplicate it over and over again in excess then present it and seek my approval. I also noticed that she was quite the people pleaser in every day life as well. So this really made sense.

I wanted to share this to kind of share this concept of how praise should be presented to a child under 7. The best way to praise a child who has just shown you their work is to say, I feel really special that you shared this with me. It is also ok to say I am really impressed with how hard you are working on this project. If you are praising the behavior and effort then you are allowing the child to continue to pursue projects for their own pleasure and not just to please you. This really opens up their creativity and love for the project/learning. This also helps them to be self motivated individuals as they grow up.

Since learning this you do not know how irritated I am with myself, lol. I am very artsy and crafty. When I finish a project I love seeing the reactions of the recipient, when positive of course. I always feel like I have to show someone and get their reaction. I cannot be an anonymous artist, lol.

I had an order for a hand drawn portrait of a family with their dog. I completed the piece and it had been the biggest challenge to date, at the time. Something seemed slightly imperfect about it, but all in all I thought it was very good. I delivered the piece that took me two months to finish. Something did not seem right. They had not reacted like anyone else I had done one for. No excitement about this piece that I had poured my heart into. In emails this family had asked my permission to use the piece on their Xmas cards. I had given permission. I never asked what they thought, and they never said. I got an Xmas card from them and it was a photo of them instead of the drawing. I sent an email to them and asked them if everything was ok. The mom said, we just thought that we did not look like us very much, but the dog looked great! Then someone told me that this person had said they looked like aliens and that I had been rude and did not give them a refund like they asked, and they didn’t. I would not do a drawing for over 9 months after that happened. I had become so wrapped up in what people thought of my work that the first negative reaction had really set me back. I am a product of inappropriate praise, lol. I am a work in progress, it just takes a lot to overcome your programming, lol.

Hi Tina,
I can so relate to your post above. My twins are 9 (actually turning 10 on Labor Day) and we seem to have a similar issue. My son doesn’t really care what other’s think about his accomplishments, however, my daughter seeks approval in most areas of her life. Whether she writes a creative story, picks out an outfit, designs a new hairstyle, or decorates cupcakes, she is constantly asking what we think. My husband and I have always encouraged our kids to be independent thinkers, allowing them the freedom and flexibility to be who they are (within reason lol). We have accepted that our daughter has the “People Pleasing” personality and encourage her to “create” to please herself as well. Ok, not sure where I was going with this, other than to say…. I can relate.

Very good points Tina – I think they really show how important Fikrey’s points are.