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Becoming A Peer-Educator
Becoming A Peer-Educator
When I was a freshman at UMaine, I tried to start a business out of my dorm room.
My interest in English and composition in high school groomed me as a peer-tutor before I’d even heard of a Writing Center. I wanted to offer to other students what I’d offered to my friends: free peer-to-peer advice on writing of all types. I even made a sign to hang on my door. My RA hunted me down by the end of the day, telling me that by University policy, I wasn’t allowed to run a nonprofit out of my dorm. Then she told me about the Writing Center.
This began the most amazing three years of my life thus far. As I worked to fill a role of leadership, I noticed that most tutors felt the transition from the tutor training course to working in the Writing Center was rocky; they felt thrown into the deep end.
I knew that our Director, Paige Mitchell, constantly evolves the curriculum of the course to make the class most effective for the most students. I wondered why we were still seeing tutors who were overwhelmed by putting theory into practice.
How could I work with the new cohort of tutors to make their transition more comfortable? We know that peer-to-peer strategies work in tutorials, so why wouldn’t they work when training new tutors?
With Paige's help, I designed a role within the ENG 395 classroom. The goal was to establish myself as a peer-mentor for the tutors-in-training, a familiar face to make the course feel less intimidating.
The tutor training course is reading and writing intensive, it’s fast-paced, and involves gaining first-hand experience while simultaneously learning peer-tutoring theory. The process is overwhelming, as students don’t receive grades throughout the semester. Paige assigns critically reflective assignments and treats responses as qualitative. Students get an overall grade based on participation, attendance, assignment completion, and a multimodal portfolio.
"The goal was to establish myself as a peer-mentor for the tutors-in-training, a familiar face to make the course feel less intimidating."
"The goal was to establish myself as a peer-mentor for the tutors-in-training, a familiar face to make the course feel less intimidating."
Defining the Role
Defining the Role
of a Peer-Educator
of a Peer-Educator
I modeled myself after Kenneth Bruffee and Brian Fallon’s*
I modeled myself after Kenneth Bruffee and Brian Fallon’s*
ideas of what peers are and how peer-tutoring affects student writers. Bruffee discusses how peers create a social context to talk about writing, that don’t change what students learn, but rather the context in which they learn it. Bruffee’s final point that made me most curious: these kinds of tutors can be more emotionally involved than a non peer-tutor or a professor.
I also drew from Fallon's idea that: “The teaching of tutors must be and can only be accomplished by learning from tutors” I pay particular attention to Brian Fallon’s research on the effectiveness of peer-tutoring and how these practices can be transferred “from one generation of tutor to the next” (Fallon 2011, 362).
I used these ideas to define my role in ENG 395 as a peer-educator: A supplemental instructor that creates social space in the classroom for emotional involvement with students.
In the tutor training classroom, peer-educators offer students a familiar and low(er) pressure space to learn alongside a veteran tutor.
Emotional involvement is key in discerning between a teaching assistant and a peer-educator.
*Bruffee, Kenneth. “Peer Tutoring and the “Conversation of Mankind.”” The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors. Edited by Lauren Fitzgerald and Melissa Ianetta, Oxford University Press, 2016. Fallon, Brian. “Why My Best Teachers Are Peer-Tutors.” The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors. Edited by Lauren Fitzgerald and Melissa Ianetta, Oxford University Press, 2016.
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