The Importance of Self-Care
This blog helps you work on strategies for establishing healthy boundaries with students
Scenario A:
A student comes in to a workshop session to work on crafting an argument for a paper the class is writing. The student is discussing the events of their weekend and tells you they went out drinking in town. They tell you about their wild night in immense detail. You are aware that this student is underage and are uncomfortable with the amount of information they are sharing.
Describe how you could diplomatically intervene mid-story to stop the student sharing anymore sensitive information without being judgemental or unkind
Scenario B:
You have been working with a student who is an education major. They need to earn at least a “B” in ENG170 in order to satisfy the Education Department requirements—otherwise, they will need to retake the course. The student is diligent and has shared with you how much they love working with small children—in fact, they dream of teaching at a pre-school one day. However, this student is currently averaging somewhere between a C+/B- in the course. At the end of one of your sessions, the student begs, “Can you look at my final copy this weekend before I hand in the research paper? I can send you my Google Doc on Saturday night and you can send it back to me on Sunday.”
Describe how you might respond to this student to refocus their expectations without squashing their dream
Scenario C:
Over the past three tutoring sessions, you have noticed a formerly optimistic, hard-working student is becoming more unfocused and distracted. One day, they mumble, “I’ve got to get back to the city to take my mother to chemo again—-can you give me a ride to the train station after tutoring?”
How can you help this student while also establishing boundaries?
Link back to Tutor Training site
Scenario A: In this situation, I would say something along the lines of, “While I’m honored you feel comfortable sharing that, let’s get back to looking at your assignment because I want to make sure you understand it/know how to revise it/know what you’re going to write about and use supporting evidence properly.” If the student persists or tries to bring it up again, then I would politely (yet firmly) ask them to stop.
Scenario B: I’ve already had a student try something similar to this; I even reached out to Rachel about this and she offered solid advice in how to handle it. If a student were to reach out in this manner, I would tell them that I cannot look over their paper at this time, but if they’d like to go over it, to please bring it to the next session. I would also gently reiterate the advice I might have given them concerning grammar/structure errors, tips on how to catch said errors, and to see how the paper sounds when they read it aloud (the ears catch what the eyes don’t), as everything we went over should be enough to help them. I would encourage them to do the best they can, and to perhaps take a break and come back to it later so that they are able to look over their paper with fresh eyes.
Scenario C: For something like this, I would politely tell the student that I’m so sorry to hear that they’re going through something tough, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for me to give them a ride. I would ask them if perhaps they could ask a friend or their roommate for a ride as that might be a better option.
I hope you are enjoying these Scenarios! The program that we used to make them was a lot of fun—- has a very “corporate training” feel.
Yes, Scenario C is a tricky one. I have actually driven students in the past, but only 2-3 times over the course of a 25+ year career. I believe in all of the cases, I saw students walking in the rain on their way to town and gave them a lift.
Glad my advice was helpful in terms of the “can you look over my draft” query.
Cases like this are difficult when a student has really been working hard in tutoring and you really, really want to seem to succeed. Again, as with the driving a student, I have broken my own rules and on rare occasions looked at the draft of student “just one more time” as an instructor. In these cases, it usually happens with a student taking the course for the second time because they are an education major who needs that “B” to stay in the program.