This reflection paper describes a student's experience founding and leading an informal peer tutoring organization at the college level. The paper examines the motivation behind creating an alternative to formal tutoring services, the logistics of recruiting expert peers, and a specific leadership communication challenge involving a student who repeatedly missed sessions due to a personal relationship issue. The author also interprets results from four self-assessment quizzes covering creativity, communication effectiveness, multicultural competence, and conflict resolution style, connecting each score to real behaviors observed in the tutoring context.
The organizational activity I have been involved with lately is related to my school. Specifically, I was influential in forming a new peer tutoring organization. I noticed a general reluctance on the part of most students to attend tutoring sessions at some of the more formal and well-established tutoring entities at my college. There is a perception that joining those sessions indicates one is an inferior student, and that the tutors are too stuffy and "square."
At the same time, I noticed that my friends and I — who are either upper-classmen or graduate students — have a mastery of most core subjects, especially those pertaining to undergraduate coursework. Our sphere of expertise includes language arts, history, math and statistics (up to but not including Calculus), biology, business, physics, astronomy, and other sciences. I also know quite a few individuals who are fluent in foreign languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, and German.
Given these strengths, I thought it would be a good idea to begin conducting our own tutoring sessions. By doing so, we could start a new club at the school and receive resources — some of which are financial — for helping other students. Additionally, we would be able to tutor in locations that are more social and less austere than the offices of some traditional tutoring services on campus.
I recruited each of my friends who were "specialty experts" to participate and help coordinate schedules for students. We are all active in marketing and spreading the word about our services. Some of our most reliable clients are our very own classmates.
The opportunity I recently had to communicate as a leader actually pertains to this tutoring club. I was working with a student who is enrolled in one of my business and leadership classes. For some reason, this student would never show up to our sessions, even though it was clear it would greatly benefit her. She was not doing well in the class, and every time I spoke with her she conveyed that she had difficulty completing the homework and was not earning the marks she wanted on examinations and quizzes.
She would consistently say that she needed tutoring and would set up sessions, but then would not attend them. Understanding how to identify and address the root causes of conflict or disengagement is a core leadership skill, and this situation put that skill to the test.
"Discovering personal barrier and adapting solution"
"Four quiz scores linked to leadership behaviors"
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