One-on-one Community Tutoring for Low-income Students Experiencing Difficulties in Writing
Reading and writing have always been the two major components of language development, with children typically developing writing skills around early to late elementary school grades (Abbott et al., 2010). While writing stimulates “cognitive learning strategies” via boosting the development of rehearsal strategies, elaboration strategies, organization strategies, and comprehension-monitoring strategies (Weinstein & Mayer, 1986; Bangert-Drowns et al., 2004), many research has thus found writing to be an important predictor of later academic success. However, children from low-income families have encountered particular difficulties in writing mainly due to a lack of adequate language interactions (Malin et al., 2014), as lower-income parents are less likely to engage in frequent conversations and read books aloud to kids. Since parents are usually the “gatekeepers” for children’s opportunities, such limited opportunities can lead to a delay in vocabulary development which is crucial for developing future writing skills. As a result, to better prepare children for advanced education and avoid significant academic gaps, there has been an increasing number of writing centers and after-school writing programs, boosted by the participation of community organizations such as 826LA. Apart from traditional in-class teaching, many of the programs have also turned to employ one-on-one tutoring. While many researchers argue that one-on-one tutoring could yield optimal results for low-income students in terms of writing skills improvements, there are still issues such as limited application, poor attendance, and low-quality student tutoring that prevent it from attaining its maximum effectiveness. With organizations such as 826LA opening up more possibilities for future implementations among low-funding schools, we hope to overcome these issues by having a higher level of school engagement through following up on individuals’ presence as well as providing opportunities for direct interactions between student tutors.
Admittedly, one-on-one tutoring, compared to traditional large-scale class teaching, shows a more positive effect on reading and writing proficiency due to its high level of sensitivity-responsibility. For instance, the Reading Partner program had a statistically significant impact on improving reading comprehension, sight-word efficiency, and fluency (Jacob, 2014). Consistent with the finding, one-on-one tutoring also reduces racial achievement gaps among low-income middle school students (Dobbie et al., 2011). Such promising results of one-on-one tutoring programs could be explained by their sensitive and responsive nature. Pairing one student with one tutor allows close examination of the student’s progress and the tutors could frequently tailor the teaching materials to the specific needs of the students. For one-on-one writing centers, the tutors are thus able to adjust the emphasis placed on specific areas depending on the students’ writing shortcomings. For example, once during my tutoring shift at 826LA, I placed more emphasis on organizing the paragraph sequence with one student who experienced difficulties with transitions, while other students claimed that they needed more help with brainstorming.
However, regardless of the positive impact one-on-one tutoring has on writing and overall academic performances, the number of one-on-one writing tutoring programs implemented is still limited due to not only low school funding but also the public judgmental views of college student volunteers’ engagement. As private tutors are normally expensive, many community public schools in low-income neighborhoods may not have sufficient funding to afford enough tutors, considering the large student population. The issue is ameliorated recently with the aid of community writing programs and online tutoring. Recognizing the extremely low cost of online one-on-one tutoring as tutors are no longer required to commute (Kraft, 2022), some organizations such as 826LA have further combined community volunteers with virtual tutoring to maximally reduce the schools’ financial burden. Nevertheless, the embracement of community volunteer tutoring has raised several concerns by the schools. Specifically, many schools still hold stereotypical views regarding college student volunteers, perceiving them as unprofessional and unreliable since many students engage in community service “merely for grades’’ (Mitchell & Donahue qtd. in Mitchell 462). This reluctance to cooperate with community organizations that recruit college students creates a barrier to the extensive implication of one-on-one writing tutoring programs.
Surprisingly, among the already-implemented one-on-one writing programs, certain matters including poor attendance have, indeed, arisen as a result of using college student volunteers, which further perpetuate the preconceptions about this community. According to Jacob, “lack of consistent attendance and retention” has been one of the biggest challenges (2014). In fact, since the students’ community service tended to be part-time in nature and the majority of the student volunteer body participated because of course requirements, many student tutors did not consider the community service to be as important as their school academics. Such a lack of motivation and undervaluing of community tutoring outside of the classroom have led to frequent rescheduling or even cancelation of the shifts, with the changes peaking around midterm and final weeks. These usually “last-minute” changes left the schools unprepared for adaptations and the new tutors unfamiliar with the tutoring materials, which not only hindered the effectiveness of tutoring but also accentuated the pre-existing biases towards college students that they were “privileged” and thus often unreliable (Mitchell & Donahue 459).
Besides, while most schools leave attendance at the writing programs voluntary, over the course of the school year, only a few students are able to attend the program consistently. Take myself as an example, when tutoring at 826LA, there have been several instances where I had to wait for more than 15 minutes for a student to drop by, when the total time for one tutoring session was approximately 45 minutes. In some extreme cases, the tutoring shift had to be canceled as there were no students. My conversation with one of the students from 826LA also revealed that most students had never used the tutor resources provided by organizations like 826LA. The poor attendance of the students is likely to yield insignificant results in students’ writing improvement, which in turn makes it hard for the schools to believe that such programs are useful for the students. With a lack of trust, more schools are inclined to withdraw from the community writing programs, creating a vicious cycle.
The inconsistency could be improved by advocating for more school involvement, more specifically, by having the schools and organizations keep track of both the students’ and tutors’ attendance. Although it is hardly possible to have full-time college student tutors on a continuing basis, prior to volunteering, organizations like 826LA could ask for students’ availability during the semester and have them select weekly shift blocks that they are capable of attending. Providing a more structured schedule beforehand not only strengthens tutors’ sense of responsibility but also ensures an adequate supply of tutors, which helps to mitigate the impact of frequent turnover. While a lack of school support lowers the level of implementation fidelity (Jacob, 2014), apart from reminding students the availability of community writing support, it would be crucial for the schools to offer instructional supervision and support by allowing at least two classes per week to be the mandatory sessions for community writing tutoring. Since writings require constant revision, by virtue of regular attendance, students are likely to see an improvement in their writing skills, which enhances their desire to participate further in the tutoring program. At the same time, the occasional replacement of classes with writing tutoring reduces students’ stress and workload since they no longer need to use their lunch breaks or after-school time to participate in such programs, highering the likelihood of consistent attendance and retention.
On the other hand, college student volunteers’ lack of experiences and training have also potentially hindered the effectiveness and quality of the tutoring. Resulting from the desire to help students, some inexperienced college tutors could be too persistent at the start about obtaining a clear answer (“Writ 150” 0:01:42). Understanding that students have different personalities, such persistence may be perceived as an invasion of privacy, especially considering that individual students are often paired with different tutors for each session due to the high level of turnover. For example, during my first shift at 826LA, as the eagerness for helping the students revise her essays overrode all other concerns, despite her seeming apparently uncomfortable, I continued to ask questions about her family situation. However, instead of providing a clear answer, the student showed withdrawal and eventually asked to start on a new topic. Since these “do’s and don’ts” are usually not addressed in the training sessions, inexperienced student tutors might make unconscious mistakes that not only cause ineffective tutoring results but also further damage the reputation of college student volunteers.
Therefore, organizations like 826LA should provide more opportunities for student tutors to interact with each other so that they could share strategies regarding effective tutoring. Though the Youtube videos shared in the community have offered tremendous help for novices to avoid certain “minefields” when tutoring, those three-to-four-minute interviews tend to be incomprehensive. Particularly, because of the subjective nature of writing, throughout the course of tutoring, many questions have come up which were hardly mentioned in the training session. For instance, some tutors including myself sometimes find it difficult to give concrete suggestions without unconsciously replacing the students’ ideas with ours. If given opportunities to interact face-to-face with other student tutors at 826LA, these concerns could be more thoroughly discussed and student tutors would get a chance to learn new strategies that have received positive feedback from the students.
While community organizations lower the barriers for one-on-one tutoring, a higher level of school support combined with a higher quality of tutoring that focuses on respecting boundaries may help with a wider implication of such a tutoring method. More specifically, consistent attendance to one-on-one tutoring led by responsive-sensitive college student tutors who are able to tailor the course materials depending on students’ specific needs is likely to yield positive results in writing improvements. As children aged 0–5 are recommended to receive one-on-one tutoring to accelerate academic development and children aged 5–10 benefit from one-on-one tutoring by avoiding academic gaps (“How Young Is Too Young to Hire a Tutor for Your Child? — TutorUp”), one-on-one tutoring for writing with the help of college student tutors could be implemented across a wide range of ages among low-income students.
Work Cited
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“Writ 150.” YouTube, uploaded by Reuben Levine, 27 Apr. 2019, www.youtube.com/watch?v=-f7sH8OBPWM.
