Tutor Reflection

This past October, I applied to be a tutor for both The Study and Student Athlete Support Services here at Loyola. As a tutor, I spend about 3-6 hours a week in The Study, located on the 3rd floor of Jenkins Hall, helping fellow students and student-athletes better understand their class material. However, The Study is also used as a workspace, utilized by Loyola students for individual studying, group projects, as well as tutoring sessions. Students that are together in The Study at the same time are part of a gathering, which Goffman defines as “any set of two or more individuals whose members include all and only those who are at the moment in one another’s immediate presence” (Goffman, 18). More specifically, this gathering would be instrumental, …show more content…
All eight sessions, as seen in Figure 1, began with the tutor and the tutee in a two-person “H” facing formation, the most internal and closed formation that focuses most exclusively on the other person. This formation lasted for the entirety of two of the eight sessions, in which the tutor held up flashcards for the tutee to study from and when the tutor was verbally quizzing the tutee with all notes and books closed. In the other six of the eight sessions, the formation changed when the tutor, as seen in Figure 2, moved approximately 90 degrees around the table, about 3 feet apart from the tutee, assuming the “L” facing formation and designating personal space between each individual. From what I could observe from afar, this was done so that the tutee could show the tutor their work or a passage from their textbook. Since this is a somewhat formal social occasion, it can be understood that the tutee chose to arrange him or herself in the “L” facing formation with a distinct amount of personal space as to maintain a certain level of professionalism and