Beane - Important Take-aways

The most important take-aways from this presentation are active listening, attentive listening and asking questions.  All three of these strategies I take for granted or sometimes forget to do.  It is difficult to watch a student squirm when they are wanting you to finish their sentences, but that is what we as tutees must frequently do.  We also must let them know that we are listening and want to understand what they are saying.  With active and attentive listening the tutee will realize that you are truly listening and that you do want to understand.  They too can tell that you aren't going to finish their sentences and they must do that themselves.  It is important to ask questions because, as the presentation tells us, frequently they can talk their way through the problem.  These skills of "talking out the kinks" are things that too often we don't think to do.  Tutees sometimes need someone to listen - one of the easiest ways to learn new material is to teach it to someone else. 

I think that it is often easy in our busy lives to forget to ask questions of our tutees.  Particularly during lab sessions, we are trying to help everyone and we want to rush to the next person.  Slowing down  and asking a few questions may help the tutee to avoid a problem that they may otherwise have ran into at a later time.