Hello everyone,
What's the difference between a teacher and a tutor?
To a large extent, I'm asking you to draw a distinction between connotations in our specific circumstances, and I may be defining jargon. The two are often interchangeable: tutors teach and teachers tutor. Even so, it seems to me that there are differences, and the biggest differences lie in planning and scope.
The teacher is responsible for planning the curriculum; the tutor helps students cope with the curriculum the teacher has planned.
In LAUSD general education classes a teacher is responsible for a large group of students. Tutors are generally responsible for single students or small groups. The teacher must push the curriculum as much as the majority of students can take it. The tutor helps the stragglers catch up or get ahead.
Special ed. classes and RSP teachers combine the qualities of teacher and tutor--you may have to translate what I say for your particular circumstance if you teach special ed. Special ed. teachers provide all the best qualities of both teachers and tutors.
Now, why am I bringing this up?
Frankly speaking, many teachers view themselves as tutors rather than teachers. Making and executing plans are difficult; so is managing a large group of adolescents. In many ways it's easier to focus on an individual student--especially one who wants to learn--and let the rest keep themselves occupied however they want. You can't do this.
If you have a class of 40 students (the norm for most classes in the high school), and if you spend all of your class time tutoring, you will be able to work with each student for only 90 seconds in an hour-long class.
You can't tutor a class of 40; you can't even tutor 20 at once. 8 is really pushing it, especially if they are at different points in their understanding. You must be a teacher not a tutor; you must plan your curriculum so that the majority of your students will understand--if they don't, you need to re-teach, not just tutor them individually. Further, when most of them demonstrate understanding of your objectives, you can't hold them all back while you tutor the stragglers.
If you teach well, many of your students can tutor each other, and you can spend your guided group practice time clarifying and helping, rather than tutoring. If you discover during guided group practice that most of the class needs tutoring, then revert back to direct instruction and re-teach; don't make an attempt to tutor everyone in class. (There's no sin in re-teaching; in fact there's no sin in tutoring either--it's just that tutoring is impossible to do on the scale you're working at.)
What do you do if you have a student who needs tutoring? Help the student to get it. Don't sacrifice all the other students' education while you tutor a single individual. (Tutor individuals or small groups during your lunch or after school; invite them to be tutored in the library; arrange to have an RSP collaboration to tutor them if they qualify for special ed.; if you have a TA who is strong in your subject, the TA might tutor; encourage peer tutoring.) Rarely, circumstances will allow you to tutor during your teaching time; mostly they will not.
Jeff Combe
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3 comments:
Isn't a successful teacher more of an extrovert and a successful tutor more of an introvert?
This simple answer is no.
There are at least two ways to consider what constitute an extrovert and an introvert.
If you mean that an extrovert is someone who is not shy, who is comfortable in public, and who relates well to other people; and an introvert is shy, uncomfortable in public, and does not relate well to other people, then a teacher as you imply might best be an extrovert only in not being shy and being comfortable in public.
Yet many famous actors are famously shy and uncomfortable in public (Jean Arthur, Greta Garbo, and Marlon Brando immediately come to mind), so the teacher's need to be in front of people is no more inhibited by that definition of introversion than the actor's.
The idea of shy actors illustrates a problem with the reasoning. It is not so much the being in front of people as it is the personal interaction that is most frightening to them. Close, personal interaction with strangers might be more devastating to an introvert as we've defined it as being in front of a crowd. In the latter, at least, an introvert may hide behind the character of the "teacher."
Laterly, I prefer a definition of introvert and extrovert that suggests that an introvert is the person who prefers to be alone during free time, and the extrovert is the person who prefers to be with others durig free time. Since this involves only free time, it has little influence on teaching.
Here is a big "however": social intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, and intrapersonal intelligence are all useful for teachers. The first two imply extroversion; the last implies introversion. Two to one in favor of extroversion, but that's only by implication, and training can overcome many deficits in natural intelligence.
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