Adventures in Tutoring

Last Wednesday I was supposed to spend the day preparing for my Thursday tutorials. Com Law 101 is an introduction to law course which business students are required to take. They have 4 lectures per week, plus every other week there's a “compulsory tutorial.” (There are about 900 students taking the class; the tuts are small discussion groups, and they can’t schedule more than 32 per week. Hence tuts are every other week for students, but every week for tutors.)

Pre-assigned questions are posted on-line, and students are supposed to come to class prepared for discussion. We're starting off with an introduction to the NZ legal framework and constitution, about which I know next to nothing. So I was a bit anxious to at least read all the assigned materials, which I hadn’t had time for because my intensive just ended on Tuesday. But, Ali’s been looking at cars, and on Wednesday he wanted me to come see what he’d found. “It will only take half an hour.”

Five hours later (the dealer told us to take the car for the day, get a feel for it and Ali promptly – and sensibly, I had to admit – wanted to use it to check other potential cars around town) I was in a mad panic. He dropped me off at home so I could get to work, while he tried (unsuccessfully, it turned out) to negotiate for the car.

It was a little past midnight by the time I felt reasonably comfortable with the material. As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. It would have been nearly impossible for me to know less than they did. My first group, at 9 am, were shy (or still asleep?). The 10 am crowd was better: they’d read the material and were awake enough we could have a discussion; it was actually fun. Unfortunately, my 2 pm class was deadly: every question I asked was met with blank stares. As if they hadn’t heard a single lecture or read a page - and would rather be anywhere else in the world. And I get to do it all again with new groups this Thursday.

Cheers,
Sandie