A Spring 2019 Math Tutor Training session, run recently by Instructor of Developmental Mathematics Teresa DeSousa Cull, presented methods tutors could use to enable them to go beyond providing math content assistance. 
  
The session provided strategies to help students develop improved learning strategies, study skills and academic work habits. Eighteen tutors attended the training. 

Teresa used a collaborative activity to crystalize key concepts that would be discussed during the training. The activity was aimed to assist tutors in thinking and working with one another to consider the concept of teaching students how to learn. It resulted in a whiteboard “mural” with one side representing effective classroom habits and the other side identifying valuable outside classroom habits and study skills. Teresa’s training offered insight into how tutors can have a more impactful session by encouraging struggling students to establish better academic strategies that perhaps were never taught or encouraged. 

The partnership between the First-Year Studies (FYS) Department and the Center for Educational Services (CES) fosters opportunities to help students who need to take developmental math and or English courses achieve success. When the two-hour training session concluded, tutors were prepared with a fresh perspective for the diverse learning styles that are present every day in the classroom. Concepts presented will allow tutors to make meaningful suggestions to the students they see, both in the CES and in the MAT*085 courses that have embedded tutors.