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Tutor Training: Appreciative Strategies

Tutor Training

Appreciative Strategies

DISARM: Recognizing the importance of first impressions, create a safe, welcoming environment for students. 
  • Ensure tutoring environment is warm and welcoming, smile, welcome student at the door, engage in small talk at the start of the session, make the student feel comfortable. 
DISCOVER: Utilize positive open-ended questions to draw out what they enjoy doing, their strengths, and their passions. Listen to each answer carefully before asking the next positive question.
  • Utilize positive open-ended questions to draw out what coursework they enjoy doing, their strengths, positive academic experiences. Tie these in with the content tutoring you are providing. 
DREAM: Help students formulate a vision of what they might become, and then assist them in developing their life and career goals.
  • Help students formulate a vision of what they hope is an achievable outcome of the tutoring experience in line with their life and career goals.
DESIGN: Help students devise concrete, incremental, and achievable goals.
  • Help students devise concrete, incremental, and achievable goals for the tutoring experience. 
DELIVER: The students follow through on their plans. The advisor is there for them when they stumble, believing in them every step of the way and helping them continue to refine their dreams as they go. 
  • Proceed with the content tutoring, remembering to remain positive and using inquiry-based questioning. Support and encourage the student throughout the appointment(s). 
DON'T SETTLE: The advisor challenges the student to proactively raise the student's internal bar of self-expectations.
  • Challenge the student to further improve through independent study, group study, asking questions, and seeking out the professor. 

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