So I'm starting as a supplemental instructor (SI) in a few weeks and I was wondering if anyone with experience tutoring/SI'ing has any advice to offer. I've never done anything like this before and I'm curious what it's going to be like.
Did you do a lot of prep for your SI sessions or did you just leave it open for questions?
What did you do if you couldn't answer a question?
How bad would it be to offer private tutoring outside of school to students willing to pay for it?
My undergrad had SI's and tutors. I did the latter, but worked with and knew a lot of SI's because our jobs tended to overlap. As a tutor, I only prepped for workshops. For the most part I just walked into work and let people ask me questions on assignments/labs. It was a little different for SI's though. They regularly did part lecture and part Q&A during their sessions.
For example, let's say you're an ochem SI. During the lecture portion of your SI session, you would go over what the instructor discussed about that week in class (like grignard reactions). While going over the basics of grignard, you could have problems that you got from the book or another resource, and incorporate them into your lecture. Then, as you write out the problems, you can ask students to help you figure out the mechanism and products based on what you've covered so far and by using their own in-class notes. At the end of the SI session, students could ask any remaining questions they had, and you could then pass out a worksheet or something with more problems to provide them with extra practice. Before everyone leaves you could also pass out a 'cheat sheet' summing up the mechanism of grignard and other facts about it.
Also, depending on if theres a midterm/final coming up, the lesson plan for the SI can change. During the beginning of the quarter/semester, it can be split between content review/Q&A. But the week of a midterm or final, it should be almost exclusively Q&A. The big thing with SI is that you're helping a bunch of students all at once. Let's say you're doing an SI session the week of a midterm and it's totally packed with students all wanting their questions answered. If there's
one person that wants you to go over a concept in detail that was introduced allll the way back in week 1, are you going to do it? Probably not. You'd be wasting all the other students' time answering this one dude's question, something which by this point in the quarter, he should already know. In this case you could either ask him to wait until after the session to talk to you, or a better option would be to suggest he go to tutoring (where it's one-on-one). With SI, it's about what you can do that would help the group of students as a whole, and not
so much on an individual basis.
I think if you don't know the answer to something, the basic rule for any tutor/SI is to first ask a co-worker, if there's one there. If there isn't and you REALLY have no idea what to do, then it's best just to tell them that you don't know, but you can get back to them about it when you find out. At our school, the SI's had the email addresses of all the students in the class they were the SI for. So if they found the answer to something that they didn't know in the session, they would simply mass email the class and then everyone would be informed.
I knew some SI's and tutors (myself included) that did private tutoring. It was allowed at my undergrad, as long as you don't treat your PT students different from the other ones during tutoring/SI. We charged anywhere from $20-30 an hr. I know one guy that charged $60 for private ochem tutoring, but that was an exception. Most PT also want some kind of gas reimbursement.
That's pretty much it, let me know if you have any other questions. And sorry for the wall of text
🙂
