Peer Tutors Make a Smashing Debut!!!

After intense training and much preparation, the Snowden peer tutors made their debut on Friday, January 30th in Mr. Peterson's 9th grade ELA classes.


In what has to be some sort of record, a total of nine tutors (5 peers, 4 college students) worked in one classroom together at the same time helping students write in-class essays exploring the structure and meaning of poems. More pictures of the festivities are posted below.

The inaugural Snowden-Claderwood Peer Tutoring Class was selected in October from a competitive group of applicants. The six seniors met weekly from October through December learning and practicing the techniques that make great tutoring in writing. Each tutor who completes the training and works through the year as a tutor will receive a college scholarship. This year's peer tutors are:

Caroline Casey
Nhu Dao
Dana Mendes
Clarimar Nivar
Elizabeth Nwaoshai
Chelsey Roberson

(Left to Right) Clarimar, Nhu, Dana, Chelsey and Caroline

The peer tutors' first assignment was unlike anything they had been prepared for. After months of practice in traditional one-to-one "sit down at the table" sessions, they were asked to take on a unique assignment.

Mr. Peterson's classes were preparing to write an in-class essay analyzing a poem of their choice. The mission of the peer tutors was to take their newly acquired tutoring expertise and have a series of short writing conferences with a number of students as they wrote. At the end of each conference, the students were to make notes at the top of their paper reflecting what they had discussed with the peer tutors. Usually, the notes were a rough outline or list of major ideas that would be covered in the essay.

After a special training session on Thursday, the peer tutors showed up ready to work on Friday afternoon. They were, understandably, nervous, but they were a smash hit. Students were eager to work with them. The conversations going on around the room were deep, meaningful and writing-focused. It wasn't all perfect of course. The peer-tutors encountered all of the problems that tutors always face: students who don't want help, won't talk, haven't read or are reluctant writers, but they were able to break through some of those walls and make good decisons of when to move to another student.

The peer tutors listen to Mr. Peterson as he prepares his
students to get started.

Initial reports from that first session were generally positive. Despite the frustrations, tutors were gratified to finally get their hands dirty, and they felt good about the work they had done. "It felt good to help," one of them reported. In fact, the sessions went so well that Mr. Peterson invited the peer tutors back the next week to hold more traditional writing conferences with the students as they evaluated and prepared to revise their drafts. We'll have pictures of that soon.

Thanks to Mr. Peterson and Ms. del Solar for inviting us into their classroom, and congratulations to the peer tutors for an exciting, historic, record-breaking, successful debut!!!!!!