Given that everyone in the world is in this crisis together and living with similar struggles, our community is eager for insights into how we make peer tutoring work and how to make this practice even better. We hope that your center is planning to share how you have turned this crisis into an opportunity for growth in your center by proposing to present at SSWCA 2021. Proposals are reviewed by the SSWCA board, who are all current or former directors of secondary school peer tutoring centers; we understand that these are extraordinary times and that proposals will not look as they have in the past. We need your voices; we want your proposals and your future presentations.
As a middle school director, I have new tutors every year. My tutors are novices, not experts you would expect to present at a national conference. Yet, I still encourage them to propose and present. As some of the only thirteen-year-olds who work as peer writing tutors, their perspectives are valuable. Similarly, as the only secondary students to be asked to peer tutor through this crisis, this year’s tutors have a perspective that no one else could share, and we need those perspectives documented.
I wanted to share how the process of identifying a topic and drafting a proposal can be approached this year as many of us struggle to find a firm footing.
Consider offering a limited set of prompts from the CFP to help tutors not to feel overwhelmed. Is there a prompt that speaks to a student or resonates based on the work and training being done?
If none of the prompts spark interest, tutors should reflect on the work they are doing: what struggles are they having, what is working well (and why), how can the tutoring sessions or the center overall be improved? Those reflections could become presentation topics as long as they are relevant to the conference theme and can be investigated in order to find something not commonly known or practiced in our field. Given that most of us have limited experience with tutoring online, a conference proposal this year could be a plan for the next few months: review the existing literature, conduct in-house research, and/or enact an experiment.
For example, one year I had an eighth grade student interested in how to help clients with anxiety. When her conference proposal was drafted, she did not yet have the answer for what strategies work best for these clients. After submitting her proposal, she researched and practiced. Her final presentation had statistics, signs tutors can use to spot a client with anxiety, and techniques tutors can use. Your tutors don’t need to have the answers right now; they need to have the drive and passion to investigate.
To draft a proposal, tutors need a title, description, and abstract. For me, these come from conversations with my tutors. What specifically from our center sparked this idea? What is your hypothesis and how will you investigate this? How does this relate to the conference theme?
More difficult for my students is the outline because if students don’t yet have answers, it is difficult for them to envision what ten minutes will sound and look like. I suggest you reflect and discuss what technique(s) will work best for that topic. If the topic is based on personal experience, then an anecdote may be appropriate. If the topic is based on research, perhaps a common (short) reading would help ground the audience. If the topic is based on practice, role playing could be effective. If the topic is based on an artifact (client feedback, a tutoring journal, document with actual feedback given to a client), displaying and analyzing that artifact would be powerful. Share our “Support for Conference Proposals” page for more ideas on how to build an engaging presentation.
For the take-aways section, students need to draw conclusions beyond your one center. How will tutors from other centers around the country benefit from this presentation? You don’t need five take-aways, but there should be something original that isn’t taken from a commonly-used training text or publication and that is relevant to other centers.
Remember proposals are due Nov. 20, so I encourage you to start these conversations with your tutors as soon as possible so they have time to mull over their practice and land on a topic, and consequently a presentation they will enjoy and that will be insightful. If you have questions, please email sswca.board@gmail.com
By Renee Brown, SSWCA President