 So who tutors the tutors?Academic publishing giant Houghton-Mifflin didn’t know. So they
called Gary and Joyce Phillips in the Grossmont College English
Department.
“Joyce had been researching tutor training for some time prior
to Houghton-Mifflin approaching us,” Gary said, “so we mentioned
to the editor that, as far as we knew, no one had written a book
that addressed the training of tutors from a ‘how to’
perspective. Houghton-Mifflin liked the idea and, subsequently,
asked us to write the book.”
The book is “Essentials of Tutoring,” published last April. The
book now fills a need long since identified by the Phillips’.
While most new tutors greatly benefit from training before they
start working with students, there was no tutor training book
available that prepared tutors for the details, especially in
the grammar instruction concepts that they needed to be
successful.
‘Essentials of Tutoring’ is the core training tool for
Grossmont’s English Writing Center, where Joyce Phillips is the
Learning Assistance Center Specialist. It represents years of
one-on-one working with both students and tutors.
“The book is actually an supplemental took available to
instructors who adopt either “Keys for Writers” or “Universal
Keys for Writers,” said Joyce, referring to books authored by
Ann Raimes. “ ‘Essentials of Tutoring’ will help new writing
center tutors successfully prepare by providing a guide to all
aspects of the job of tutoring.”
She further described the book as a how-to guide which new or
inexperienced tutors can use for a self-paced training program,
for a work text in a tutor-training class, as a reference tool
during the course of a tutoring session, and as a source of
information for review of grammar and writing concepts with the
review designed to prepare tutors to verbalize such concepts in
the course of tutoring sessions.
Though featured as a supplement, “Essentials for Tutoring” is
also available as a stand-alone title at the campus bookstore.
The Phillips’ have co-authored other works, including “The
Brainerd Journal: A Mission to the Cherokee 1817-1823,”
published by the University of Nebraska in 1998.
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