My first "tutoria"

Friday, 16 November 2007. After the usual Friday-English lesson, I could attend my first "tutoria" with my third-year-ESO students just to have an idea of what a "tutoria" is and what it consists of. In my honest opinion, it was a brilliant idea because it was a good way of getting acquainted with them and knowing more things concerning their off-task behaviour. Their tutor, Carles, offered me the possibility of observing the session and it was a wonderful experience. In that particular class, he wanted the students to succeed in answering questions regarding difficult social situations. The lesson was about the assertive answer, whose goal is to express our own feelings and opinions in a persuading, clear and polite way. First of all, he changed the configuration of the classroom. The students were told to sit by forming a circle around the class. They were really amused because they love changing the learning format. Their tutor started explaining the differences among the assertive answer, the passive answer and the aggressive answer by giving a wide range of examples. In order to put that into practice, Carles suggested an activity: a student had to criticise another student's character or attitude in public and the person criticised had to make an assertive answer without being rude or sounding aggressive. In the beginning, they were not very receptive. Perhaps they didn't dare to express their deepest feelings and impressions in front of the rest of their classmates. However, little by little, they began to say a few good and bad things about their partners. Some of them accepted criticism but others gave some impolite, unfriendly answers. In fact, it was really interesting how the tutor coped with them. Finally, most of them ended up recognising their failures in front of their classmates and, for me, that was a real success. I cannot express with words how satisfactory that session was. I really enjoyed myself and I am convinced that they did too.