Empowering Tutors to Build Professional Prospects Beyond the WC
Progress in the development and professionalization of tutors is lagging behind the ever-evolving progress of WC theory. Our proposal seeks to change how we prepare tutors for work following the WC by implementing an ongoing pipeline after initial training that informs undergraduate tutors on and involves them in practices funneling them toward future education careers, such as participating in tutor conferences, forming tutor-administrator mentorships, and more. This would redefine the parameters and roles of tutoring to include professional development and advancement. Existing certification, like the CRLA, prepares one to become an effective tutor, but it is not transferable to any other role. We ideate a secondary certification during the tutor’s employment that can be directly applied to future opportunities in education, such as becoming graduate assistants, professors, and eventually WC administrators. We have created a digital, interactive website that displays flexible, professional pipelines in the form of a choose-your-own-adventure. Attendees are invited to navigate through various options enabling them to envision career pathways in an accessible and engaging way that assists in visualizing the different prospects available with a secondary certification. We are basing our vision on the work of Dayna Jean DeFeo and Fawn Caparas’ “Tutoring as Transformative Work: A Phenomenological Case Study of Tutors’ Experiences” (2014), wherein the central concern is shifting the focus from a “service-oriented” tutor training geared toward “benefit to the tutee” to “advancing tutor development as a personal and professional opportunity” (142). We hope that participants will leave this interactive presentation with a sense of empowerment and awareness that their expertise as tutors can transfer over to long-term professional pathways.