The L earning A ssistance P rogram Our mission is to empower students to become independent and active life-long learners.

Amy Bailey
Spring Semester 2001
    It's always hard to start, so I'll start by introducing myself. My name is Amy and I am a mother of four. I am a “returning” student, which means it's been over 10 years since I've been in college. I started at Saddleback College in the summer of 2000, and my major is Nursing. I worked in the medical field for over ten years and decided that I wanted to be with the patients more than their files. I am very happy in the direction that I am going and part of that is due to tutoring. Being a tutor has help me keep on top of my favorite subjects, meet new people, and most of all. It's helped me become more proficient in an area that I lacked confidence in, and that was training.

    When you start a program such as Nursing, you begin with the sciences such as Anatomy. Many semesters later, you start to forget the names of each of the bones in the hand for example. Tutoring has helped me remember small details that might have slipped away if it wasn't for the wonderful students that I have had the pleasure of dealing with. And with a major such as mine, these details keep resurfacing from time to time which makes it even more important to be familiar with the subjects. In this respect, I owe the students a great deal of gratitude for their hard work and dedications to a subject that in most cases gives people the “willies.”

    In being an older student, I have been pleasantly surprised to see the tremendous outpour of young dedicated students in this last semester. I have met some tremendously intelligent young students in a time when people are focusing their attention at all the negativity surrounding the troubled youth of today. These young students deserve our support and appreciation, and it has been my devout pleasure to be part of that support. When people say that today's youth is tomorrow's future, they're not kidding. We need to support the hard work of our brilliant students in more ways that just a passing grade, they need the confidence to know that they can go all the way, if they want to, and part of that confidence is gained in the way that we are taught, and in the way that we are tutored.

    This leads me into my final thought. There was a time when I use to dread training a person who was new to the hospital, I even asked by supervisor not to assign me any new trainees. She was a kind woman and respected my request, but deep down, I knew it wasn't for the best. I had a problem communicating with people. I didn't know how to get a point across, and because I asked not to be a trainer, I never gained the skills that I know I will need someday. Being a tutor has given me the skills I lacked. I have learned how to communicate my thought and feelings, and I have learned to interpret the level of understanding that the student has. I now know what a teacher means when they say that he/she can tell if any given student understands what they are trying to explain; you can see it in their eyes. I can't relay the feeling I get when I can see that a student does not understand, I refocus my approach on a subject, and the student not only understands, but also can talk about the subject fluently. I can see now why people become teachers and the reward they receive. Unfortunately, not all the students have wanted to learn like the one's that I have seen, and in this respect I feel truly fortunate and blessed.

    Tutoring has opened a new world to me and I hope that the students that I have dealt with feel the same way. It's not always easy to ask for help and I hope the people that I have tutored feel that I want them to do the very best that they can do. I always want to give words of encouragement and a place that they can come when they are in doubt. There may come a time when I can't give any of my extra time to students, but I hope they will still come and ask, say “HI”, and look for a kind word that I will always have for each and every one of them.