No. Most tutors have little or no experience teaching adults when they start at the LCLC.  We hold an orientation evening to train you.

Orientation is held on one evening for  three hours; The same program is offered on three separate evenings. During tutoring hours once the Center opens, the LCLC is supervised by two or three staff members who have had extensive experience teaching English to adults. The staff and our library are your main resources—but don't forget to talk to other tutors about what they do, and don't hesitate to be creative. The most important thing is to get to know your learner.

At the beginning of the semester, the evening gets off to a hectic start, since learners often arrive in groups right at 7 p.m. Tutors should arrive a few minutes before 7 p.m. We have to match up learners and tutors, and this takes time and judgment, especially if we are interviewing new learners and also getting tutors off to a good start. It's important to be patient and to realize that the first or even second night, depending on attendance, you might not get assigned a learner. On a busy night we will have over 20 learners and 17-18 tutors; everybody will be tutoring, including all staff members, and there will be no empty seats.  Once the semester is under way, tutors and learners settle into a comfortable learning arrangement, working from 7 to approximately 8:15, then taking a short break and resuming their work afterward until the Center is ready to close.  Tutors maintain a session report for each evening to serve as a guide for that learner's next session.

Some tutor-learner pairs have been formed in previous semesters. We always renew those matches if we can. We assign more experienced tutors to newer, more basic learners, who are more difficult to teach, and, as a rule, less experienced tutors to learners who have a surer idea of what they are working on (especially those who have attended the LCLC previously).

We first assign for-credit tutors (those enrolled in English 393 and Honors 290), beginning with those who tutor twice a week, then once a week, and then volunteers who tutor twice a week. After those considerations, everything is much less certain. We consider prior experience at the LC or comparable experience elsewhere, but new tutors who have participated enthusiastically and creatively in orientation sessions are almost certain to be given assignments, and lack of prior experience does not work against them. We also consider language expertise (if relevant). Tutors who attend irregularly, or who consistently arrive late and/or leave early, might be assigned learners, but those tutors have the lowest priority.

If we match up all learners following our usual protocol, extra tutors are released as soon as possible. We usually have more learners than tutors, but sometimes, especially early in the semester, close to holidays, and near the end of the semester, it's the other way around. We cannot control our learners' attendance patterns, and the majority of our tutors are volunteers.

We almost always need tutors to work with the learners who do come . Learner attendance can be very irregular (and this is beyond our control). You might have a great session one week, not see the learner again for two weeks, and, if you arrived a little late, come in the fourth week to find him or her working with somebody else--although our hope would have been to match you yourself with this learner. For-credit tutors are asked to observe another tutor-learner pair if they do not have a learner on a specific evening.

If you are sick, please call to cancel as soon as you can (773-508-2330) or email the staff at locolice@gmail.com (an easy address to remember:  LOyolaCOmmunityLIteracyCEnter. Do not contact the course instructor. Please do not fail to call. Your learner will be expecting you and will be waiting and waiting, and perhaps we could have assigned him or her to another tutor right away and saved time and good will. For-credit tutors will also be able to report absences via Facebook. If you are tutoring for credit, you have to make up any sessions you miss by tutoring on other evenings.

And? Do you know anybody who is not busy? Please don't cancel because you are busy. Of course you are busy--everybody, including each learner, is very, very busy. Do not stay away because you have an exam, quiz, or paper; manage your time carefully. You're probably a student at Loyola University Chicago; of course you will have exams, quizzes, and papers. You can see these tasks coming and you can plan for them. Your learner makes a sacrifice to get to the LCLC, just as you do. Everybody at the LCLC could be someplace else, doing something else. We need you for 2½ hours once or twice a week; that's our agreement. If we can't count on you, your learner can't count on you—which means your learner can't count on us.

About 60% of our pairs are stable, although a small minority of tutors work with three or four people over the course of the semester. It's good for learners and tutors to have regular pairings, but it's also good to experience change—for learners to listen to another tutor's English, for tutors to adjust to another learner's style. Everything is potentially useful, instructive, important.

We expect you to start tutoring as soon as you are matched to a learner. If you were matched to a learner the previous week and you see that person arrive, you should get the file (you'll learn about that at orientation) and get started right away. If it's 7 and your learner has been waiting, and then sees that you continue to talk to other tutors when it's time to start work, the learner might conclude that you're not very intersted in helping him or her. Tutoring runs from 7 or so to 8:15, which is break time, and then again from 8:25-9:30. You should start wrapping up the evening at 9:25. During the break, those who wish to can go out to smoke, get coffee, etc.

You keep track of your activities in the learner's file, which never leaves the LCLC. You make notes (on a session report) during and after each session. These notes are reviewed by LCLC staff every week. They make suggestions, look for problems, etc., and when you return you should always look at the comments that the staff has made on your notes. The files kept by those tutoring for credit are reviewed by the course instructor on a regular basis.

It's easier to work with returning learners, since previous tutors have identified their needs and goals, and the history of tutoring helps. Basic learners won't understand "goals" or "objectives," and their goals might be fairly obvious. You will find that you start to identify our learners' goals by talking to them, listening to their spoken English, reading their writing, hearing about their experiences using English, and discovering what their ambitions are.

Most tutors need to review the basics, which is easy to do—parts of speech, main verb tenses, etc. Our grammar tutorial during orientation gets you started. Tutors who have studied foreign languages have a head start on this topic.