Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Reflections on my first tutoring sessions

So here I am--two shifts at the Johnston writing center completed and hopefully past the apprehension I had about tutoring when this class began. First let me say:

1. Johnston is a super eerie building, sort of like a museum. I'm afraid to touch things inside because they all seem so precious and the toilets flush like a gunshot. On the other hand it is the coolest work environment I've been in so far, a futuristic open space that is so silent-- the best place to write (other than the Williams courtyard).

In both shifts I had someone book a one hour appointment and freaked out a bit, I hadn't yet considered the fact that people actually could schedule that much time. Both guys had reached the final drafts of their papers and marked "revising & editing" as the focus of their booked appointment. Both times I figured I was screwed and was going to end up with a student that will hand me the paper and refuse to work with me but maybe two experiences in a row have proved me wrong. I assume that both students did expect me to line edit the paper for them and hand it back. Student #1 had to submit his paper on gender issues thirty minutes after the appointment. He pulled the essay up on his laptop and I started to ask him questions about the paper with the fear that he might try to hand the computer to me. Student #2 successfully did put the essay in front of me to read, it was a weird assignment for a Race & Ethnicity class-- a fiction story that should be written like a non-fictional memory-- in which the student had to pretend to be an African slave telling the four stages of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Second, let me say:

2. This job is so cool! During my "shifts" I got to learn about and discuss issues like the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, war in Bosnia, and why little boys should be allowed to play with dolls. At this point I feel like nothing I'll read here will actually bore me, especially since the writer will be sitting beside me, though I guess there is a point where a chemistry lab report might fall into my lap or I might have to help with a 15 page excerpt from someone's novel.

Needless to say I did take somewhat directive approaches with both students. Though we first discussed the focus and organization of their papers, both students were close to strict word limits and didn't have room for further development. I had them read their work out loud in hopes that they would notice places where the voice sounded choppy but few times just had to give them the answer-- like in spelling--because it seemed just plain mean to withhold. Student #2 was already over the word limit and really just wanted me to run through his paper and cancel out 167 words that I thought he didn't need. It took about 20 minutes of explaining how he could solve that problem himself by not talking in circles and going straight to the point. I hope our session did something for him. I'll have to go back to the MS textbook to read the articles about "Directive vs Indirective" tutoring, I'm still not confident about technique when I think of how directive I actually should be in some situations and another read will hopefully solve that.


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