darn that sneaky line!

November 24, 2004

I’m guilty of helping a couple people way too much this past week. If I look at it honestly, I have to admit it’s laziness. Sometimes it’s so much easier to just tell them how to do it.
I’ve accidentally discovered another reason for having the student read his own paper out loud: If I read it, I tend to correct as I go, as if the paper were something I’d written.
Now for the visually impaired guy, there wasn’t anything else to do, so maybe I didn’t tromp all over the line more than necessary, but with the girl I was tutoring yesterday, I just took over. She told me I was wonderful, but I think that means I did too much. In both sessions, there was a little voice in the back of my mind, asking, “Who is doing most of the talking here?”
I can no longer do anything I tell my students not to do. I wrote, “I think” in a reading response this morning, and had to backspace over it. I couldn’t let it stay there. Tutoring is definitely making me a better writer. I pay more attention. My Education professors have complimented me. I’m ‘bout written out, though. On break I have no intention of writing so much as a grocery list.
Writing Center suggestions? No! Change is evil!