Once I started to think about it I ran into a few problems that are unique to walk-in writing centers. I think the main problem or difficulty is that sometimes it is difficult to really get the feel for a writer and their mistakes when you only see them once. In CRLA the other students seem to know their tutees pretty well because they have scheduled appointments with them almost every week, sometimes even more that once a week. We usually see a student for a half an hour and that’s it. The CRLA tutors always tell stories about how they have a student who learns visually, or by hearing. Diagnosing something like that takes time. We are usually struggling to run through our student’s papers once before they quickly fix them and run to hand them in. Can we really be as effective as the writing centers or as the tutors who have set appointments?

How much can we really teach a student in 45 minutes? I ask this question because an important part of teaching and learning is the review of the previous lesson. If I teach a student about parallel sentences, I can ever know if that student understood what I taught them or if they bothered to apply it to their writing? Most likely I will never see them again. While researching for my paper, I learned that NYU students must make an appointment to see a tutor. I guess this wouldn’t guarantee that a tutor would see the same student over and over again, but I think it would be more likely.

I guess we could invite our students to bring their next paper to us, so that they can see if they have grasped a certain concept.

Another problem that arises from having a walk-in writing center is that if a student has a bad experience with one tutor and then is assigned to come back, then the following tutor is forced to deal with a student who not only doubts the tutor’s capability, but really doesn’t want to be there. I’m sorry if anyone has had my students. I had one of these disgruntled students the other day and it was pretty much torture. The student had tons of mistakes that he believed weren’t mistakes because, according to him, his previous tutor was unable to explain to him why he was wrong. He wouldn’t even listen to me. In any case, if a student worked with the same tutor every time then the tutor would be forced to work with the students that they have either affected for good or bad. It would almost be a checks and balances. It may even fix the problem that was talked about in the meeting Friday.

Anyway, that’s all about that…