Thoughts on Staff Meeting

November 6, 2004

When Kristie was talking in our staff meeting yesterday about avoiding work in general and ESL in particular, I know she wasn’t giving me any dirty looks or anything, but even so, I hope I’m not one of the people who does that. I’m looking back on my behaviour, and I remember one time being reluctant but doing it with a smile, and one time I had a difficult time getting it across to a very loud and abrasive student that I was about to sit down with a girl who had come in before him, and that another tutor would be clocking in in just a minute. That one made me a little cranky—the world’s one and only student wanting me to drop everything and read his paper right now. I like to work—I do tend to get too absorbed in what I’m doing while waiting for work and someone has to rattle my cage, but then I wake right up and do what I’m here for. I want to certify, so I actually need those hours written down.

I think I’m a good tutor, and I think I’m getting better. My observation went well, and people seem to leave me feeling pretty good about what we did. I’m having a confidence crisis now, though. If I’m voluntarily and subconsciously blind where I’m concerned, someone please point it out (privately and gently, please).

I’m going so crazy in my Education classes that tutoring class is something I take care of when I think of it. I wish it weren’t that way, because I’m painfully aware of ripping myself off, which is why I’m taking the time this morning to take a look at things. I got here at 8:00; I figured the WC doesn’t open till 10:00 and I’d have time to get some work done. Well, I got some reading done—the Testing Center doesn’t open till 9:00. Oops. Ah, well. Lesson learned.

The Bibliographic Essay

Your major assignment for the semester is a bibliographic essay treating 10 sources that discuss some issue of problem in writing centers. As I have noted in class, your best resource at the moment is the textbook, which very handily has provided us with a works cited at the end of each chapter as well as a brief annotated bibliography. If a topic has piqued your interest, you should get your hands on the sources listed in the textbook and see what they have to say.

A bit about bibliographic essays...

Typically, a bibliographic essay does not include your position on the issue. That is, typically, you stay out of it and merely inform us of what the sources have to say about it. I am willing to allow a little leeway with this assignment, but only so long as your position/argument does not overpower the 10 sources you are treating.

Your task in this assignment is to identify some issue related to writing centers and to provide us a kind of “survey of scholarship.” The difficult part of this is that you can’t simply slap a bunch of sources together and call it a day. You’ll need to figure out how they all connect to one another. You’ll need to figure out how they respond to one another. You’ll need to figure out, in other words, how they all fit together. In short, the difficulty of this assignment is in the organization.

The trick to this is thinking about them in terms of “camps.” Most of these pieces will make it clear how they relate to others, either directly or in terms of how they use other arguments. You should also “mine” their bibliographies for other sources. See who they cite. Get your hands on those texts, too.

The Writing Center has subscriptions of some of the materials you’ll need to accomplish this task. The online resources in the library will also be incredibly helpful (here’s a handout detailing how to use the MLA databases). As always, use the librarians if you get in a jam.

Edit: I neglected to mention page lengths. As I said in class, I am reluctant to prescribe a page length. But if it helps, shoot for 8-10 pages on this assignment. I don't see how an effective job could be done in less.

What did you say?

I really enjoyed our CLRA this week on listening. I know it seemed as though I was not listening to our instructor (thanks Layne) but I was and I really learned a lot. Even though a lot of the stuff they talked about was pretty common knowledge, sometimes even the basics need to be broken down and analyzed. The more we evaluate the reasons behind the ordinary, the more we become aware of how to handle certain situations better. I think that the most valuable thing that I gained was understanding of the paper on barriers to good listening. This week I have found myself identifying “Pseudo listening” and “Pre-judging the speaker” frequently in myself and others. I have always considered myself to be an adequate listener, but it is interesting to learn that when I am honest with myself I can think of times when I have been guilty of every type of poor listening that we learned about in class. They say recognizing you have a problem is the first step to recovery.
It has been fascinating to notice excessive examples of poor listening when hearing people talk to each other about the recent election. I have heard many examples of “Pre-judging the Speaker”, “Rehearsing”, and “Listening for a Point of Disagreement”. I am convinced that if we could get most of the people involved in politics to truly listen (not “Hearing but not Listening”) to that CLRA, and then apply the skills that they learned we would soon have created world peace.
So how has this helped my tutoring? Well it has not had a chance to really be applied yet. Working nights gives me less practice then I would like. But I am positive that recognizing the listening levels of the students that I work with, and more importantly effectively monitoring my own listening, will improve the communication and effectiveness of every session I tutor. I have already found applying what I have learned to the rest of my life has helped me a lot, so why would tutoring be much different?

Nov. 2nd Vote--Board of Education

I am going through a bunch of information about all of the issues and candidates that we all will be voting on tomorrow. I have all of my decisions locked down for everything except for board of education. I really haven’t heard much about any of the candidates and was wondering if anyone knew anything about them or feels particularly strong about one over another. I got on the web site for the board of education but did not see any open endorsement for one candidate over another.

What’s worse is that many of the candidates don’t have a web page, making it difficult to find out anything substantial about any of them. As for now I’m trying to find my voter’s info. packet, which will hopefully contain so information I can use.

Are any of the teachers showing solidarity, lending support to one candidate? If so, who? If anyone has anything they think is worth considering, or even a good website beside utah.gov, I would appreciate it.

If nothing else, they pay us to look smart.

There have been a few occasions on which students have blown me away with their intelligence and writing skills. One example that stands out in my mind is a student I tutored very early in the semester. He had written a personal narrative, and wouldn't let me see it until he had explained that he had been homeschooled and this was his first "real school" paper. Talk about pressure. I was putting on not only the writing expert hat, but also the mother-as-teacher hat. But I digress.

The paper was excellent. Even if I hadn't gotten any background, I would have been able to tell after reading the first few paragraphs that this kid was not a product of the public education system. I had little to offer but encouragement, but I knew how important it was for me to provide something helpful. If his first experience with the WC (and, really, with Weber State in general) didn't teach him anything, he wouldn't ever use us as a resource again. So what did I do? Pointed at every single thing that didn't completely jive. Even though the paper was good to start with, the student got the 20 minutes and margin full of notes he had paid for.

Beyond this fine-toothed comb approach, I don't know what to do about students who intimidate me with their writing skills. We've always got something to offer; it might just take some work to find out what it is. Getting frustrated is part of the process sometimes. It keeps us on our toes.

Elections tomorrow, and I'm still wavering on The Big Issue. It's as though both candidates were cut from the same block of incompetence and deception. Argh. For once I am glad I live in a state where my vote doesn't actually count. For the record, I think Bush will win again. And then the country will implode. Unless Kerry wins. And then the country will implode. Dammit.