Why Not

Well it appears as though everyone is filling their blogging requirements and so I guess I will write one more for the heck of it. First of all, thanks Cynthia for that information of Biblioraphic essays. It was incredibly helpful. I think you saved us all. Anyway, it has been a blast having class with you all. Good luck with all of your finals and we will see you at the christmas party.

Sentimental Thoughts and Lyrics

I guess I was not done with my blogs. I got at least one more to do, so here it goes.

I once was encouraged by a man to apply for a job at the Community carrier Center. If I got the job I would be a manager and my duties would be to aid people, mostly Hispanic women, in finding jobs and receiving the type of education that they would need to be able to acquire higher paying jobs. My friend helped me through the process of filling out my application, he even did a mock-interview with me. He was very helpful. When I left his office to go to the real interview I told him that I hardly felt qualified to be applying for this job. The job description said they were looking for someone with at least 5 years experience, a degree in social work or a related field, and the ability to communicate in Spanish. Of the three prerequisites for the job I fulfilled one; I spoke Spanish. After expressing my concern to Bob (that was my friends name) he said something to me that has stuck. He said, "Bush was not qualified to be president, but he got the job anyway." Some people would not agree with what he said, but it still teaches a good lesson. If you want to do something bad enough and believe you will do well in it, go for it. So that is what I did. Sadly I didn't get the job; however, I made it to the final two candidates. That was pretty good for only having one year of college under my belt.

This experience gave me some confidence I was lacking and probably is the main reason why I decided to apply to work at the Writing Center. Before working here I didn't have much experience tutoring writers, but I wanted to be able to do it. I knew that by, as Kyle said in his first blog, just jumped in and wanting to learn how to tutor writers, I would. I definitely am no expert yet, but every day I learn something knew, and that is why I love my job. I hope to be able to continue working here so I can help others and help myself even more.

part 2 of verse 1 of WET PAINT:

Asleep, I let the monster bite me.
It bit so hard it woke me up
and made me cry.

Question Concerning Biblio

I know that this is probably a little late to be asking this, but does the essay have to be an exact amount of pages or words? I've being assuming that it needs to be ten pages, but I was looking at the syllabus and no page length is mention. Have I just been thinking it needs to be ten pages because we need ten sources? It seems like this was clarified in class a couple of weeks ago and I apparently wasn't paying very close attention. I'm going to assume that Dr. Rogers is mostly concerned with quality verses quantity and whether or not I cover everything that needs to be mentioned. Is this a safe assumption???

APA and Online Submissions

Today at the writing center we had some questions about APA formatting. A couple of tutors and myself went through a couple of manuals that had APA summaries, as well as the official APA manual, and could not find anything about the rules of bulleting.

The student’s professor had some kind of problem with her listing of points in a bulleted format, but she couldn’t remember, or didn’t know, what his suggestion or problem with the formatting was in general. She wasn’t sure if it was a spacing or indenting problem, or if he wanted her to take the whole thing out. In looking in the manual, we found the rubric for a listing of points in a paragraph format, but could not find anything about using bullets in an APA paper, either for or against.

In looking through the manual, our agitated confusion was worsened by the several, almost perversely proliferating number of bullets used in the manual to organize the explanation of APA formatting. Nothing on bullet formatting could be found, but every three pages of text had bulleted information telling anything and everything about APA formatting we didn’t want to know.

I’m not sure if the other tutors would agree, but I’m willing to concede simple operator error, knowing full well I have been too distracted this week to even operate a simple style guide. I will have to look through the APA manual at a different time unless any of you know the rule.

Also, it has been interesting trying to help the many papers coming in from LeTournoue’s (spelling?) class concerning the place/rights/struggles of women. There have been papers asking about the question of whether they provide enough common ground with their audience, if they have considered their argument well (both in supporting the argument and considering the opposing argument), and in trying to help them, I have noticed it has been hard not to get sucked into debating the issue with them.

For me, this isn’t much of a problem when the student comes into the writing center and I am dealing with them one-on-one. However, for the online submissions, I find my strategies for tutoring have to be completely reconsidered. When I have a five page paper submitted online, with the author mainly concerned about audience, and the rest of her paper quite clear of most other global and local issues, it is hard to address what the student might want to consider in addressing her target audience without sounding like you are trying to argue with them.

It is a little strange because you are telling the student to consider their audience, establish common ground, anticipating questions and concerns they might have concerning the main and supporting arguments, while you the tutor are trying to write your suggestions in a way that establishes common ground with the student, anticipating their questions and concerns with your advice. The comments you give the student in an online session have to carry a main point concerning writing that is, however, carrying several other implicit sub-meanings that communicate to the student that you are not attacking their argument.

This is especially needed in online sessions dealing with controversial subject matter, and especially when the student is asking you if their rhetorical constructs and considerations are sound. In asking this, they are asking you to consider how the argument is presented and what counter-arguments need to be taken into consideration. Answers to such questions will have to do with fallacy and logic, asking the student to consider opposing arguments they may be violently against in their paper.

I had never thought about online submission in that much detail before, but they present the need for different rhetorical strategies in order to apply our tutoring skills.

MKOs and Others

My experience with tutoring did not begin with Weber’s Writing Center. I began tutoring back in high school for a local middle school. The program itself was funded by a government grant that was issued to a level-one school that had not been passing their government standards. The students were comprised largely with ESL students, with only a few needing remedial tutoring in reading and writing skills. The program emphasized one-on-one instruction for reading comprehension, vocabulary building, and writing instruction. The sessions emphasized not only the student’s own ability to read out-loud and produce written works, but to model the correct reading and writing behavior. Throughout our training, we were shown why this was so important.

The program was designed with psychologist Lev Vygotsky’s theory of cognitive development in mind. His theory attempted to explain how learning is developed and maintained. The student begins with the schema (thoughts and understanding about a certain subject) and try to apply it to a new situation. Vygotsky contests that learning can only take place with the assistance of a “more knowledgeable other” in a socially interactive environment. These “more knowledgeable others,” or MKOs, can be an advanced peer, a teacher, or any person that can help the student master the new skill. It is the responsibility of the MKO to take the knowledge that the student already possesses and try to bridge the gap (in the zone of proximal development) between their existing schema and the new concept. We were told to remember that all children have not been read to out-loud like most people assume. Those in ESL families often have parents who do not speak English at all, so any reading that they would’ve been doing with the students would be in their native tongue. The student’s reading skills would be based solely on their interaction with English speaking peers and teachers. It is important for the students to see the relationship with the words on the page to the tutor’s natural rhythms and intonation.

The ESL students often had trouble discerning one sentence from the next. The program used the tactic of grammar metaphors to help the students relate some grammatical markers with something that they already had previous knowledge of. The students were told to use the red, yellow, and green light method. We told them to think of periods as red lights because they indicate for you to make a complete stop. We used yellow for commas and semicolons because they only tell you to slow down for a second. And we used the green light to emphasize when coming to the edge of a page (or the margin) that if there are no reds or yellows then they should proceed through the sentence in the next line. Similarly, we had students view papers (from previous students that were on the same level) that received good grades in order to show them how to apply their skills to produce quality work.

This, in combination with our immediate feedback, helped students begin to master their own reading and writing skills. I often first let the students read their papers aloud to me, and then I read it aloud to them, if there is time and the paper is short enough. This allows them to hear what the paper sounds like. (Something that is hard for ESL students.) Often, they can recognize errors more effectively when they are assisted. I used to try and have them go through quality papers to evaluate what can make effective writing. Because this often takes a bit of time, I gave it as an assignment that they can take home and model their essay after.
I thought that just sharing some of my other tutoring experiences would perhaps be of interest.

Two in a row!

I won't admit that I'm just now diving into the writing portion of my bibliographic essay. If I were, though, I'd say that the process is driving me up a wall. My other classes this semester are statistics, geography, and software documentation, so essay writing has been non-existent since last semester. This is my first big assignment since beginning tutor training and really thinking about the writing process. I'm finding myself thinking as much about how I'm writing as what I'm writing, and it's kind of distracting. Has anyone else run into this problem, or has my brain just turned into finals mush?

bullet-riddled advice

My blog will not be in the fancy "paragraph" format that seems to be so desirable. What can I say? Time just keeps disappearing on me. The last two times I tried to post, blogger said "No." Granted those attempts were a week apart, but that's not the point. The point is that there are a few things I think new tutors should know. Because I am a late poster, most of these things have already been mentioned, but I will still state them as though they are fresh and tasty:

• It's ok to tell a student when the session has stopped being productive. You don't have to let anyone waste your time.
• You will use the reference books a lot. Don't try to pretend like you know every answer. Most students can sniff out a fake.
• The people you are working with are like-minded, awesome folks. Don't be so serious that you can't have fun with them. They will also teach you a lot.
• A drink of water is a handy accessory while on shift.
• You will encounter students who are much smarter than you are. This doesn't mean you can't help them. On the flip side, you will also be faced with morons and you'll have to pretend you don't notice.
• The schedule is not as iron-clad as it seems.
• Droning on about grammar rules is not a good idea. Students don't care. If something is a problem, show the student how to fix it, but don't spend five minutes explaining that/which if it has only come up once in the paper.
• Use links to explain yourself when responding to online submissions.

Community in the Writing Center

I will have to agree with Kyle—and god knows how I hate agreeing with Kyle—but knowing that there is a family in the writing center is the foremost consideration a new tutor should come to understand. In attending a commuter campus it takes some looking to find a group of people on campus that belong to a class or organization that actually form into their own little community, and the writing center has been one of the best places to find this. Of course, this can be taken as simply advice directed towards the mushier emotions, but it also has a corresponding pragmatism which allows for the development of tutoring skills and the facility of expanded discussion.

Who else but Katie would take the time to explain to me the difference between usage of ‘lesser’ and ‘fewer’ designations? Where else could I have learned to engage a reluctant student in discussion than from watching Kristi’s example of dedication coupled with an almost obnoxiously upbeat attitude? The point being: in embracing the community that surrounds the writing center, a new tutor has the opportunity to goadingly ask all kinds of questions to other tutors (both new and old) that help foster a tutoring style of their own, which is first based on the experience of watching other tutors in action. If one is involved in the community of the writing center, it is easier to get involved, watch and ask questions of other tutors.

In order for this to happen, new tutors need to support the other tutors who are new to the center, but also need to embrace last years established veterans, no matter how ill dressed they may be. This calls for the allowance for tutors to come in and talk to other tutors while they are not on shift; this allowance, moreover, comes with the added responsibility of knowing when it is appropriate to be in the center (whether no one is busy, or everyone is busy), knowing when he or she is engaging in the writing center community or simply being a pain in everyone’s ass—a category I happen to fall in continuously.

A new tutor needs to know of this community because nothing else so thoroughly fosters dedication and pride in the center and in the job itself which, in turn, fosters knowledge in how to handle different types of tutorials, proficiency in documentation and grammar, moving in the direction of the larger issues to the smaller issues. This brings up another suggestion of what new tutors need to know: being the grammar god will never make you a good tutor. All nervousness about not knowing how to punctuate every sentence in every style known to man is a wasted preoccupation. I have yet to pull off a great tutorial on the basis I knew the difference between ‘that’ and ‘which,’ or because I knew the difference between an en-dash and em-dash; however, I have pulled off amazing tutorials because I knew how to read the student, get them involved, plan a session and negotiate meaning. We teach our clients to address global issues first, local issues second, and so must our own education in compositional pedagogy follow the same natural progression. The psychology, confidence, methodology, theory and experience come first; in learning these essentials, proficiency in grammar, syntax and word choice will be absorbed in the process.

Another consideration—falling more under the heading of suggested changes—is inviting the old tutors to join in on the writing center blog. If the class blog facilitates a special purpose for those involved in the class; maybe a blog for the whole writing center is then appropriate. I have heard several veteran tutors complain about how a lot of the writing center business is discussed on the blog, disconnecting them from the current news and changes. This creates a disconnect in community.

Most importantly: get your bibliographic essay done early in the semester.