LEAN BACK AND PUT DOWN YOUR PEN

Passive aggressiveness in a tutoring session can sometimes be an incredibly useful tactic. I have found that most students end up feeling somewhat awkward and feel more obligated to participate in a session. I’ve never felt like I was mocking a student by using defensive minimalism. I try not to do exactly what the student is doing; I just reflect part of their attitude while remaining aware that my job is to encourage the student to be involved. I tend naturally to lean back in my chair if the student is leaning back in their chair. If I feel a student isn’t participating at the level I would like them to be, I’ll put down my pen and start asking them more questions. Most of the time, these tactics work to my advantage and the student understands what I want them to do and they do it.

But sometimes when I use defensive minimalism, I worry that what I’m doing might turn disastrous and when I lean back in my chair and put down my pen, the student will think I’m also disinterested. I’m worried that they think I’m there to force them to participate, and when I mimic their actions, they’ll feel like I don’t care about the session, so they might as well leave. On the other hand, they might instead feel like I’m not doing what they wanted me to do for the session, so they’ll change their actions and initiate discussion. I guess it’s just a matter of judging each session and gauging how to best go about engaging the student.

I wonder, though, about what other tactics to use before it comes to having to mimic the student to get them to participate. I generally like to use the “Offer the student some questions she can ask herself” method if they’re not willing to give me a lot of information on their concerns about the paper. This has helped when a student comes in and only asks me if their paper flows. I think that people have a lot of definitions about what “flow” means, so I like to ask about different aspects of what they’ve written, and that way we might both understand each others’ expectations of the session and I won’t have to worry about mimicking anyone’s body language.