I Don't Remember

It is so hard for me to "reflect" on what I have done once it's been done. I have no idea what I was thinking when I applied for the position as a writing center tutor. I just applied with the idea that they must not have known the truth about my inabilities. When I heard about the class we would be taking, I really debated on whether I wanted to be a writing tutor. I still remember the words "extensive writing" coming out of the writing center coordinator's mouth. As a former English major, I was tired of writing and ready to just get done with my schooling, but I knew somewhere deep inside I was still a writer. I knew I wanted to see people get more out of thier writing and to feel successful. It's so nice to get an "A" on a paper. Very satisfying. So when the job was offered to me I accepted it hoping nobody would somehow find out that I really suck at the whole writing thing and fire me on the spot.

Then I went to class. It was a scarey environment at first. We were expected to be something I wasn't sure I could be. (Whatever that was). If I were giving out advice for new class-takers of English 3840, it would be; brush up on EVERY ENGLISH (WRITING) THING YOU CAN GET YOUR BRAIN WRAPPED AROUND and get familiar with current and past United States politics. That is, for the class. Cause all the other stuff we learned about tutoring blanketed those two things. Like the layers of flakey dough in a Danish sweetroll, the actual applicable tutoring information leaves space for little else but that "else" it leaves is the sweetness of sucessful tutoring.

Not to worry, the tutoring is helpful (for the tutor and the tutee) and mostly enjoyable. ESL students are probably the most challenging (aside from the APA truckload that gets delivered to the Writing Center at about the busiest time of the semester) but only at first when you realize that you must throw all your previous tutoring techniques over your shoulder and whip out the vocabulary flashcards. ESL students are facinating because they are so diverse and their very presence speaks of culture that seems to want to express itself but is caught between two languages that show up together on the pages of thier papers because that is who they are right now while they are learning the Engish language.

The Writing Center is a pretty doggon good place to be. Even if you think you do a crappy session and you wonder if anyone noticed and thought the same thing. So many peoples lives are changed (in a good way) by the wonderful world of the Writing Center Friendly Neighborhood Heroes.

Voices

When do we hear voices? Some poeple say it's only the insane who hear them, and some say it's only the insane that talk back to them. I say people may be insain but nobody is crazy, and we all hear voices.

Voices come through many mediums, whether intentional or not. We hear them over the phone, radio, and through the television. We hear them underneath spoken voice inflection, through peoples' intentions, and in thier physical dimeanor. It becomes obvious in the style of a home, yard, motor vehicle and hairdo. Voices speak in our dreams and behind our thoughts. They live in our writing.

Voices are our friends and our enemies. Some people use them to manipulate others and to take advantage of some. Their mouths move and people move too. An unconscious voice creates opportunities to view others with contempt or acceptance. They help us to read people and to make decisions based on those that we hear. They help us dream, or cause us fear. They turn us into friends or enemies, moment by moment, year to year. Our choices are based on voices and we choose our own voices, whether we know it or not.

Voices are evident in our writing. We can choose our mood through the rhythm of each sentence, and can create a rhythm by word choice. In fact, many studies were performed on rhythms and how these are what we use to understand what people are saying before we learn (or hear) the words being spoken. Those learning a foriegn language use the voice patterns and rhthyms to understand the native speaker. So even as we speak, we learn to write because we hear what we want to record. Otherwise we would just be copying what we've read all the time, never knowing about language. I can't imagine what it might have been like to have written language before spoken language was spoken. It just wouldn't be.

So we must use the voices we hear to support our writing and to express how we have interpreted what we heard. And that is what makes everyone's writing unique; the voices we listen to and how we convey what we've heard. Who is to decide who is insain or crazy then? We all hear constant chatter and we can't get away from it by closing a book until we reorganize it and lay it out on paper (creating a new voice in the process). Then we can close the book. But I don't think we will ever not hear voices.

Ask questions and use smelly lotion

My thinking about tutoring has changed somewhat this semester. The biggest challenge for me was adjusting to walk-in tutoring. At first I thought it was weird to tutor an almost entirely new set of people every day. I didn’t know how much I was going to like it because I didn’t think I was going to get to know anybody very well. After the first couple of months of tutoring, I realized that there are people who come in to the center often, and I like to keep up with their progress. It’s good to try to make connections with the students because it’s fun to help someone with multiple assignments and see improvement.

My second concern about walk-in tutoring was crossing the line. Because I had to assess a new student’s needs and provide help in such a short amount of time, I had to resist the temptation to tell the student exactly what to do with the paper instead of using techniques to help him/her become a better writer. I soon found out that I had to ask loads of questions at the beginning of the session before we read the paper together, so I could come up with the best way of helping the student, while at the same time setting some expectations for the session. During the first few weeks, I would ask one or two questions, read the paper with the student, and then ask questions about what they were concerned about. This resulted in longer, less effective sessions because neither of us knew what we should do until 5 or 10 minutes into the session. I have found that asking a lot questions about the assignment and what the student did with it gives me an idea of how to best help the student. It took me a while to establish some questions that seemed to work, and this is something I’m still working on.

Something a little less serious but still completely important I’ve learned this semester is that a lot of people have bad breath. Something that’s been effective for me in dealing with this is to put on some really great-smelling lotion before my shift, and if anyone’s breath is offending me, I just put my hand up near my nose, like I’m resting my head, and I just end up smelling the great lotion the whole time. Maybe I’ll give the Writing Center a huge bottle of smelly lotion for Christmas.

Anyway, I would say that new tutors should focus on caring about the students you tutor. When you care about the students, you’ll get the hang of all the aspects of tutoring writing because you’ll want to learn for more reasons than getting a grade, and you’ll have a lot of fun.

Guilty as Charged

If this had happened to me just once, I'm not sure I would have given it a second thought. But it's happened to me a few times now so I'm compelled to talk about it. Have any of you had ESL students with papers about how ignorant Americans are or anything akin to such a topic?

Today I had this girl from Poland come in to have me go over her paper with her. Her accent was a tad heavy so I had to ask her a few times how to say her name and even how to spell it. I felt really bad having to make her repeat her name so many times, but correct documentation seems so important in the Writing center.. She was watching me write down her name so even as she was dictating to me how to spell it I was making errors. At this point, I was already sweating like a Trekkie. But hopefully with the whole documentation part of the session over, I could now just help her with her paper.

I can't remember the exact title of her paper, but it was something like, "Americans Are Ignorant." For the most part, I agreed with her title. But I was afraid to appear too empathetic towards her lest she might suspect I was just trying to reassure her that Americans aren't all that bad. For instance, she wrote about a time where she told someone where she was from, and this person thought that Poland was in the U.S. I am well aware of how culturally challenged I am, but c'bon! I at least know that Poland is not in the U.S.

She touched on all kinds of points such as Americans being unaware of other cultures and over-indulging on everything and refusing to share with people who need help. None of this would've been bothering me except that I was getting the impression that she was angry. I tried having an intellectual conversation about why she felt Americans behaved in such a way. But the worst thing I caught myself doing was instead of saying something like, "And why do you feel Americans are like that?" I would actually say, "And why do you feel we are like that? Or "How might you compare that aspect of our culture to yours?" I was merely interested in exploring her perspective on things and thought that such conversation would help generate content for her paper. Instead, I think I just came off sounding like some stereotypical American (whatever that is).

Tis strange, because, I am an American, so why would I feel guilty about referring to Americans as "we" or "us". It just seems bias and unprofessional to me to say "we" or "us". About halfway through her paper and a cold sweat later, I honestly wanted to give up cause I felt she wasn't getting the feedback she needed and I was just reinforcing her negativity towards Americans.

Another problem was that she wanted to focus mostly on grammar and punctuation. I helped her a lot with that, but I can't help asking the author questions about their work and where they are coming from. It's merely interesting to me and I always hope they enjoy talking about their intended message. Still, I feel like I didn't handle this situation very well. And so I was wondering if any of you have had similiar experiences with ESL students and could offer me any advice on what to do in such a situation. Was I even in a situation? Or was I just being paranoid and feeling guilty for no reason?

While I had other productive sessions today, that one with the Polish girl made me feel totally inept. I just can't convey how excruciating it was to have her dictate to me how to spell her name and yet I was still writing it down wrong. Perhaps I was too nervous to even think.

Let them Laugh

I like laughter. I use to be embarrassed to laugh because I say "teee! heee!" and I can laugh pretty loud at times. But then I heard someone snort and I realized that my laugh wasn't so bad after all.

I like to collect laughs. Not like someone would stamps or coins... or (I don't know)... PEZ dispensers, but I like to hear others laugh. I sometimes consider myself funny. Sometimes I don't intend to be funny, but people around me are laughing... and saying that I am funny. (Shrug)

So why am I talking about laughter? What does this have to do with the writing center? It is because I have a question: is it okay to make students I tutor laugh?! Is it okay that I laugh?

I guess to answer my own question, it depends. It depends on what is funny. Am I making fun of the writing?--- never... or at least not until the student laughs at it first. Am I making fun of the student? no--- I wouldn't make fun of someone intentionally. --- So, is it okay that I laugh in tutoring sessions?

Yesterday, Kelley asked me how I manage to get students to laugh in my sessions. (Shrug) I don't know--- is that a bad thing? or is it a good thing to make those I tutor laugh? (Like in wizard of oz, “are you a good witch, or a bad witch?”) Is it a good method or a bad method to laugh in sessions?

Katie said she envied one of my sessions because we were laughing the entire time. Yeah, we were having fun, and yeah--- I felt like the session went well. So, maybe it is okay to laugh in sessions. Besides, laughing is so much fun. I laugh when I am uncomfortable, when I’m happy: I laugh whenever. I think that that laughter is a way of communication. If I am laughing in a session, it could convey the message that this is fun stuff that we’re talking about. It can also convey that, yeah, I know that it can be uncomfortable to talk about your own writing; I get that. But---see me laughing?--- it’s okay; you’re gonna be okay. Writing is fun. Why not let them laugh?

My head is cold.

I got my hair cut this week. When I went to the hair salon, I had certain expectations of how I wanted my hair to look. I was nervous and excited at the same time; I closed my eyes when the hair stylist began, cutting 10 inches of my hair. I could hear the "clip! clip!" of the scissors. When I opened my eyes, I looked at my shorter length for the first time: I looked different. I felt different. I couldn't tell if I liked it or not at first glance; and even now, two days later, I'm not sure what to think of my new look.

Erik Mathews on Boy Meets World cut his hair; he said that his new hair style represented the "new and smarter" Erik. (And then he asked if anyone else's head was cold because his head was cold.)

When students come into the Writing Center, what are their expectations? I guess it depends on what he or she is looking for when the individual comes in. But do you think that we might have students who want to hand you their paper, close their eyes--- and then when they open their eyes again they want to be presented with the "new and smarter" paper? They want us to do the thinking, revision and changes. Can we still help them achieve their "new and smarter" paper without them closing their eyes?--- or in other words, not want to make the changes themselves? So what if you do? ---What if you amazingly enough get the student involved in the revision process and they don't like your ideas. For me, if I decide that I don't like my short hair, I can tell myself that it will grow back. My hair stylist suggested that I layered my hair to give me more volume. I didn't have to, but I felt brave. I guess in the same way, you don't have to force changes onto the student.

I had a session a couple weeks ago where I helped a student make changes in her paper. She came back yesterday and showed me her score. The paper was graded in four sections. She did well in three of the four sections. A closer inspection revealed that the section she didn’t do as well in was the section we didn’t get to talk about as much. We spent the session yesterday revising and coming up with ways to open ideas up for discussion. We talked about what good things she did in the other sections, what her teacher liked, etc. And then we molded these ideas together so we could revise her last section of the paper. It was fun talking with her, but I wonder if she really liked the changes I was suggesting. She might have been skeptical about my ideas. But she said that she would try a couple of them and see what she could do to fix her paper so she could resubmit it to her teacher.

I guess that is all we can do when it comes to helping students make drastic changes in their papers: suggest the changes and hope the suggestions are good. I don't know if I like my hair layered and this short. I've never had it this way before. But I guess I can work with the change and hopefully I will like it.

So... is anyone's head cold? 'cause my head's cold!

To Be a Tutor

Like others, when I was hired as a tutor I thought it would be a breeze—sit down with a student, read her paper (preferably in silence to myself), tell her what was wrong, and send her on her way. However, when I went to class—and later to work—for the first time, I realized that I was grossly unqualified to help other writers and extremely unprepared to be a tutor.

In the beginning of the semester, I was completely surprised by the ethical and moral dilemmas of the writing center. What should a tutor do with an offensive paper or with an offensive writer? How do tutors help writers without “taking over” their work? What is the “line” and how do tutors know when they have crossed? And more importantly, how do they get back on the right side when it has been crossed? How much is a tutor obligated to tell—or not to tell—a writer about his or her writing? What is the best way to handle ESL students? Issues, questions, dilemmas—the list of problems faced in the writing center goes on and on, and the debate continues. Before I became a tutor, I hardly knew the writing center existed; I definitely didn’t know there would be so much “baggage” that came along with the job. But it has been good baggage––weighty at times, unpredictable, hard to carry and store, but always thought-provoking, insightful, and helpful in tutoring sessions.

For some reason, I was also shocked by how closely tutors work with writers. Before tutoring, I assumed that a session would center on the paper with minimal interaction between student and tutor. I learned quickly that tutoring is about the “process,” not the “product!” The goal of a tutor is to help students become better writers, not simply put out better papers. As I learned to play the role of a tutor and interact with students, I was pleasantly surprised by the gratitude many students had for the help I offered and by the gratification I got from offering it. It’s enjoyable to work with willing, dedicated writers—they make the job fun and interesting. Of course, not all sessions or students are ideal. Some drive me crazy and make me want to burn their paper in front of them, but it helps to have a sense of humor—and perspective. I laugh every time I read about Katie’s cell phone student. How long ago did it happen? A week hasn’t gone by that it hasn’t come up in a blog or in class discussion. I’m glad it didn’t happen to me, but it really is kind-a funny.

My best advice to other tutors is BE SINCERE, BE HONEST. Praise the writer when something is well written, funny, or interesting. Tell him you are confused when you don’t understand, and ask him to explain it more clearly. Tell the student how much time you have, and explain why you can’t spend two hours together discussing every comma splice of a seventeen page research paper. When you don’t know the answer, tell them you don’t know; when you do know the answer, teach them patiently and with confidence. Ask more questions than you answer, help the student think about the paper so they will understand it better. And when you can’t think of anything else to say or do, just BE NICE—after all, it’s only a paper.

Writing, Thinking, and Learning

Well, I’ve been a little behind schedule with my bibliographic essay, but I finally realized what I want to write about. During the semester, it has been a continual revelation to discover the way I learn as I write. I always knew that writing was a laborious chore and that it was hard to get from start to finish in a productive and understandable way; but I didn’t really know why. My favorite phrase from the reading assignments was a statement by Ben Rafoth. He helped me to understand that the problem of writing is not merely a problem of arranging words, letters, sentences, and paragraphs; it is, in fact, a “thinking problem” (Rafoth 76). Janet Emig made a similar connection in her article about writing and learning. The simultaneous process of writing (or typing), reading, thinking, and reasoning provokes a style of learning that is almost impossible to duplicate. Drawing from these two sources, I want to write my bibliographic essay about the relationship that writing has with learning and thinking.

Who wants to know sane people, anyway?

Sometimes I wish I didn't act like I know about certain facets of my personality. For instance, I occasionally wish I didn't act like I know that I'm smart. But I know that I'm smart and I act the way I do sometimes because I know that I know that I'm smart and it reflects in my behavior. Does this make sense? It's likely one of the reasons people have called me a smarmy know-it-all.

Except this semester has proven to me that I don't know it all. Here are some things I did not know that have since proved useful to know:

It is okay to end a session with a student if it started badly and has progressed worsely for an inordinately long amount of time. I wish I had known this when I tutored the incredibly rude girl who answered her cell phone twenty minutes into a session. I could've ended not too long afterward! I slogged through the muddy swamp that was her nine-page paper instead -- for the next thirty-five minutes. When she left, it seemed draining. Hindsight is 20/20: now I know it was not only draining, it was a colossal waste of my time and hers. I could've worked on the website for that half hour. Or made our scrapbook prettier. Or worked on an online submission.

Amen to everything Brett said about APA.

Tutoring involves two people. Feel free to read that sentence again: two people. I didn't factor the student into my thinking as much as I should have when I applied for the job. Enthusiasm about writing (hopefully) bubbled over in my interview with Dr. Rogers and Claire, but logic did not factor into my thinking about my job until I tutored someone: there was a person sitting next to me at the table. And she was talking to me. And we were collaborating. When I applied for the job, I had this mental image of me expounding vast amounts of knowledge to those students who came in for help with their papers. The students of my dreams smiled and nodded and understood everything I said.

NEWS FLASH: Students talk! And question! And heaven forbid, they occasionally argue! And do you want to know something else? Sometimes they are right and you are wrong! I'll be honest. This discovery was a blow to my ego. (It also hurt my ego to discover that sometimes you have to explain things multiple times; in these instances, having multiple tactics comes in handy. Don't be afraid to use any technique that works. Singing "Conjunction Junction" from Schoolhouse Rock was a quick and effective way of explaining the purpose of conjunctions to a student and only took two minutes. -sigh- If only I'd tried that particular method first . . .) But I think my ego needed to be deflated and then stomped on and then torn up. As the semester has progressed, I've pieced it back together into a milder form of confidence. In a sense, the students you tutor have put you on a platform because you have a job title. But their platforms stand every bit as high as ours because they wrote something and they have a better working knowledge of it than we do.

So get over yourself. All of us are smart; we wouldn't have been hired if we weren't. None of us knows everything. This is one of the reasons it's a good idea to befriend the other tutors: they're the most valuable assets in the writing center. And it's often quicker to get information from one of them than trying to find it a manual. It's also a good idea to befriend the other tutors because you have obvious commonalities (like, if you didn't notice, all of you work in a writing center and enjoy the process of writing). And you'll also find you have some not-so-obvious commonalities. Plus all of us (well, everyone I've had a shift with, anyway) are excellent conversationalists and each and every one of us has a sense of humor.

I think that's it. For now. The semester is not over yet and the blog is an excellent way to let off some steam without killing anything or anyone.

Oh, one last thing: Be careful where you sit. It's more important than you may think. (Ask Chris.)

math class was really fun! have a great summer!

Dear future tutors,

My name is Brett, and I am an awesome tutor. If you follow my advice then one day you too will be an honored and revered man or woman just like me.

A list seems to be the best way to start this:

First, learn how to use APA before you get caught not knowing it. It may seem like something that you might not need to know, especially if you’re a senior English student and have never used it, but it is important. I-M-P-O-R-T-A-N-T. Learn it. At some point in the year about a thousand nurses will lay siege on your poor little table and you’ll have to waste your time flipping through all those blasted pages about citing figures, pie graphs, journals with one author, no author, five authors and god-knows-what else-but-you-need-to-find-it-because-its-your-job-and-they’re-here-for-your-help-so-you’d-better-find-it-and-fast-too-because-their-class-is-in-ten-minutes-author. A good two or three hour reading session with the APA guide book at the start of the semester will be an invaluable investment.

Second, when with ESL students—sllooooooowwww down. If this piece of advice seems trivial to you, then you’re smarter than I am (an understatement). When I started tutoring ESL I didn’t really think about how many issues they were dealing with just to write a simple one page essay. It’s bigger than you think. You have to consider the student’s culture, writing style, language barriers, and previous exposure to English—the list goes on. Also, if they ask you a question about grammar that you don’t know, it might be wise to avoid wasting the entire session explaining the language and just say, “You know, I don’t know why we say it like that, but that’s how we do…what is your next question?”

Third, complete sentences contain a verb and a subject. If they don’t, then they are a fragment. Nothing more needs to be said about sentence fragments.

Finally, avoid focusing on just fixing grammar problems. These are really the easiest to fix and should almost always be saved for last. It is a sickening feeling to spend an hour hacking through a paper with horrible grammar only to turn finish and realize that there is absolutely no point at all to the paper. Start big—worry about paragraph organization, the existence of a thesis and whether or not there is a conclusion; then, and only after you have considered these points, move on to sentence structure, verb conjugation, and finally, ultimately, lastly, at-the-very-endly, look at grammar.

I suppose that is all the really valuable advice I have to give.

Now I will reflect for awhile.

When I started this job I thought it would be easy. Just come in for a few hours a day, put some red ink on some papers and get paid, right? ¡Incorrecto! Those students can come at you with some crazy questions, and you have to be prepared to answer them. You have to know all sorts of nutzoid stuff like being able to guess what a student means when they say, “I want my paper to flow,” or when they have a question about citing guys who cite other guys in their papers. It gets hard. One tutor can’t possibly know all of this stuff, and that’s where I have learned that one of your most valuable resources can be other tutors. It’s been a humbling learning experience. Sometimes you can leave a session having learned more than the student.

Well, I think that’s all. If I’m still working at the writing center when you read I this, then I will be lucky and you will be annoyed, because I will give you more advice even if you don’t appear to be even the least bit interested in what I have to say.

Stay out of my way man, I’m crazy.

Don’t drink and drive. Stay in school.

Brett.

P.S. The key to the writing center is in the testing center.