Normally students come into the Writing Center to talk about their writing...usually essays or research or brainstorming. So far this semester,I've only worked with people that have questions about writing that they've already done. Today was kind of weird, though, since both of my sessions wanted help with more grammatical or citation-al aspects.
The student at the first session brought in two punctuation worksheets and just wanted me to go over them with him and help him figure out where to put commas, semicolons, dashes, etc. We went overtime because he wouldn't let me close the session, even though my next tutee was waiting at another table.
The second session's student was here for help with MLA citation because she was afraid of plagiarizing. I showed her the Longman Handbook and answered questions, but when I suggested that we try to fix a couple of the citations in her essay, she said no.
I guess what I'm trying to say here is that it seems like when students come in who don't want to focus on their writing, they really don't want to get their essays out. It was pretty frustrating to me to see the student's work in her folder but not be able to dig it out and get some work done on that. What if she forgets what I've said by the time she gets home--without any examples written down, how will she know what we'd talked about? And I understand that helping the first student with his punctuation is important, but since it wasn't in the context of an essay, I felt like he could have done the same work in a differing tutoring environment. I know we can't draw the line on students if they want to come here for help, but I just wish that sometimes it felt more relevant.
Sorry about the rant...
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I can see what you mean, Jess, about students not willing to be more interactive during the session. I know Jeremiah once said that he doesn't have a student write during the session, he feels like he failed. Whenever I try to get a student to write they are reluctant--maybe of wasting time?
ReplyDeleteThe best you can do is help them with the specific questions they came in for. You can't force someone to want more help.
I second what Sarah said, student's that aren't willing to actually write during a session has been a common trend with me as well. However, I can see where they are coming from. Many of my student's tend to jot down notes in the margins while i am tutoring them, rather than re writing paragraphs.
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