Session: Session Redux

During two shifts this week I worked with the same graduate student.  Like other graduate students, he had come in for help with an pretty extensive document (20+ pages).  After greeting the student (for the first session), I asked the student what they wished to work on within the 30 minute block.  The student responded by telling me that they "didn't have a lot of time" and the student would just leave the document here with me and pick it up the next day. 

I attempted to explain that that is not how we do writing tutoring here.  The student  than said well "can you just edit what you can now" and I'll come back and pick it up.  Again, I tried to explain that that was not something I was "going to do," but I would work through the document to help the student learn a couple of effective ways to performing editing.  For instance, reading the document aloud to another person who identities, in turn, areas where the prose "doesn't sound right." The student responded that, that technique wouldn't work because 1) the document needed to be finished quickly because the student didn't have time 2) the student didn't know anyone who would do that with and for the student.  I responded that, I, would work with the student to do this, and passed the document to the student who decided it would a good time to try to "strong arm me" into editing the document.  We spent the next 25 minutes recircling the issue that the student 1) didn't have time 2) it would just be "easier" if I did it for the student.  Certainly, the student was pragmatic, in a sense.  The student was right, it would be "easier" if I did it for the student, but then the student would never learn how to performing editing or correct the grammatical and mechanical mistakes that were in the essay independently. aka the give a person a fish, and they will eat for a day; teach a person to fish, and they will eat for their life.

Ultimately, I ended up explaining that if the student wanted to speak with the director of the writing center I would certainly put the student in contact with the director. The student said "no," I just need this done. So, I did the next best thing I could think of, I encouraged the student to return to revisit this conversation.

 The student did return the very next day.  And, to my disappointment the student brought the same attitude: I give the paper to you; you do the work for me.  Thinking about the conversations today (i.e. the dynamic on giving and who is doing the giving) I now am beginning to think this is an interesting inversion of the power-differential. [Fissure for reflective pause.]  And, splicing both Foucault's theorizations of power relations (specifically that which surrounds reverse discourse) and Freire's pedagogy of critical-praxis for dialogic interaction, I have come to a certain ethical stance I tend to take towards how I hope power relations might function. 

[Brief explanation 1: "power relations"-(oversimplification for brevity) are created, maintained, and revised through discourse (I tend to define discourse broadly as what Burke calls "symbolic action" but basically for me it assumes both of the conscious and less conscious purposeful actions we engage in everyday. aka rhetoric.]

[Brief explanation 2: "reverse discourse"-is that which are more and less complete inverses in the way that the power-relations flows through the ways "subjects" are positioned vis-a-vis discourse (aka tutors give tutorial support; tuttees receive tutorial support reverses to tutees give directives; tutors do what tutees say).]

[Brief explanation 3: "dialogic interaction"-is the active product of a process that works to level power-relations by proactively involving participants as subjects in an action and decision making]

[Brief explanation 4: These are really big ideas, and I'm trying my best to be inclusive to all of the members of our community]

So, essentially, this is my ethical stance: I don't want the tuttee to be the "object" to my "subjective gaze"; nor, do I want to be the "object" of the student's "subjective gaze.  Instead, of approaching power relations as unidirectional, which Foucault certainly theorizes they are not; I assume that they can be made, if parties come open and willing to take up the work of "dialogue," multidirectional. Aka, not falling into reverse discourse.  Freire really makes that point that the "oppressed" need to be vigilant to not "reverse" the situation for those that once did the "oppressing" i.e. simply reverse the dynamic so that really there is no substantive change 1 party always assumes the subjective position and the other the object position in the model of giving and receiving.  [But, I also acknowledge and realize that there are still the historical material and institutional differentials that exist before, during, and after a WC session transpires].  Ultimately, I don't want to appropriate a student's place within this contact space; nor, do I wish to be appropriated in a reverse fashion.  What I want to do, and made slight headway towards, during the second session I had with this student is enacting a type of exchange that is neither to (I appropriate the tuttees place), nor for (the tuttee appropriates my place), rather with (we inhabit our places in a common and negotiated dialogue): perhaps the "textual" product does not improve, but it is my hope that the "ethical" product does or may. 

At the end of the 2nd session, all I am sure of is two things: 1) The student learned there is a difficulty in their use of articles; 2) If the student wants to work with me to do the work of learning, addressing, and talking about how articles function, I will be here.

At the end of all of this, all I am sure of is three things: 1) I have appropriated a space that is not entirely mine with an ethical stance which is mine; 2) This is a contradiction to the ethical stance I have enacted; 3)  I am comfortable with that because of the weird paradoxical sense it makes given the reasons I have outlined.