A Few Observations...

Before the break began, I observed Katie Walsh tutoring a student who wanted help with her research paper. Before I get into the specifics of this particular session, I want to echo what Katie astutely points out in her most recent post: most of us regularly observe each other quite by accident.

I, for one, get restless in the writing center. If I don't have sessions, I tend to talk incessantly, to rearrange the chairs, to disinfect, to make fifteen cups of tea and to push them on anyone around--anything but tend to the "work" I usually have in my bag.

In the backdrop of these practices, I overhear many, many interesting sessions. In Katie's case, here are a few thoughts based on everyday eavesdropping and confirmed through formal observation:

1) Katie has a good number of repeats. I attribute this fact mostly to her strong efforts to relate to and to empathize with her tutees. Repeats are likely also to do with her consistent friendliness and to her skills as an active listener and as a gentle suggester. In fact, I covered one of her shifts last term, and when I "rowed out to meet my ship," the tutee was quite disappointed to see me and not Katie.

2) Katie usually sits more next to than across from her tutees. She also tends to talk with her tutee in a tone that would suggest a friendship that preceeds the meeting, though other information indicates that her tutees are not her friends, at least outside the center.

3) Like many of the tutors reading this post, Katie usually will give her tutees more than 30 minutes if she does not have other sessions scheduled.

4) She is, as most of you already know, a genuinely nice person. I've never seen her be short with or curt to her tutees. She laughs with them and tries to draw them out.

5) Through a casual back-and-forth, she is able to make the tutee feel like an informal conversation is unfolding. Other tutors probably notice, though, that she has an agenda; she is conveying some valuable information on effective writing practices for college writers.

Now, here are some notes from the actual and official observation of her session. I want to say, from the outset, that this session was a tough one. I think she hung in there and tried her best, but the student was not the easiest. This is not to say that the student was recalcitrant or even mildly unlpleasant; the tutee was neither. She was just a bit on the hard-to-figure-out side. Was she tired? Apathetic? I couldn't tell. Confused? What, specifically, did she want from the writing center/from Katie?

Tip: Katie and I have discovered that, if one tutors in the collaboration station room, then a peer can observe undetected from the desk just below the cut-out.

Note: Katie and I talked, afterward, about how this session might have gone better if the collaboration station had been working. It was in the computer hospital in the basement of the library, though, getting its mouth cleaned out with soap, or pepper put on its tongue or whatever the fitting punishment is for naughty computers who've uploaded a lot of porn. Aly, when is that "no porn, no flossing" sign going to be ready?

No more digressions. Here goes:

The tutee wanted help with her thesis statement, so Katie asks about the assignment. Although the tutee does not have an assignment sheet with her, she does try her best to explain the assignment. She seems overwhelmed. Katie asks if she is nervous about the paper. I noticed that Katie as very careful in her efforts to steer the tutee away from concern with the thesis statement and toward a focus on critical researching.

Katie commends the tutee's printed out search results from JStor, suggests a few other databases, and suggests a number of alternate search terms. She also tries to refine the thesis with the student and to get the tutee to clarify her thesis based on the research, but the tutee is reluctant. It seems that the professor has "approved" the thesis, so the tutee does not want to part with her original plan.

Katie is gentle in her approach here: she suggests alternatives, but she leaves the option to stick to the original thesis entirely up to the student. (The tutee wants to find articles that make a specific argument to do with families' incomes and the effects these have on children. Katie notices that the tutee has found more on "working mothers").

In keeping with her conversational style, Katie says things like "So, you know what your thesis statement is, right?" and "This source looks useful/less useful" and "Does any source strike you as the strongest?" "Can you tell me what the argument is in this one?" "If you are focusing on dual income families, then you should probably decide what you want to focus on within that topic."

During the bulk of the session, Katie is trying to slowly and carefully get the tutee to evaluate and to summarize sources, to create a manageable list of related and reputable articles, and to try to find books as well as articles (she strongly suggests the library). She also offers a sort of mini-lesson on evaluating sources.
All of the casual back and forth, I can tell, is deliberate on Katie's part. She is helping the tutee to discern central arguments and to evaluate the evidence used in the articles the student has collected--all through what sounds like a chat between two friends. She pulls this off through many, many casually phrased questions interspliced with expressions of empathy, understanding, and comradary. What is most impressive, to me, is her "hidden" agenda--to get the tutee to come to realize that her thesis is not going to work. It may not come to the tutee while she is sitting in the writing center, but I am sure she will have that epiphany if she continues to follow Katie's friendly advice on evaluating other writers' arguments/uses of evidence, etc.

Katie is a tutor I admire, and I am very glad that I got a chance to observe her. For all the other eavesdroppers out there: check her out!