I believe as Tim A. was writing his post on Wednesday, I was coming up with the same idea in mine.
Wednesday, the 24th, was two full hours of, “Can you edit this?” “Can you take a look and let me know what needs to be fixed?” “I’m not sure what we should work on, specifically.”
Not that I mind helping students out with their work, I however mind the word edit. The word edit, as defined by dictionary.com is “to supervise or direct the preparation of (a newspaper, magazine, book, etc.); serve as editor of; direct the editorial policies of.” I am NOT an editor. I am a tutor. The word tutor from dictionary.com is “a person employed to instruct another in some branch or branches of learning.” I am here to teach you about yourself as a writer and to help you progress with the English language as well as progress your use of rhetoric. If I were an editor, and all of us at the Writing Center were editors, this would be called the Editing Center.
Is there or should there be a preface to a session? Some sort of message that comes with booking an appointment that says something along the lines of “In order for tutee and tutor to work together, please work alongside your tutor and engage with your text as clearly as possible” or “Please come to your tutoring session prepared and ready to specifically state your exact wants/needs from a session (i.e. editing is not a specific enough qualification for a session).”
Maybe I’m stressed out because school is getting busy, or maybe I’m onto something here. That is something I would like to discuss with all of you. What are your thoughts on this matter? What do you do when students have nothing more to say than “Can you edit this?” Do all students (whether they say it or not) want a free edit? Is it wrong of me to want more substance than the process of editing?
Friday, February 26, 2010
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Whiteness
Below I have taken the liberty of copying and pasting sections from a review of the book that a few years back introduced me to "whiteness theory." I had taken a Harlem Renaissance course by then and read W.E.B. DuBois among others, but David Roediger presented something I had not thought about at all.
Here there are, a few fragments by Faron Levesque (Smith College):
"In _The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class_ (1991), David Roediger writes that 'Even in an all-white town, race was never absent. I learned absolutely no lore of my German ancestry and no more than a few meaningless snatches of Irish songs, but missed little of racist folklore.'
By questioning why the main body of white, Marxist work has 'neutralized' whiteness and over-simplified race in the United States, Roediger concentrates the thematic structure of his sweeping analysis from this point of contention. The idea of 'profiting' socially, psychologically, and economically, from the 'wages of whiteness' is taken from the fundamental theory of W.E.B. Dubois. Emphasizing that even though white working classes earned low wages, Roediger asserts that their compensation went beyond the monetary to include a public and psychological wage. Moreover, 'Status and privileges conferred by race could be used to make up for alienating and exploitative class relationships, North and South. White workers could, and did, define and accept their class positions by fashioning identities as not slaves and as not Blacks.’
Within the historical legacy of racial invention, Roediger superimposes a constrained lens to question the evolving, technological operations of racial mechanisms amidst the objects of industry, folklore, humor, song, and language used to build an insidious racial hierarchy with ultimate staying power."
I decided to include these sections in my post because they capture the gist of that which altered the way that I think about race--my race--but also raise the problem of defining oneself as non-, or rather being the background against which others are made visible. They, like some points in Cathryn's post, also reverberate the blurry line (or so it seems to me) between reinforcing and redefining, or about how to change language, how to abandon stagnating words and categories in order to create new ones. I keep thinking about a professor's point with regard to attitudes such as racism, sexism, homophobia in the class room, namely not to engage them in a reasoned argument because that would validate them as equal or legitimate perspectives.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Racism and other everyday practices
Last week, I read Native American author Sherman Alexie's poem "On the Amtrak from Boston to New York City" with a small group of students. In the poem, Alexie describes an everyday experience--he's on a train, and a white woman across from him "points out the window past [him]" in order to identify all of the "history" in the landscape. Alexie means, of course, for the word "past" to carry particular salience. She fails to see him; she can only see past him. Hers is likely a scene she's played out with countless other social actors who've played this same scene, too, with others, and so on. Her intentions are at least benign, and maybe they are even good. That is why Alexie decides to buy her an orange juice from the snack car instead of telling her off.
In response to the poem, one student relayed a commonplace reaction to this kind of text -- "It doesn't sit well with me," he said, "when minorities act like all white people are racists. I am not a racist at all."
What does a racist look like? What does he sound like?
As the EWC authors demonstrate in their chapter on everyday racism, "racism" is a particularly hard-to-pin-down bit of ideology. It is insidious, amorphous--it is like the fog lingering and moving all over the place in T.S. Elliot's London. It stands in drains. It moves around a house somewhere only to curl up and fall asleep. It moves and stretches and changes density, but it does not necessarily ever dissolve. It is yellow and thick and dirty and unpleasant. It sits stagnant and it flares up in fits and starts. The world that makes it can't will it away by simply turning its back on it and failing to own up to it.
The student's response, in other words, (and let me say here that this is a particularly thoughtful and open student--the sort of student who regularly lights up with depth-filled epiphanies) has to do with an outdated way of thinking about racism and hate--one that considers "racism" a visitor in the world, something that's visited us and caught us unawares and one that we long ago voted off the island. This way of thinking does not allow for the possibility that well-intentioned, ordinary, and everyday men and women made this beast through everyday practices and that everyday practices might, therefore, be the channels through which it survives, or even thrives.
One might have thought, at one time, moreover, that a "racist" was a person who committed some kind of overtly hateful and ill-intentioned act (or series of actions). His lexicon would have included any number of head-turning obscenities. This was never really real, but it was a nice idea. This way of thinking was entirely practical, and it still is.
It is a way of containing a staining and relentless social problem under the protective cover of a bell jar. This way of thinking about racism, though, has allowed the everyday practices that give some folks a boost and others a hard push down to proliferate unquestioned. It makes sense--I like to hang on to lies that make me feel safe, even when I know they are lies through and through somewhere in my head. Some of them only harm me, though, so maybe I am alright with keeping these or letting them go as I please.
Fog. It lingers and it infects and you can't touch it because it is everywhere and it is nowhere.
The woman on Alexie's Amtrak train is reproducing a time-honored set of social niceties. She's ruminating to a captive audience -- the stranger on the train. She's stringing together any number of cliches that fall, generally, under the "things one says on a train to a stranger" rubric. What is the harm, really?
These exchanges, though, are practices produced and reproduced in the context of deeply racist institutions. And institutions are not born out of the ether by some evasive higher power, are they? Nor are they the result of some evildoers working all on their own.
While the writing center is an institutional entity, it is also a sort of bastard child of the academy. It can afford, maybe, more than other entities, to transgress in various ways. What does this mean?
We are all "implicated" in a "power structure" that socializes us into "raced identities," which "are used to determine, categorize, evaluate, sort, promote, or reject us," and are the result of "the vast array of systems and institutions through which our social, political, intellectual, and spiritual lives are conditioned" (95). This is not, in other words, an issue we can opt out of because we are complicit in its operations every day in the everyday ways we do being people.
This is not the kind of issue one can simply say one does not participate in...it's a real thing in the world in which we live. We can no more escape it than we can escape the universe. So, now what?
The authors of the EWC are mindful of this rather icky milieu. They know the world is not going to be able to go through the 12 steps to "recover." One cannot pluck the fibers from their being they'd rather not know about and toss them to the wreckage pile. So, in an artful weaving together of a possibility-- a community in which humility reigns supreme and where participants linger in tensions and in unknowns -- they present the writing center community with a particular challenge--one that I can't fit into a neat little quip to end this piece even if I wanted very badly to do so. It would be easier, it would make me feel pretty good about myself, and it would satisfy. Instead, I'll have to end with a hope--that you'll want to go soot-hunting with me.
In response to the poem, one student relayed a commonplace reaction to this kind of text -- "It doesn't sit well with me," he said, "when minorities act like all white people are racists. I am not a racist at all."
What does a racist look like? What does he sound like?
As the EWC authors demonstrate in their chapter on everyday racism, "racism" is a particularly hard-to-pin-down bit of ideology. It is insidious, amorphous--it is like the fog lingering and moving all over the place in T.S. Elliot's London. It stands in drains. It moves around a house somewhere only to curl up and fall asleep. It moves and stretches and changes density, but it does not necessarily ever dissolve. It is yellow and thick and dirty and unpleasant. It sits stagnant and it flares up in fits and starts. The world that makes it can't will it away by simply turning its back on it and failing to own up to it.
The student's response, in other words, (and let me say here that this is a particularly thoughtful and open student--the sort of student who regularly lights up with depth-filled epiphanies) has to do with an outdated way of thinking about racism and hate--one that considers "racism" a visitor in the world, something that's visited us and caught us unawares and one that we long ago voted off the island. This way of thinking does not allow for the possibility that well-intentioned, ordinary, and everyday men and women made this beast through everyday practices and that everyday practices might, therefore, be the channels through which it survives, or even thrives.
One might have thought, at one time, moreover, that a "racist" was a person who committed some kind of overtly hateful and ill-intentioned act (or series of actions). His lexicon would have included any number of head-turning obscenities. This was never really real, but it was a nice idea. This way of thinking was entirely practical, and it still is.
It is a way of containing a staining and relentless social problem under the protective cover of a bell jar. This way of thinking about racism, though, has allowed the everyday practices that give some folks a boost and others a hard push down to proliferate unquestioned. It makes sense--I like to hang on to lies that make me feel safe, even when I know they are lies through and through somewhere in my head. Some of them only harm me, though, so maybe I am alright with keeping these or letting them go as I please.
Fog. It lingers and it infects and you can't touch it because it is everywhere and it is nowhere.
The woman on Alexie's Amtrak train is reproducing a time-honored set of social niceties. She's ruminating to a captive audience -- the stranger on the train. She's stringing together any number of cliches that fall, generally, under the "things one says on a train to a stranger" rubric. What is the harm, really?
These exchanges, though, are practices produced and reproduced in the context of deeply racist institutions. And institutions are not born out of the ether by some evasive higher power, are they? Nor are they the result of some evildoers working all on their own.
While the writing center is an institutional entity, it is also a sort of bastard child of the academy. It can afford, maybe, more than other entities, to transgress in various ways. What does this mean?
We are all "implicated" in a "power structure" that socializes us into "raced identities," which "are used to determine, categorize, evaluate, sort, promote, or reject us," and are the result of "the vast array of systems and institutions through which our social, political, intellectual, and spiritual lives are conditioned" (95). This is not, in other words, an issue we can opt out of because we are complicit in its operations every day in the everyday ways we do being people.
This is not the kind of issue one can simply say one does not participate in...it's a real thing in the world in which we live. We can no more escape it than we can escape the universe. So, now what?
The authors of the EWC are mindful of this rather icky milieu. They know the world is not going to be able to go through the 12 steps to "recover." One cannot pluck the fibers from their being they'd rather not know about and toss them to the wreckage pile. So, in an artful weaving together of a possibility-- a community in which humility reigns supreme and where participants linger in tensions and in unknowns -- they present the writing center community with a particular challenge--one that I can't fit into a neat little quip to end this piece even if I wanted very badly to do so. It would be easier, it would make me feel pretty good about myself, and it would satisfy. Instead, I'll have to end with a hope--that you'll want to go soot-hunting with me.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Meghan's 'stare fest'
AMANDA:
Okay so I just observed Meghan tutoring and it was....different? Her monotone tutee did not have much to say other than the topic 'drugs'. Granted that's what his projects were about but every other word? I heard Meghan trying to get more out of him and to try and get him to elaborate on his thoughts but he really didn't do that.
Along with his blank stares and lack of communication, I believe something was accomplished; the start of a repeat tutee! He was practically in lust with her! He obviously didn't have much to say or much to ask questions about but he kept the session going as long as he could. He seemed pretty content with his side-by-side one-ended stare fest.
MEG:
It's true. His interest did not seem to be with an upcoming paper ("Project 4") that we were brainstorming for. It wasn't due until May, but hey, it's nice to get a head start. (Even though "Project 2" is due next week and hasn't been started...) He spoke slowly and in circles. No matter what questions I came up with, he didn't have an answer other than "drugs."
"What is your paper about?"
"Drugs."
"Which ones?"
"Drugs in general."
It was exhausting. His thesis was too broad (Drugs are good and bad.) and he wasn't interested in narrowing it down. Therefore, the question becomes: "What do I do now?" It is difficult to engage a tutee who is just not interested...in their writing. However, that is not my job. As a tutor, I am here to help those who want to be helped.
So, I simply said, "Well, it looks like you have a good start," and I stood up. Men.
Okay so I just observed Meghan tutoring and it was....different? Her monotone tutee did not have much to say other than the topic 'drugs'. Granted that's what his projects were about but every other word? I heard Meghan trying to get more out of him and to try and get him to elaborate on his thoughts but he really didn't do that.
Along with his blank stares and lack of communication, I believe something was accomplished; the start of a repeat tutee! He was practically in lust with her! He obviously didn't have much to say or much to ask questions about but he kept the session going as long as he could. He seemed pretty content with his side-by-side one-ended stare fest.
MEG:
It's true. His interest did not seem to be with an upcoming paper ("Project 4") that we were brainstorming for. It wasn't due until May, but hey, it's nice to get a head start. (Even though "Project 2" is due next week and hasn't been started...) He spoke slowly and in circles. No matter what questions I came up with, he didn't have an answer other than "drugs."
"What is your paper about?"
"Drugs."
"Which ones?"
"Drugs in general."
It was exhausting. His thesis was too broad (Drugs are good and bad.) and he wasn't interested in narrowing it down. Therefore, the question becomes: "What do I do now?" It is difficult to engage a tutee who is just not interested...in their writing. However, that is not my job. As a tutor, I am here to help those who want to be helped.
So, I simply said, "Well, it looks like you have a good start," and I stood up. Men.
Labels and themes
When the staff created the URI WCenter blog last spring, we brainstormed a number of types of posts. Here's the list (with explanations as needed):
announcements
assignments - descriptions of common writing projects
diversity - posts on the theme of diversity
events - like announcements?
idea bucket - creative ideas for tutoring strategies
images
kvetch - complaints about work in the Center
proposal - policy change ideas
resources - online (and other) tutoring resources
Use these designations to "label" your posts, if you like. Or just look down the list to help you invent something to post.
Commenters: can we think up some other themes for posts? Give it a try.
announcements
assignments - descriptions of common writing projects
diversity - posts on the theme of diversity
events - like announcements?
idea bucket - creative ideas for tutoring strategies
images
kvetch - complaints about work in the Center
proposal - policy change ideas
resources - online (and other) tutoring resources
Use these designations to "label" your posts, if you like. Or just look down the list to help you invent something to post.
Commenters: can we think up some other themes for posts? Give it a try.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Up and Running...And Already Blogging?
Yes, I find that the first day of tutoring presented me with quite a few calls to write. The first thing I should point out here is that I began my shift disconcerted; I was suprised to learn that my four available appointments were booked solid on my first shift for the term. I thought, I suppose, that I might ease my way into the tutoring semester, but no such luck. I hope that these impresssions aren't tainted with that mood, but they likely are--just a quick preamble/disclaimer...
I was surprised to learn that my first tutee was a professor--a visiting professor from another country. I asked what he wanted to work on during the session, and he said he wanted to talk about how the writing center could help him with langauge and with writing.
No problem, I thought--I have this down: we let writers set the agenda; we work on specific writing-related issues and/or on particular pieces of writing; we, at times, help writers identify patterns in their own writing, etc.
However, when I finished this longish monologue detailing practices, he just sort of stared at me blankly. Picture: every facial feature completely still, posture titled slightly to the side (is he bored?), legs crossed, silent. Hmm...I wondered if he thought I was pausing, so I pretended that I had merely been pausing and I continued talking. However, my structure fell apart and I was just sort of spouting off little bits of information I could think of and asking random questions in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way; he started to look a little bewildred, so I slowed down and tried to be as relevant as possible...I told him about a former writing tutor we used to have; "She is fluent in Arabic," I told him with a knowing smile. "It is too bad she isn't here anymore."
Then his eyebrows forrowed and he tilted his head to the side. "I am already fluent in Arabic. Already I can speak and write Arabic."
I tried to say that I had known that and that I meant that perhaps she'd have made a good tutor for him due to this shared langauge background, but I suppose I see now how that doesn't actually make perfect sense.
After this conversation, he (remarkably) asked if he could make a running appointment with me -- twice a week, and could he have my email address.
I said yes to the appointments, so we'll see how it goes. It will, hopefully, be less awkward when there is writing between us.
The next session was fairly unremarkable -- a literature review in need of a better structural/organizational design, but I think the tutee looked vaguely upset by the end. I can't pinpoint why, and I am hoping that the upset was more overwhlem with her own work and not to do with aggressive tutoring.
The last session, though, was perhaps as unusal as the first. The tutee told me he is a PhD student working on a seminar paper and that his professor told him he needed to get writing help. The draft was thick, so I suggested he tell me which section he'd most want to work on. His reply: "I can email you the rest, what you don't get to today."
My reply, in brief: "No, thank you."
I told him we'd start at the beginning and we'd see how far we could get. I could see why his professor wanted him to get help; the essay was confusingly written, and he had a very strange variation on the subjunctive that manifest itself as a series of misplaced and badly executed "woulds." He seemed to want very much to question my grammar/mechanics knowledge. Every time I suggested a sentence-level change, he sort of grunted/commented on the fact that it was like that for a reason that was clearly over my head (it was not)...since this was the end of a strange shift, I very nearly told him that I am the product of 17 years of catholic education.
That's right, nuns. Sister Marie Therese with her "Jerry" books--her beloved 9th grade grammar books...my friend, one day, threw them out the window of our 3rd floor English classroom before she made her way down the hall and into the door; she looked for them on the shelf where they were usually kept, and she looked completely dejected to find them gone. It would be like me without the Longman's chart on transitional devices.
She was not red in the face and screaming the way she'd have been if someone were to talk while sentence diagrams unfolded in perfectly slanted cursive writing on the blackboard. No. She was silent and expressionless, and something in her stillness told me she was too overwhelmed to be angry per say. She made him go to the lawn to collect them. She did not even call the Christian brother who was our disciplinarian and resident ass grabber. We watched out of those small, rectangular windows as he tried to stay ahead of the wind blowing them out onto the highway. The books landed on our desks crumpled. We sharpened our pencils.
I ended this session by using a rather loud and emphatic tone and telling him to look up the subjunctive mood in a handbook, to (no one will be surprised here) see a transitional devices chart, to move certain parts around, to cut down on repetitions I could point out, and then to come back. Finally, finally he started to give me the impression that he thought I just might know something about writing effectively. That made me very glad in a perverse and mean-spirited sort of way, and he should be equally glad that I did not throw his essay out the window.
I was surprised to learn that my first tutee was a professor--a visiting professor from another country. I asked what he wanted to work on during the session, and he said he wanted to talk about how the writing center could help him with langauge and with writing.
No problem, I thought--I have this down: we let writers set the agenda; we work on specific writing-related issues and/or on particular pieces of writing; we, at times, help writers identify patterns in their own writing, etc.
However, when I finished this longish monologue detailing practices, he just sort of stared at me blankly. Picture: every facial feature completely still, posture titled slightly to the side (is he bored?), legs crossed, silent. Hmm...I wondered if he thought I was pausing, so I pretended that I had merely been pausing and I continued talking. However, my structure fell apart and I was just sort of spouting off little bits of information I could think of and asking random questions in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way; he started to look a little bewildred, so I slowed down and tried to be as relevant as possible...I told him about a former writing tutor we used to have; "She is fluent in Arabic," I told him with a knowing smile. "It is too bad she isn't here anymore."
Then his eyebrows forrowed and he tilted his head to the side. "I am already fluent in Arabic. Already I can speak and write Arabic."
I tried to say that I had known that and that I meant that perhaps she'd have made a good tutor for him due to this shared langauge background, but I suppose I see now how that doesn't actually make perfect sense.
After this conversation, he (remarkably) asked if he could make a running appointment with me -- twice a week, and could he have my email address.
I said yes to the appointments, so we'll see how it goes. It will, hopefully, be less awkward when there is writing between us.
The next session was fairly unremarkable -- a literature review in need of a better structural/organizational design, but I think the tutee looked vaguely upset by the end. I can't pinpoint why, and I am hoping that the upset was more overwhlem with her own work and not to do with aggressive tutoring.
The last session, though, was perhaps as unusal as the first. The tutee told me he is a PhD student working on a seminar paper and that his professor told him he needed to get writing help. The draft was thick, so I suggested he tell me which section he'd most want to work on. His reply: "I can email you the rest, what you don't get to today."
My reply, in brief: "No, thank you."
I told him we'd start at the beginning and we'd see how far we could get. I could see why his professor wanted him to get help; the essay was confusingly written, and he had a very strange variation on the subjunctive that manifest itself as a series of misplaced and badly executed "woulds." He seemed to want very much to question my grammar/mechanics knowledge. Every time I suggested a sentence-level change, he sort of grunted/commented on the fact that it was like that for a reason that was clearly over my head (it was not)...since this was the end of a strange shift, I very nearly told him that I am the product of 17 years of catholic education.
That's right, nuns. Sister Marie Therese with her "Jerry" books--her beloved 9th grade grammar books...my friend, one day, threw them out the window of our 3rd floor English classroom before she made her way down the hall and into the door; she looked for them on the shelf where they were usually kept, and she looked completely dejected to find them gone. It would be like me without the Longman's chart on transitional devices.
She was not red in the face and screaming the way she'd have been if someone were to talk while sentence diagrams unfolded in perfectly slanted cursive writing on the blackboard. No. She was silent and expressionless, and something in her stillness told me she was too overwhelmed to be angry per say. She made him go to the lawn to collect them. She did not even call the Christian brother who was our disciplinarian and resident ass grabber. We watched out of those small, rectangular windows as he tried to stay ahead of the wind blowing them out onto the highway. The books landed on our desks crumpled. We sharpened our pencils.
I ended this session by using a rather loud and emphatic tone and telling him to look up the subjunctive mood in a handbook, to (no one will be surprised here) see a transitional devices chart, to move certain parts around, to cut down on repetitions I could point out, and then to come back. Finally, finally he started to give me the impression that he thought I just might know something about writing effectively. That made me very glad in a perverse and mean-spirited sort of way, and he should be equally glad that I did not throw his essay out the window.
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