Exam Week, Reflecting on the Apprenticeship Experience

The most valuable aspect of this entire semester in English 383 has been my apprenticeship in the writing center. The hands on experience in actual sessions helped me gain confidence in my own ability to act as a tutor in the center and be a representative of the center. While there was a lot of idle time spent in the center, I did learn a lot from each of my sessions.

In total, I met with a student only five times this semester. However, every session was unique as each student had different needs, but I think I learned the most in my last session, as I was challenged with my first one on one session. As I said in my post, this student was annoyed with her professor, and it was difficult to convince her change needed to be made. To her, the paper was clear as day, and the connections were sensible. Truthfully, they were forced connections that did not really apply to the texts she was discussing in the paper. Her reluctance to change and the in depth conversation of the literature was a test of endurance for me. The whole time, I had an idea that I thought would have worked very well for the paper, but it did not really matter. The paper was hers. It was not my job to tell her what to write.

The literature could be applied in many ways. Bruffee’s article is the whole basis for the writing center, and I had to keep in mind that we were learning collaboratively in the center, it was not lecture and clear cut instruction. The ideas of many of our readings about patterns of error being the most important for correction were evident in almost every session I had. Patterns of error are the best points to focus on when discussing grammar with students. I generally tried to use the minimalist tutoring method described by Brooks in his article “Minimalist Tutoring”, attempting to get my students to realize their own mistakes and trying to teach to the “other self” as Murray would like. While I did have an ESL student once this semester and will have more if I continue to work in the center, the ESL readings did not apply as much. Perhaps because of my experience in other education classes, this reading was less valuable to me because I already felt prepared to work with students from other cultures. Additionally, I lived with a student from Italy last semester and that got me comfortable working with diverse students as well. Similarly, the articles on written commentary were helpful, but I did not get a chance to use them in the writing center. In the sessions I observed and directed, there was not a single chance for me to use written commentary effectively. Perhaps working as a Fellow would provide more opportunities for this because of the advanced notice both the students and tutor receive of the conference dates.

Overall, I do not think 383 would be complete without the apprenticeship. Despite the times when I had nothing to do, the little experience I had was really valuable. To be thrown into the center without having the experience in the center with a mentor would be insanity. I would be completely lost without this apprenticeship, but now I am confident in my ability not only to help a student with a paper, but help the student become a better writer.

Week Eleven, Last Week of the Semester

AND FINALLY I HAVE SOMEONE TO WORK WITH (with whom to work... yada yada yada)!!!

Since the calendar has been updated to include the apprentices, this is the first time that I actually had an appointment. Unfortunately, so did my mentor, who was not there to help me out at all when I had questions.

My session this week was sort of a mix between two of the videos we watched for class: "The Angry Writer" and "The Reluctant Revisor". The student was referred to the center by her professor, who told her that she had no thesis and was making forced comparisons that did not make any sense. She believed that her points made perfect sense, and they could stand fine for the paper so long as she revised her thesis.

I started the session by asking the student to explain the assignment to me. She told me that her only guidelines were that she had to choose two books from the first half of the semester and compare them. The assignment was due before the end of the next day, the last of the semester.

Understanding the instructions of the assignment, I could see why her professor complained that the argument was flawed. Instead of comparing two texts, she used Augustine's religious ideology to explain why the relationships in Song of Solomon failed. Unfortunately for the student, this was not the point of the assignment.

After reading the paper, I struggled for a minute with how to tackle this problem. It was evident that the student did a lot of research when considering her topic, and she picked out a lot for good textual evidence to support what she was saying. Her grammar and tone were not problematic in the least, and there were no evident typos I could find on my second read through. However, she did not really have a strong comparative thesis. However, while I was trying to help her recreate her thesis, I ran into some ethical difficulties.

I was not sure how much I should actually talk about the texts with her. The paper was meant to be her analysis, not mine, and I found it extremely difficult not to just tell her what I think would make a good comparison for the paper. I recalled that Freed wrote, "We would be doing students a disservice by not voicing our own opinions, forcing them to scrutinize their work." From there, I tried to play like devil's advocate in our discussion of the two works. I told her that I thought she could make a good comparison between what Augustine is looking for and what Milkman is looking for, and how they each change when it is found. While she did not understand completely what I was saying (and I was glad because I was afraid that I had perhaps gone too far and given too much advice), I gave her a minute to think about it while I went out to the hallway to "get a drink of water." When I came back, she had a brand new thesis statement, completely of her own making and far enough removed from what we were talking about to make me feel like I had done a good thing.

Finally, I told her that it may be easier to make the comparison if she wrote a paragraph about one text, and then the next about the other text. She told me that she really appreciated my help and that she "couldn't wait to get it over with," which for me was comparable to "I'm really excited about finishing this thing."

HAPPY END OF THE SEMESTER!!
(one more post to come as a reflection)

Week Ten, Would someone PLEASE come to the Writing Center????

It's getting a little frustrating now. I have not tutored a student since before spring break, and neither has my mentor (at least duing my hour). It's coming down to the end of the semester now, and I've missed a few empty weeks on this blog. Maybe next week (the last one!) I'll have a real one on one session (something that will be invaluable for next year). I will reflect on my experience more in this post later...

Week Nine, Getting to Know my Mentor

Because, yet again, there was no appointment this week, I decided to interview my mentor for an assignment in another class. I was supposed to identify a person with a different background from myself and interview her, identifying differences in our culture-general framework. I took liberty with the definition of "different" when trying to find someone to interview from a different background, but what I found was interesting. Even though my mentor grew up two states away from me, we had some general differences, which proved to me that everyone is an individual (not that I didn't think so in the first place). Here's what I found:

For this activity, I interviewed a UR student from New Jersey with an English heritage. The student asked not to be identified, but I will refer to her as Jane for this assignment. We found that we had many similarities, but there were some obvious differences as well. I asked many of the suggested questions and expanded some of them to uncover further differences.

The first difference came in the second question of the interview: who makes decisions at home. In my experience, my parents led their kids to be independent in making their own decisions, and when it came to making decisions about the home, it was a group effort. It reflected our democratic environment in that we had to find common ground to come to a consensus and make a decision together. In Jane’s home, her parents made all the decisions and children were an afterthought. She thought this was because of the value of adults in society over children. Her parents did not think that she and her siblings could contribute much or should be able to contribute much to important discussions about “adult” things.

We also differed in what provides security in life. I believed that tight relationships can provide security. Knowing that you have someone to rely on in a hard time is essential to comfort and happiness. For her, money provided ultimate security. She believed that money provided opportunities for her and her family and that things are more regular when you can pay to have them be so. Without a steady stream of money, you cannot know what you will be able to eat next week.

Our expectations of young children were also different. I took the attitude that kids will be kids and they will make mistakes once in a while. People learn from experience and need guidance to become socialized. She believed that children were more expected to follow rules, obey elders, and be nice than any other age group in society. Children are an embodiment of their parents’ success, so they must obey them. It is also expected that children will go to school and achieve.
Along the same lines, she wished that her children could grow up without such high expectations. She wishes she could have had more freedom growing up and hopes to provide that to her children. On the other hand, the main thing I want to provide my children is the message that if there is something they love and they work hard enough at it, they can succeed. I know that when I was young, I loved hockey. Because I was always small however, I tended to be cut from teams and became discouraged. Today, I know I could have played the sport at the college level if I would have believed in myself and followed through with my dreams.

The final big difference happens to be about marriage. When asked who she thinks she should marry, she said that she should marry the person with whom she falls in love. I responded that I should marry the girl with whom I fall in love. Perhaps this difference shows a greater acceptance on her part of diverse sexual orientations. I feel like I am accepting of those things, and perhaps I only answered the girl with whom I fall in love because of the personal preference I have for women. However, Jane is a heterosexual woman, and she still answered person, a gender neutral word. This made me think a bit about my own subconscious beliefs.

We agreed about a lot of issues. We both stressed that individualism is very important in society, as reflected by the fact that you are supposed to move away from your parents at a fairly young age. We also thought that success is defined by happiness, no matter how much money one makes; however, I believed that people with more money can afford to purchase more things that make them happy and thus perhaps that money can buy happiness. She adamantly disagreed with me, arguing that even with increased opportunities, people need to find what moves them and inspires them, something that cannot be found in a store. We also both agreed that marriage is up to the individuals involved. I was surprised by her response to this because she seemed to have to obey her parents a lot more than I did, and I thought maybe they could have input on how proper her marriage might be. However, individualism seems to outweigh the value of respecting elders in this case. With both said that it is important to be self-sufficient at a young age and that you should rely on others in your youth and for love and support in difficult times. Jane also added that you can depend on others to provide opportunities for you through personal connections.

Week Eight, Another Day Off....

The writing center seems to be dead this time of day. It seems to be a slow part of the semester for everyone except me. I spent the entire hour working on education homework... ugh.

Week Seven, SPRING BREAK!

I definitely did not correct any papers this week. I had a wonderful time in sunny Hilton Head Island!

Week Six, A Day Off

No one had an appointment with us today. More next week hopefully...

Week 5, A Leadership Paper

I have always expected to see diversity in the types of students and writing assignments that come into the center for help. Different students have different priorities, and it is nice to see that many students believe that their writing is important, as I assume is one of their reasons for coming to the writing center.

This week I got to see my first paper for a leadership class, which was somewhat different from the typical paper seen in the writing center. The leadership professors ask their students to break out of the typical style of writing for their essays. For example, the student said she was required to state in her thesis exactly what she will be arguing in the paper, using the first person. When I saw the first person in, of all places, the thesis statement, I immediately circled it to comment on later. I was surprised to learn the different style required by the department.

I am so used to the conventional college essay that it took me a minute to accept this, and I even questioned the girl, and almost the professor's judgement, saying to myself that the style change was unnecessary and ridiculus. I am definitely glad that I did not come out and say that, especially to a student with such a strong paper and a pride in her department.

There were not many changes to be made, but I did see that the student had made some typos that she did not catch. Instead of pointing them all out to her, I pointed out one and told her to go over the paper and make sure she proofread it carefully, remembering the goal of the writing center to make better writers, not better papers.

Having worked primarily with elementary and middle school students in my education career, I think it is very interesting to move to a realm that is more concerned with fine tuning than with instruction on mostly concrete facts. I think collaboration should be a big part of teaching young people just as it is for college level writers in the center here.

Week Four, Student Athlete

This past Thursday, I had my first ever conference with a student athlete. And guess what: nothing was different. Meeting with student athletes (so far as my experience reaches) is the same as working with students who are not athletes. The student came in with some strong ideas that she needed help communicating with the reader. I saw this as the same type of struggles as most other students who come into the writing center.

We sat down this week to two writing assignments: a 200 word reflection about a concert for a music class, and a two page paper demonstrating that the student had observed a sociological principle through her own experience.

The reflection clearly got accross the student's feeling about the concert: she thought it was frighteningly pretentious. Being from Trinidad herself, and experiencing a concert that was supposed to represent the Christmas season in a Caribbean environment, she had strong feelings about the concert and felt restricted by the length of the paper. Since the reflection communicated her major dissappointments with the concert, we worked on condensing statements so she could say more, and comma placement, a common pattern of error that the tutor regularly notices in the student's work.

The second piece of writing needed a bit more work. The student wrote about the behavior of students in a study hall with and without an authority figure present. She obviously had understanding of the topic and the principle she was trying to demonstrate, but this time had trouble communicating exactly what she was trying to say. She had written a strong thesis that was easily identifyable, but her topic sentences needed work connecting back to that thesis. We asked the student what the main ideas of each paragraph were and how they related back to her thesis, and then explained that she should open each paragraph with a statment that summarizes exactly that. She picked up on the idea quickly and developed much stronger topic sentences without much guidance.

When it comes to working with student athletes, tutors must take an individual approach to each student. No one fits any stereotype exactly, and it is imperative not to judge a student before they walk into the center. Every athlete on this campus is here for more than just athletics. It is a strong university that opens up more opportunities for athletes than other Division I schools around the nation. When it comes to helping these students write, it is essential not to group them or stereotype them in any way. Doing so will only lead to frustration and anxiety on both the student's and the tutor's behalf.

Week Three, A Core Paper

"The tutor's goal is not to fix the individual paper, but to help the student become a better writer." ~Muriel Harris

This quote seems almost word for word to be the motto of the UR Writing Center. On Thursday, I believe I experienced the most common (or at least the easiest) session for tutors: a student with a decent paper on a familiar subject. Therefore, I chose this quote because I think the tutor did an excellent job pointing out patterns of error, and helping the student fix his own problems.

As we sat down with the student for the session, he explained to the tutor and I that he was working on a core paper for a "grammar freak" of a professor. He told us that his professor did not require students to go to the Writing Center, but highly suggested it because it "helps with the readability" of what tends to be writer based prose. When I asked him why he continued to come to the writing center, he said that he likes to meet with a fellow after every revision to make sure he did not make any grammar mistakes (primarily) and to see if there is some obvious room for improvement of the content (secondarily). A red flag went up in my mind as it seemed the student's priorities were out of order.

Reading the paper through for the first time, the tutor made some corrections with grammar and typos. She began to write some comments in the margins with questions raised in reading the paper, but scribbled them out as they were answered later. When she finished her first read through the paper she explained to the student that the paper was well-organized, well-written, and had good support. I too was impressed by the strong evidence and body of the paper; however, I thought the conclusion could use some work as it seemed to restate the thesis and then contrast it with another idea that seemed out of place relative to the rest of the paper.

Because grammar was the student's first concern, and we all concluded that the paper was a strong one, the tutor chose to focus first on the main pattern of grammatical error in the paper: pronoun antecedant confusion. She took one example from the paper and asked the student what the pronoun referred back to. Then she showed him how the reference was unclear and needed to be revised. The student changed the sentence, and the tutor told him to go through the paper and look for others that may be unclear. To make sure the point was clear to him, the tutor found another example and asked the student to correct it on his own.

There were also some instances of tense confusion in the paper, which I pointed out to the tutor who told the student. Without saying more than "tense confusion", the student knew exactly what the problem was and changed it himself.

Finally, the tutor asked the student if he had any other questions, and the student asked about his conclusion which seemed a little brief to him. The tutor reread the conclusion and suggested the student rewrite it because it seemed to contradict the thesis. She was quite directive in her commentary during this brief part of the session.

I may have reversed the order of the session, as I immediately thought the conclusion needed work after reading through the paper. However, the way the tutor conducted the session was also effective because there were no grammatical errors in the conclusion and the student's first priority was grammar. I think I would have been a little less directive with my commentary on the conclusion as well, asking the student questions like: "How does this sentence relate back to your thesis? What else could you say to expand on the thesis and raise more questions for the reader?"

The session had a happy ending though, and it certainly helped the writer more than the paper. Because it was a strong paper with good support, perhaps focusing on grammatical error was not a terrible thing. Besides, it could truly help the writer in the long run as he will look out for pronoun and tense confusion when revising his papers. The goal of the writing center was truly achieved in this hour.

Week Two, ESL Finance Student

"The point is this: We can discuss error in two ways: we can discuss it at a level of consciousness that places that error at the very center of our consciousness. Or we can talk about how we experience (or not) what we popularly call errors of usage as they occur in the ordinary course of our reading a text" (Williams 167).

This week at the writing center I experienced the first tutorial in which I have taken part. The tutor, who was nervous about working on a paper for a finance class (a class which she knew nothing about), first showed me how to check the calendar to see what to expect at your appointment. We waited for a few minutes until the student, a girl from eastern Europe, walked in with her 12 page paper.

A bit overwhelmed by the length of the paper, the tutor skimmed through the first pages, looking for any obvious errors. The first thing she could tell was that the paper was very well researched, but it had very little citations. The only in-text citations the student gave were authors' names before a quote. The student acknowledged the problem, but also told us that she did not know the proper form for citation. At this point, the tutor decided to move on and discuss citations later.

The student asked if the tutor could tell if anything was missing, but since the tutor was unfamiliar with the topic of the paper, she referred the student back to her professor, saying, "I'm not a good judge to tell you what's missing here."

I think I might have handled this a little differently. I probably would have asked a bit more about the assignment, and read through to see what questions arose from the paper. A well written paper can answer most of the reader's questions, and still raise more questions for further consideration. If there were a point in the paper in which the text was unclear, or needed more explanation, I probably would have looked to ask the questions I had about that part.

Having said that, the tutor moved on to grammar. She brought up three grammar points for the student to consider. First, she asked the student what the difference was between "balance of payment" and "balance of payments", if any. The student said she would look up the answer and make the term uniform throughout the paper. Next, the tutor turned attention to comma usage, explaining to the student that a comma is used to separate transition words (however, moreover, nowadays, on the other hand, etc.) from the sentence. This was a pattern of error the student had in her paper, so it was probably a good point for discussion. Finally the tutor told the student that there were other individual instances of translation issues, and that if the student had time to set up another meeting, she could go over those on the next draft.

After looking at some of these usage problems that hindered the reading on the first time through, the tutor tried to show the student how to use Noodlebib. Unfortunately, the student was only further confused because she did not know what format she was supposed to use for the paper. The tutor decided to show the student how to do MLA style citations, and used an example of a bibliography entry in MLA form.

I would have told the student that it was extremely important to find this out from the professor, and then come back to learn how to do the in-text citations and bibliography. Giving the student information about MLA style citations before knowing what format the professor wanted was probably not to the benefit of the student, especially if the professor wanted something else. This could only confuse the student more.

Overall, I enjoyed this meeting despite being sick with a stomach flu. I feel like I would have been able to help a lot more if I were feeling better. I tried to keep my distance because I didn't want to scare anyone off with my germs, so next time I will hopefully be able to interact a bit more.

Week One, Getting Acquainted With the Writing Center

The small, windowless room or two that is the UR Writing Center is located in the Administrative wing of the Boatwright library. Tucked away where no students can see or be seen, the center is not very welcoming to first time students. The dark shadow of the large clock tower keeps the red brick surroundings outside the entrance chilled and discouraging. Pulling open the heavy wooden door reveals a skinny hallway with a low ceiling and bare white walls. The hundred feet to the entrance of the Academic Skills and Writing Center is lit brightly by stinging UV lamps. I, already nervous about what I might find here, am tempted to turn around and walk briskly out the door. But met with the smiling face of a UR Writing Fellow, I begin to relax and recall my purpose here: learning through observation.

The warm face of my assigned fellow is perhaps the only warm thing about the writing center. The atmosphere is clearly not one that allows for students to relax and learn, and being that a student’s emotions should be taken into consideration during a tutorial, this place does not seem like an appropriate one for any type of learning. The five by five room, cloaked with the intrusive rumbling of a noisy air vent, was definitely crowded with just me and my fellow, leaving no room for a third should a student ever come into the center during one of my apprenticeship times.

However, since my writing was not being scrutinized by a strange set of eyes, I felt at ease after my introduction. My Writing Fellow, Claire, introduced me to the writing center, since we did not have a student scheduled to come in during her hour, and no one came in without an appointment either. She showed me what a valuable resource Writer’s Web can be, and told me that in her last session it helped her to explain comma use to a foreign student. I watched as she filled out the report form for her last session. I saw that not only was she kind in appearance and person, but her reflective thoughts were also very positive and encouraging. She seemed to truly take to heart what some of our readings have said about considering the emotion of a student who has worked up the courage to come in for help. I will take this to heart, especially after taking that first intimidating walk down the narrow hallway to the writing center.