Blog #5 - Tutoring Session w/ Stephanie

During class last Wednesday, Stephanie and I took turns being the student and tutor. While I was the tutor, the two tutoring strategies that I used were "creating a headline or bumper sticker" with regards to the thesis/focus of her paper, and "mapping" for the developmental part of the paper. Since she had a rough draft but no main focus, I asked Stephanie to tell me what she wanted her paper to be about; in other words, what she got out of the Lunsford reading that she would like to respond to. I asked her to read her rough draft out loud so that we could get a better idea of where she wanted to go. Based on Stephanie's response to what she wanted her paper to be about, we used the "bumper sticker" approach in order to create a headline or focus. The one I came up with was "It Works, But Does It Really Work?" with regards to collaboration in the writing center. Stephanie's bumper sticker was "Collaboration - To Be Used But Not Abused". I liked her bumper sticker and so we went with that for the focus - that her paper will state why she agrees with Lunsford and the idea of collaboration, along with her experiences in the past as to why collaboration should be used cautiously in certain situations because tutors might misuse it as a way to be the "boss" of the student rather than a helper. From there, we kind of used the "mapping" approach when I asked her to look over her paper one more time to pick out certain parts that she could use in her final draft. She used different colored pens to see what information from the draft she could keep and what she could throw out.

When our time was up, Dr. Chandler asked a very important question: who did the most talking? I realized that Stephanie and I had an equal amount of talk time, but was it appropriate for this session? This is something that I need to always keep in mind when I conduct tutoring sessions - that the student should always do most of the talking.

Now that it was Stephanie's turn to be the tutor, she used the "matrices" and "read aloud" strategies to help me with my paper. When I read it out loud, I was able to catch my own mistakes and fix it immediately. Even though I already had an idea of what I wanted my paper to be about, Stephanie helped me with my focus by giving a lot of encouragement and positive feedback to reinforce the decision of my topic of choice. With regards to the matricies strategy, we didn't really go along with what the book told us to do. Instead, Stephanie kind of used the "coloring" method by telling me to use two different colored pens and draw brackets around information that I would keep for my final paper and use a different color to see information that I no longer needed. By having the different colors and by putting them into brackets, I was about to see more clearly what information I could work with for my final paper.

During this session, I realized that as the student, I did most of the talking which is supposed to happen. I learned that as a tutor, you must master different strategies that can be easily accessible when a student needs help. Since all students' learning styles are different, the tutor must learn to think on her toes and use strategies that are effective and can really help the student. A lot of encouragement is needed to help the student see the greatness of their paper, however, it should be positive feedback that will not crush their spirits but give them hope that they will produce good papers and someday become good writers too.

Blog #4 - Tutoring Session w/ Vanessa

I really enjoyed my tutoring session with Vanessa and I felt that I learned a lot as the student while observing her acted as the tutor. During our session, Vanessa asked me to make a list of main ideas from the Lunsford reading that I thought were important and could help me in creating my response essay. She asked me to narrow down my choices to the one that I felt most comfortable writing with, the one main idea that I either totally agreed or disagreed with. When I finally decided to write my response essay on "collaboration and why it works", Vanessa directed me to do the clustering method wherein I wrote the main idea in the middle of the page and circled it, then wrote ideas relating to that idea around it, creating a web. She asked me to do the same method for the "cons of collaboration" in order to see the other side of the argument. We looked at both clustered webs and decided to stick with "collaboration and why it works" since it had the most information out of the two which related to their respective main ideas.

By the end of the the tutoring session, I had a "battle plan", if you will, on how I was going to tackle this task of writing my response essay - I will first summarize why collaboration works and then respond by giving reasons on why I agree with Lunsford.

As the tutor, I felt that Vanessa conducted this session as if she was showing me a picture. We both looked at this picture and dug/looked closely at it in order to find the details that made this picture so important. She did not force me to begin writing my paper during the session; instead, she paved the way in order for me to find my focus, planning out the path that I was going to take in writing my essay, so that at home, when she's not there to help me, I'll know exactly what to do and hopefully, get the job done right.

Blog #3 - My Writing Center Philosophy

Unfortunately, I missed class on Wednesday, September 17, so I wasn't able to be a part of the class discussion concerning this topic. However, if I were to draw on my past experiences attending tutoring sessions in the CAS and from the readings that we've been doing in class, my Writing Center Philosophy would be a combination of the Garret and Burkean Parlor Centers that were coined by Andrea Lunsford.

I believe that knowledge is both interior, like the Garret Center, and exterior, like the Storehouse Center. I believe that in order for knowledge to be interior or to be our own, we need to search externally by looking elsewhere and learning from other people. Tutors and teachers should help direct the students in order for them to find that knowledge and make it their own. Students, on the other hand, should not be sponges absorbing everything that the tutor is telling them. Instead, students should use this information or knowledge as a guide and change it up a bit to make it personal.

Everyone in the writing center should work together like the Burkean Parlor Center and strive to have a collaborative environment. The writing center should be a friendly place where students do not feel intimidated that their writing might not be good enough. Staff members should be welcoming and should not discriminate against anyone. This place should also have enough staff members available at all times so that if students want to walk in and ask for help, tutors and teachers will be there. Tutors should be knowledgeable in the content in which they will help the students with. If everyone in this writing center will work collaboratively, I believe that tutors should also know the content that the students need to research or are working with in order to provide better guidance and assistance to those that they are helping.

Blog #2 - Process for Creating Lunsford Summary

In order to fully understand what Lunsford was talking about in her piece entitled "Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center", I had to reread it over a second time. I felt that her writing was very confusing because her definitions of each Center was unclear. She also didn't give a definite answer as to which side she was for - either Storehouse, Garret, or Burkean Parlor.She said that it would be ideal to have a Burkean Parlor center which was kind of like the Storehouse Center but since all three possessed similarities, it was hard to see what made them different.

The first time reading through, I highlighted key ideas that I thought would be important in creating my summary. I then wrote down in my journal all of the key ideas that I highlighted in order to see it more clearly. I placed each idea under the three categories named after each center which helped me understand what each one was all about. As I wrote the summary, I put everything in my own words using her main ideas as my guide.

Blog #1 - Response to First Reading

Research has shown that peer tutoring is effective for all age groups. It can help improve the skills and knowledge of the person being tutored, as well as the tutor herself. I learned through the readings that one-on-one conferences is as effective as traditional lecture classes because it creates in the student a positive attitude towards writing.

There are certain features that should be found in a person in order for them to qualify as a good tutor. Through our class discussion, we learned that tutors should be genuinely interested in helping the students succeed and improve in their writing. Tutors should offer feedback and encouragement so that the student will be inspired to finish what he/she started.

There are certain things that tutors should not be found doing, one of which is offering empty flattery. Offering too much praise creates doubt and suspicious in the student, causing them to wonder if their writing is really all that you're making it out to be. A tutor should not point out all the flaws in a student's writing because it will discourage them from improving on their writing.

What surprised me the most about the "don'ts" of tutoring is that some act as a therapist. There are times when tutors become overly involved in the student's writing that they cross the line. This should not happen; instead, tutors should focus on what's written and help the student improve and expand on what's there.

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first blog :o)