Being Tutored

It's so nice to be tutored, I've decided. Each time I've sat down to work with Taylor, Cara, and Scott, I've received a lot of help with my papers. We discuss issues and make comments back and forth, and some amazing idea always arises that makes me think, "Why didn't I think of that!" In the past, I've done peer review sessions during class, but they haven't been very helpful. Perhaps they're so good in this class because of that fact that all of us are pretty good friends now, that we've all received some training about tutoring, or that we all have a passion for reading and writing; perhaps it's a mix of all of these. Whatever caused it, it's nice. One of the aspects I like about it is that we both help each other. Unlike traditional tutoring sessions in which one person is helped, both people really benefit in these settings. I wonder if this is what the basic nature of a writing circle or writing group is. Of course, perhaps a writing group is more based around someone reading to a group and then receiving mass feedback. I suppose that would be nice in some situations, but I'd imagine that I'd prefer the type of one-on-one work and feedback that comes from tutoring or peer-review sessions. Meeting with Dr. McKinney and Dr. Snyder recently have also been effective experiences for improving my papers and my skills as a writer. Neither of these teachers took authoritarian stances during our meetings; both meetings were essentially peer review sessions... in an office. As much as I've learned about how to tutor better during this semester, I've also learned how helpful it can be to be tutored. I think that there could almost be an entirely different class dedicated to discussing how to be an effective tutee. I could certainly use it.

Peer Review

It was great working with Scott today. We helped each other out a lot. I got a lot of ideas from him about how to boost the creativity of my and Cara's project. It was nice to hear him give real support and encouragement for our good ideas and provide suggestions for areas that could be improved.

He was kind of stuck with knowing where to go. But as we talked about different ideas and worked together, he came up with the awesome idea of doing a message board format for his paper.

It's amazing how collaboration works. The ideas we bounced off of each other randomly inspired the other person to say something, which inspired another idea, which inspired another idea, until finally a good and acceptable idea was found. It would be interesting to record these peer review sessions to try and discover how the process of learning and making decisions takes place. It's a constant state of feedback and evaluation. It was a lot of fun. It was completely beneficial for both of our papers. I'm glad we had as much time as we did. I don't think I would've got as much done otherwise.

The project Cara and I are doing is coming along really well. We met on Saturday and shared some various ideas. She worked on it a lot on Sunday and came up with a new direction for it. She sent me an email about it, but I didn't get it until 5 am on Monday. Fortunately, I understood what she was saying, wrote my part, and both of our parts fit together very well. We just have a few revisions to do, and it will be great.

Online Tutoring and Observing

The discussion about online tutoring yesterday was interesting. I heard some really good points being made about the potential benefits of it. In my Comm class, we recently talked about computer mediated communication and how some people just completely come out of their shells when they're online; so for them, online tutoring would be great. Like I had mentioned, though, for those of us who aren't too computer savvy and who prefer personal interaction, online tutoring isn't much of a substitute for face-to-face sessions.

Humorously, after observing one of Taylor's traditional sessions yesterday, the opportunity arose to observe her do an online tutoring session. She wasn't too familiar with how to get it going, so Cara helped set it up and then had to go. Taylor chatted to the girl and got the information needed on the yellow half-sheet and then uploaded her paper to the screen. However, once she got the paper uploaded, whenever she typed, the text would appear on the paper instead of in the IM box. We tried and tried but couldn't figure it out. I volunteered to communicate with the student via IM on the main computer while Taylor read the paper and made comments. This would have been quite an interesting session, but we found that it didn't work! Either the student couldn't receive our messages, or we couldn't receive hers; it was just a weird situation. After trying to make contact with her for 15 minutes, I left. I don't know if Taylor was able to get the session going again or not. Because of these technological difficulties and my personal preferences about tutoring, I think that I prefer face-to-face tutoring for now.

ESL Discussion and the Tutoring Project

Some of the main points that I enjoyed from today's readings were the ideas that we need to get to know students' cultures. I've thoroughly enjoyed the experiences I've had in exchanging cultural information with international students. One student taught me more about Buddhist philosophy after he asked me to explain why there seems to be such a rift between science and religion in the U.S. According to him, Buddhist philosophy has no qualms with science and actually embraces it. Because of these ideological differences, it was somewhat difficult for him to enter into Western academic discourse that takes such issues for granted. Being a grad student in the communication department, it was important for him to be conversant with the background cultural issues in America before he could intelligibly comment on related issues in his writing. I'd never thought that I'd serve as a sort of intercultural communicator as a WC tutor, but I did... and it was fun. I really enjoyed learning about another perspective on life. In another instance, I learned the Chinese symbol for "sun" from another student. It looks like two squares stacked on top of each other. Since then, I've noticed that shape in architecture on campus, and it's made me think of the Chinese sun and smile. (how's that for cheesy?) It's thoroughly enjoyable and helpful to communicate to international students about their cultures. It's too bad that we don't have more time to just get to know people.

The observations are coming along pretty slowly. Just now, though, I set up some times to observe Taylor in the WC. She's completely booked over the next few days, unlike the girl we were going to observe at the Writing Desk who is working the same amount of hours but has only one scheduled appointment. It'll be interesting to observe a coworker.

Censorship vs. Empathy Training

I realize that this isn't directly related to tutoring or to the entirety of our class discussion today, but this is a topic that really interests me. In fact, last year I presented a paper at an undergraduate research paper conference about the need for discussing love as a solution to social problems (not just as an abstract emotion) in classrooms. That sounds pretty cheesy, I know, but I think that it really makes sense. Actions and words of offense and exploitation run rampant in our modern American society and in many other societies. Often, we censor explicit and offensive words and behaviors. The problem is that the standards for explicitness and offensiveness, just like everything else pertaining to language, are subject to change. Thus, censors are unable to create concrete standards of linguical conduct, and censees are unable to be sure about the current appropriateness of their language. In short, all parties involved (censors, censees, and victims) can easily become frustrated. Interestingly, exploitative behaviors, which can be as damaging physically as offensive language is phsychologically and emotionally (if not more so), are not as carefully censored as offensive terms are, in my opinion. Even though there are many laws prohibiting certain exploitative behaviors (which is a luxury that is not afforded to the offensive language arena), many of these behaviors still occur in such an insidious way that if a similar issue lurked in the realms of language, the "guardians of political correctness" would be appalled beyond belief. With each exploitation-produced product that we, as ignorant consumers, buy, we are degrading a fellow human being to an extent unreachable by offensive language. Rather than just creating myriad laws or conventions that prohibit and punish both offensive language and exploitative behaviors, why don't we start focusing on preventing these problems by helping school-aged children think critically about various values, behaviors, and attitudes? Morals do not have to be imposed by authoritarian figures in order for this to take place; students should simply be given the opportunity to reflect on what their values are or would be in a given situation. Current local and global humanitarian issues could be discussed during classes, and children could be encouraged to reflect on what should happen in these situations as well as what their individual values, behaviors, and attitudes could do to help remedy these situations. Such exercises could easily be implemented in English and Social Studies classes; other disciplines could also get involved in the effort by assigning such assignments as appropriate. By reflecting on and discussing empathic issues (which are essentially related to love) in classrooms, preventative measures would be in place for resolving social problems and decrease some of the need for the censorship of words and behaviors.

Murphy and DiPardo

I realized during class yesterday that I kind of contradicted myself. During Cara's presentation, I stated that there is profundity in the small things we do as tutors that actually can significantly affect people over time, step by step. Then, during Katie's discussion, I said that I thought it was a stretch how DiPardo said that words change conscious and, therefore, major aspects of life. I suppose that these two statements aren't necessarily contradictory, but I do feel that they need to be resolved. I think that the balance comes in recognizing that words and tutoring sessions do have the ability to change something in the tutee that could lead to a significant change within them, but the choice is ultimately up to them to let/make it happen or not. Not to get too philosophical or anything, but I think that's how it is with a lot of things: events, discussions, objects, people, and anything else can, if you let them, exert a great influence on your development. Some things inevitably change you, but with many things, you have to let them or make them change you.

To tie all that back into tutoring, I think that we can try to create an environment in which students can choose to make significant changes if they want. We can make the Writing Center a comfortable and friendly environment, and when we start tutoring, we can share large-scale skills and rules in the context of the specific paper, always trying to involve the students and make them think about the paper themselves in order to fix it. By doing these things, I think that students will have the opportunity to become better writers and better readers of their work. Perhaps they will then gain confidence that will help them in other parts of their lives, or perhaps they might discover that they love writing and want to change their major,... anything could happen. It almost seems like the butterfly effect: some small thing somewhere may effect some huge event somewhere else. I guess you never know.

Observation in the Bookstore's Cafe

Observations:
1) smells like coffee
2) there were seven students here already
- 2 girls talking (one is Krystina)
- 2 other girls talking
- 1 girl studying
- 2 guys reading (one is David)
3) people who've walked since being here: 9
4) people who've bought something: 3
5) cashiers: 1
6) sounds: loose change clinking, receipts printing, machine beeping, water running, students talking, squeaking
7) there are wood and carpet floorings
8) people enter from both entrances
9) there's some sort of crowd control guides to help create lines

Questions/Thoughts:
1) the smell is strong; how many people get coffee here a day?
2) 7 students were already here, but not many of them seemed to have coffee. This place could probably seat 35 people.
3&4) 9 people have come in and only 3 have bought something; only 2 have stayed.
5) maybe a lot of people come in at other times (since there are so many seats), but this time of day must be slow.
6) some things are happening
7) some people are sitting at tables on both surfaces
8) there's fairly open access with two fairly wide entrances - many people can be facilitated
9) there must be times when a lot of people are here, necessitating the line guide, but right now it's pretty slow