Just Play

Gyra's blog post about different kinds of intelligences really got me thinking. I posted a comment on it, but still couldn't really get it out of my head and needed a little more room to think about it so I decided to write a post on it myself. It made me think of Good Will Hunting, not sure if you have all seen this movie but if you haven't you should because it is amazing. Matt Damon or Will in the movie is a genius who has never gone to college or had any really good education but is just naturally smart especially in regards to math. He is trying to explain his intelligence to his girlfriend as the conversation goes like this:

Will: Beethoven, okay. He looked at a piano and it just made sense to him. He could just play.
Skylar: So what are you saying? You play the piano?
Will: No, not a lick. I mean, I look at a piano, I see a bunch of keys, three pedals and a box of wood. But Beethoven, Mozart, they saw it, they could just play. I couldn't paint you a picture, I probably can't hit the ball out of Fenway, and I can't play the piano.
Skylar: But you can do my O-chem paper in under an hour.
Will: Right, well I mean when it came to stuff like that... I could always just play.

When I read Gyra's post about different kinds of intelligence this popped into my head immediately. I think that in the way that Matt Damon describes in this movie, some people can just play certain things. I could never just understand math the way some of my friends do, but when it comes to reading and writing, as Matt Damon puts it, "I could always just play." So, I guess my point in bringing this up is coming to the realization that when it comes to reading and writing, other people can't necessarily just play the way that I do. I think to be a writing tutor it is important to understand this. To be a teacher of any kind really it is important to understand this. Teaching someone something that you have never really had to try at, something that you are just sort of naturally good at, is really hard! When I help people with papers sometimes I find myself giving advice and when the writer asks me "Well, why is it that I should do that?" I have absolutely no idea how to respond. This, to me, is the biggest challenge in being a writing tutor. The majority of us are a part of this program because we have a natural talent for writing and English, so how can we really help those who don't have this natural talent? It has always been difficult for me to tell someone how to approach writing and reading because I don't even know how I approach it. I just do it. When I started this class at the beginning of the semester this seemed to be my biggest hurdle, figuring out how to help someone improve their writing when I wasn't even really sure if there were concrete things that made good writing. To me, good writing has never been simply the sum of a bunch of mechanical aspects of "good writing" but instead is in the essence of the writing, in the flow of it. Now I have learned that while writing may still be something that comes naturally to some and maybe never will come easily to others, there are things that we as writing tutors can do to make this process a little easier for other people. Maybe we will never be able to teach people to "just play" when it comes to writing the way that we always have, but I do feel confident that with the skills we have learned in this class we can do something to help those whose natural talents fall outside of the realm of writing and reading. And maybe in the meantime they could help me with that whole math and science thing? Because I am very far from being able to "just play" when it comes to those things. Honestly...I am very far from even knowing the rules when it comes to those things.

Second Boys and Girls Club Visit

I have to say that I think our second visit went considerably better than our first, at least mine did. The kid I've been working with had already started working on his script a bit and so I had him start writing things down that he wanted to say. First we started talking about the basics about the person he interviewed. I had him write down how he wanted his video to start. Then I asked him some questions about the pearls of wisdom he got from her and what they meant to him. I was impressed with his writing and he came up with some very good things to say! We then went on to type out what he had so far and then did bullets of other things he wanted to talk about. Overall it was very successful and I was happy because I felt like I had actually helped this time and we actually got somewhere.

On another completely irrelevant note, I just found this video on CNN and thought it was hilarious. Thought some of you might enjoy it too.

Fearless Cat Faces Two Alligators

Directive Approach for ESL students

I have been thinking about some of the things that Professor Grove said last week about ESL students, particularly about the need to be directive. It is interesting that Professor Grove said that the best approach with an ESL student is to be directive because if you give them too many options they will simply be overwhelmed. We have been talking so much about directive vs. facilitative approach and have pretty definitively decided that it is always better to be facilitative. We have discussed the ways that facilitative comments are more appropriate and helpful especially as our role as tutors, but the class with Professor Grove made me realize that this is not always the case. I never thought about the fact that some students might need a more directive approach until Professor Grove pointed it out. She said that in this situation we are like the teacher and they are the student. It took a little while for me to adjust to this idea, since most of the semester we have been talking about ourselves as peers who can help talk about ideas. It is a little intimidating to me that for ESL students we need to assume this "teacher" role. I have been thinking to myself "Why would anyone trust me with such an important job?????" Thankfully, Professor Grove also talked to us about some of the ways to prioritize our concerns with ESL students during one session. We brought up the concern that there are so many things that we could help them with so how do we know which are the most important? Professor Grove suggested that the first thing we work on is grammar. This also was a big shocker to me since previously we have discussed not paying too much attention to grammar and focusing on ideas more. She said that grammar is something manageable that we can work with and it gives the students very concrete things to focus on, which is what they need. All in all, Professor Grove's visit was extremely helpful to me and completely changed the way I view consultations with ESL students. Hopefully, I will be able to follow her advice if and when I am in this situation.

High School Student Mentoring Pt. 2

I have been corresponding through email with the high school student that I mentored about the college writing process over the last few weeks. We were hoping to get another meeting time in to talk about her essay, but unfortunately we couldn't find a time that worked for either of us, so we have resorted to email. I first want to comment and say that giving my comments over email instead of in person was considerably harder. In person I could easily make a comment and give one of my radiant smiles and say it in a nice way so that it doesn't sound too harsh, whereas over email I found that this wasn't quite as easy. I was immediately faced with the problem of how to word my criticisms without sounding too harsh. I read over her essay and was pleased that it had improved so much from the first time we talked and that she seemed to have taken a lot of my suggestions to heart. I told her that I thought it was overall a good essay but that there were a few areas that might need clarifying. I decided to use the track changes feature on word to write little comments about wording and spelling and small errors, which proved to be very helpful. I then attached her paper back in an email to her in which I gave sort of "end comments" about the paper as a whole. I realized my email was quite lengthy by the time I finished it, mostly because I spent several sentences clarifying things that I could have said quite easily in person. My real reason for writing this blog post is not to tell you about this particular consultation, but to reflect on the use of email as a means of writing comments. As I mentioned, it is particularly difficult to write comments over email, and I now understand why the writing center has a policy that students must actually come in to the writing center for a consultation rather than simply emailing their paper. Over email it is much more tempting to tell the writer what to fix rather than discussing with them about their ideas, for the obvious reason that the writer is not present for you to discuss with them. At first, when I heard about the policy of having to do a face to face consultation, I thought it seemed a bit useless, but this consultation has made me realize why that is a policy. As I was writing my comments back to the student, I was very tempted to simply cross things out and change words and tell her exactly what to fix. I realized that the process of an email consultation by its nature sets up an authoritative relationship between tutor and tutee rather than the facilitative one that we hope to have. Despite these issue, I think I managed to keep a facilitative tone rather than an authoritative one, but I'm not sure that if I were to continue to do email consultations I would be able to keep this up. In short, consultations should be in person, not over email or any other type of electronic device.

Reflection on Our Visit to the Boys and Girls Club

I realize this is a week late, but I wanted to reflect on how our visit to the boys and girls club went since I was sick for class on Wednesday. I have to be honest, our visit was not exactly what I expected. I thought that we would be giving the kids practical help on how to create their video and tips on how to make a better video. When we got there I realized that there were only a few students who had even done their interviews yet, let alone even started their videos. I realize these kids are pretty young, but the boy I was working with didn't even know when this was due or when they were going to start working on the actual video. We spent the majority of our time just talking to each other about our favorite things and our siblings, because there wasn't too much to talk about regarding the digital story. I had him tell me about his interview because he was one of the few who had done the interview and I showed him my digital story and gave him some tips on how I did mine. I don't think it was a waste for us to go on Monday, I just wish they had been more prepared so that we could have helped more. I didn't feel like I was able to help the boy I was talking with because he didn't have enough done to work on. I realize this will sometimes be the case with people who come in the writing center, but at least those people seem to have an idea of what their assignment is and we can discuss how they will go forward from where they are. The kids didn't seem to know what their process was going to be at all in this project and I have to admit I felt a little incompetent desperately trying to think of things I could help him with before he had even started the project. You can't keep a 12 year old kid talking for too long about how they intend to proceed with a project, so I felt kind of stuck. Maybe other people felt that they had more success with the kid they were working with, but I wish there was more I could have done or helped with. It just seemed like it wasn't very organized so it was difficult to give him very much help. Hopefully when we visit next week they will be a little further along in the process and there will be more concrete things that we can help with.

Non-traditional Students in the Writing Center

Sorry it has been so long since I have blogged! I have been absolutely swamped with work. Anyways, this is a bit of my free writing from class today and my thoughts on some things that we talked about!

          We read about a lot of non-traditional students in the writing center, but it seems to me that these students don't frequent the Richmond writing center the same way that they might at a big university.  Smith specifically references older people who go back to school after being in the workforce or not completing their degree originally. As a small, expensive private school, I wouldn't expect that many people would choose Richmond to finish their degrees. I would expect they would choose larger public schools. This being said, I wonder if this article really applies to the Richmond writing center. The one thing that I thought did apply to our writing center was the issue of some of the students being product focused rather than process focused. I think regardless of whether someone has been in the workforce or not, the majority of people are product focused, especially in a competitive environment like Richmond. Both traditional and non-traditional students are driven to succeed and because of this many people are product-focused, with the exception of those who are genuinely concerned with writing, such as English tutors. What does it even mean to be a non-traditional student? Does this mean people who are not college age? It seems to me that we should have an individual approach for everyone who comes into the writing center, rather than grouping them based on their age or whether or not they fit our traditional stereotypes of a college student.  I think if you go into a session with pre-conceived notions about the best way to go about a consultation just because of the person's age, you are already discrediting the fact that he or she is an individual with his or her own writing needs. Rather than saying "Oh this is a non-traditional older student, so I need to approach our session in this way," we should be saying "Oh this is an individual student that I need to approach in a unique way just like every other student that comes into the center."

Gardner says,

"Given my earlier linkage between 'several non-traditional students' and the label 'quickfixer,' the terms themselves may lead us to practice based only upon generalizations and stereotypes."

        I think this is a very important point and one that we need to remember. We need to be vigilant in trying to avoid consulting based on stereotypes rather than individuals. 

         Also, we touched on the issue of the power struggle with a non-traditional student. Since they are older, it seems a bit awkward to be telling them what to do or acting smarter then they are. They are our "superiors" and most of us were raised to be respectful to our elders, but just because we are helping them with their writing doesn't mean that we are disrespecting them in any way. They are coming into the writing center because they are acknowledging that they need help and that we have the skills to help them, so I seriously doubt that they will be offended when you try to help them. Of course, it may feel awkward, but we should remember that we are facilitators of writing and are not given this position to be authoritative. As long as we keep the same respect for the non-traditional students that we are expected to have for traditional students, there is no reason that our consultation should feel disrespectful or uncomfortable. These people want to learn and want to improve just as much as anyone else and we shouldn't withhold our comments or wisdom for fear of insulting them. 

The Concept of Control in Teacher Response

In this article, Straub quotes Rebecca Rule saying, 

"As [a] teacher, I must be careful not to take over—because the minute I do, the success (if there is one) becomes mine, not his—and the learning is diminished. I can contribute; I can guide; I can brainstorm with him; I can suggest exercises; I can offer models; I can tell him where the comma goes; I can support him wholeheartedly. But I must not take over." 

I think this is a very important point for us to remember in our role as writing consultants. I think anytime you are talented in a particular area (most likely writing for most of us since we are in this class) it is difficult not to take control in situations regarding that area, but as consultants, it is extremely important that we don't. I know that sometimes when I read people's writing I have the urge to cross out all sorts of things and change it to exactly how I would say it or write it, but this is not the point of being a writing consultant. We have to suppress that urge to take control and instead support, guide, and help, as Rule suggests. It is not simply about having a good end product, if it were, perhaps people would just bring us assignments to the writing center and we would write it for them. But that is not what the writing center is about. It is about learning. It is about the process.