In Regard to "Non-traditional" Students and the (Lack of) Value of Such a Label

While reading the article “Writing Center Ethics & Non-traditional Students” I find myself disagreeing with Gardner and the other contributors and even feeling almost annoyed that such an article exists. McLean and Lyman occasionally make worthwhile comments but Gardner is objectionable and poses irritating questions. At the start of the article Gardner asks “Is it fair to make assumptions based on a student’s age?” (7). I wonder instead if there is any point to making assumptions based on a student’s age or any other criteria for that matter.
Every student that comes into the Writing Center is at a different stage in their writing and has different needs. A student may arrive with a paper that needs significant amounts of work or they may show up with a strong paper. They may show up with 25 minutes to work and a paper due the next day or they may have plenty of time and a paper that is not due for another week. They may be a student highly motivated to improve their work or they may be an apathetic student that is only there because they are required to be. These are the kinds of factors that are important in a tutoring session, not how old the student is or how long it has been since they last wrote an analytical essay.
It seems to me it would be much more effective to pay attention to each student’s specific needs than to try to guess at what the session will be like based on some kind of stereotype or category the tutor thinks the student can be placed in. There is no reason to assume that an older student is especially busy and will try to rush the session when the tutor could simply ask the student how much time they have to work and make a list of priorities based on the student’s answer. It is entirely possible to encounter a “traditional” student with only half an hour to dedicate to the session or a “non-traditional” student who can stay for a whole hour. In fact I have encountered both of these types of students, so what is the point of the labels?
Gardner seems particularly caught up with what kind of ethics and strategies should be used on these so-called non-traditional students. I would argue that these students are no different than their so-called traditional counterparts except in the sense that all students are different. It would be better if Gardner stopped worrying so much about the labels and what goes along with them and instead approached each session as a separate case rather than a category. The better tutor is the one with good people skills in all situations, not the tutor that can classify students as part of some group.
Lyman, and especially McLean, do come closer to this idea near the end of the article. McLean states, “I think that tutors, as well as anyone else, should struggle to avoid stereotyping students…However, I do believe that students need individual strategies adapted to their needs” (10). Here, McLean gets at the real point, each student needs to be worked with individually, not as a member of a certain group of students.

Works cited: “Writing Center Ethics & Non-traditional Students” by Gardner, E. et. al.

The Importance of Writing Center Reports as a Means of Transparency

I completely agree with Jane Cogie that Writing Center Reports (or Conference Summaries) are a valuable part of the process that takes place in a tutoring session and an equally valuable component of the student-tutor-professor relationship. An open and transparent writing process, which includes sessions at the Writing Center, benefits all parties involved. It allows the professor to understand the student's writing beyond just what they see in the finished paper, which can indicate to them where a student is making progress and where they might need additional help. This will allow the professor to address a student's needs more specifically. The student will also benefit because they will receive more personalized help from their professor. Furthermore, the report can show the professor that although a student may not have turned in A work they are trying to improve rather than that they tried to write the paper at the last minute or simply do not care. In these ways Writing Center Reports may foster a more productive and open relationship between the student and their professor.
The tutor will not experience such direct advantages but it is still important to be able to communicate clearly with the professor so that they know how the tutor assisted the student. This can benefit the Writing Center by showing the professor how it works and perhaps a tutor will receive feedback that can help him or her develop more effective strategies for working with other students in the future.
In her article Cogie also addresses some of the possible drawbacks of Writing Center Reports. One issue she raises is that sending a report may reinforce the idea that tutors are subservient to professors, but this is not the case. The report is simply a method of open communication that can help both the tutor and the professor understand how to more effectively assist the student. Also, the tutor does not actually answer to the professor he or she answers to the Writing Center Director. Thus, the professor and tutor are more like peers with the same goal and if there is an issue the Director can mediate.
Cogie also raises the issue of confidentiality for the student. The advantages a student gains from the report are far greater than any concerns for confidentiality. However, if this became a serious issue perhaps the Writing Center should adopt a policy that allows students to opt out of sending the report.
Another potential complaint is that tutors put time into writing the reports but professors do not fully put them to use. Cogie responds to this problem and sufficiently refutes it and I agree with her. While there may be some professors who do not use the reports effectively or extensively, it seems that the majority of professors value the additional reflection. The reports can help a professor further consider their own assignments, see more clearly where students are struggling, and provide them with additional information that they can use for grading and commenting upon student work.
Writing Center Reports add to the collaborative process of writing and promote open communication for the involved parties which makes it easier to help the student.


works cited: "In Defense of Conference Summaries: Widening the Reach of Writing Center Work" by Jane Cogie

What failure do you most fear as a consultant? What can you do to prepare?

I most fear that I will encounter a student that is smarter than me or who has a paper about something I know nothing about. I dread the day that a student brings me a paper that is over my head to the point that I may not even understand it. Certainly there are subject areas in which I am no expert and I worry that I will not be able to help a student who brings me a paper on a topic I am particularly unfamiliar with.
I realize that I will not be knowledgeable about every subject that I read about in a student paper but this is not exactly what I am afraid of. I know that I can work with a paper on an unfamiliar issue when it is intended for an uninformed audience and likely if it was written for an introductory course. In these instances I imagine I would be able to follow along with little trouble. The problem is what happens if a student brings me a higher level paper. For example, I am mostly involved in classes that are humanities related, what if a student brings me a paper written for an upper level science course? Perhaps they know the information well but they want help because they have trouble writing clearly about it. It would be much harder for me to help a student write an effective paper when I have no idea what they are talking about and therefore I worry about how to help such a student.
From Steve Sherwood's article "Apprenticed to Failure" I have taken away that I must accept that sometimes I might fail to help a student, however I will always try to learn from such failure when I encounter it. For my particular fear of failing a student who writes a paper on something I know nothing about one solution might be to ask the student to email me with a brief summary of what their paper is about so that I can do a little bit of research before the consultation. That way I would not be so clueless about the subject matter and vocabulary and could potentially be more helpful to the student. Still, I am sure that I will have some particularly tough tutoring sessions at some point and there will be students who I cannot help either because of this particular fear or because of one I have not even thought of yet.

First Real Tutoring Session

This week I held my first real tutoring session on my own. Our class has paired up with Dr. Blake’s class to help look at the papers they are writing for a research project, which also helps us gain tutoring experience.
I had already read my writer’s paper the night before because I had picked it up from the Writing Center so I was lucky enough to already know what kind of paper I was working with. I was happy to find that the student seemed to be a competent writer but that her paper was only a draft so although it was pretty well done already there were things I could talk about with her. It was nice that my first tutorial would be with a student that would be able to talk about her paper and take suggestions but who I would not have to do sentence-level or grammatical work with. My only fear was that the student would be reluctant to take criticism or just be uninterested in working with me because I knew she was required to come in for her class.
However, I found that the student was quite easy to work with. She listened to the suggestions I gave her and discussed her own opinions with me. We talked about things like possibly reorganizing some of her paragraphs and adding a little bit to her conclusion. Throughout the session I felt that we did a good job of working on the paper as two peers and I think we did some worthwhile work as a result.
I found that the reading most applicable to this tutoring session was chapter eight of Ryan and Zimmerelli’s The Bedford Guide for Writing Tutors, which was about different types of writers and how to cope with various tutoring situations. The section on “The Unresponsive Writer” was useful because it is what I feared would happen (p. 100). It discussed how sometimes students who are required by their teachers to visit the Writing Center can be reluctant to accept help. Although it turned out that my writer was willing to work with me, I still found one piece of advice helpful. The section states that it can be good to “remind the writer that you are there to help and that the suggestions you offer are just that—suggestions that he or she may choose to accept or reject” (p. 100). I believe that this is relevant not only in a situation with an unresponsive writer but also with any relatively strong writer. The student writer I saw obviously knew how to write so I wanted to be careful not to give the impression that I thought I was better than her or could teach her but rather that I was a peer who was willing to edit her paper and offer my recommendations as an outsider to the paper, and she could choose to take my suggestions or not.
I also found the section on “The Writer with the ‘Perfect’ Paper” helpful (p. 105). While I do not think that either the writer or I thought the paper was perfect it was certainly strong. The most useful comment I took from this section was that even in a good paper “you can still encourage the writer to look for areas that might be improved” (p. 105). I liked this comment because it shows that even when a paper is already good it can always be improved and thus it reminded me that I would still have work to do with the writer.

Midterm Consultation

Holding a consultation with Taylor was the first time I had to edit and comment upon a writer’s work on my own and in a formal setting. I had observed Writing Consultants’ appointments with students previously and had participated in these to some extent but I had never taken on one of these appointments independently. Still, I felt confident in my ability to conduct a consultation. Even when students came to the Writing Center during my observations with papers that needed a significant amount of work I did not think that I would have trouble holding such consultations. I simply thought that I would need to be more patient. Thus, I was not particularly concerned about meeting with Taylor because I am comfortable around her and know that she is a more than competent writer. I was surprised when we sat down and I realized that I did not really know how to proceed. I had wrongly assumed that the consultation would be effortless and soon saw that I needed to call upon the information we have read and discussed in class. Despite the fact that Taylor is a friend and I did not expect her paper to require extensive revision, it was still important for me to approach the situation as a serious consultation in which I should employ the techniques and approaches suggested by authors with more experience than I have.
My first appeal was to the basics. I took the advice to “read a draft all the way through before you begin to comment on it” (Writer’s Web). This gave me a more certain starting point and an overview of what I would be working with as a whole. After I had read Taylor’s essay I began a discussion with her orally so that I could convey my general reactions to her paper and so that I could hear what she had to say about it. This created an open setting in which we could talk about the paper in a constructive way even when I gave her criticism. It also allowed me to gather more information about what Taylor was trying to do in her paper so that I could more effectively assist her. In taking this approach I was using the strategy “describe your reactions as a reader, and ask questions that invite her [the writer] to further examine, explore, and clarify her ideas and approaches” (Ryan and Zimmerelli 25).
Once I had an understanding of Taylor’s paper and some ideas about where I could offer suggestions I asked her if she had any concerns about the paper. I wanted to be sure that I addressed all of her concerns before I added any concerns of my own (Ryan and Zimmerelli 21). The only aspect of her paper that she said she was worried about was the amount of summarizing. She thought there might be too much summary and not enough analysis but also said she had done some editing for this already. I considered this issue but thought that Taylor actually had a good balance between summary and her own ideas and analysis (Writer’s Web). I told her this and because we had both read the novel she was writing about and did not feel overwhelmed with summary we decided that it was probably a reasonable amount.
I had been a little concerned about editing Taylor’s paper on Madame Bovary because I had written my own paper on the novel the semester before. I was afraid it would be too hard to objectively edit the paper when I had so many ideas and opinions about the novel myself (Yothers 5). However, having read the novel helped me. It made it easier for me to address Taylor’s concern about writing too much of a summary. It also made it possible for me to follow Taylor’s argument closely and gave me inside knowledge about the accuracy of the content. I felt more capable of determining how convincing the argument was because I understood it both in terms of what Taylor was writing and what was written in the novel. As Yothers concludes, “it is a mistake for us to refrain from seeking to address issues related to the reading and interpretation of texts out of a fear of being too directive” (6-7). In light of this advice I decided to freely discuss ideas and examples with Taylor. This openness allowed us to talk about where she effectively proved her point and where she might be able to add more textual evidence.
At this point, having established mutual understanding and having addressed Taylor’s concerns, we were able to get into more substantial issues. I was able to take on two roles as suggested by a question used in Elbow and Belanoff’s peer-editing exercises. I acted as though I completely believed Taylor’s argument and this allowed me to suggest things she might add as further support. I then acted as though I did not believe all that she wrote so that I could critically point out parts of her argument that were weaker (Holt 385). This technique allowed Taylor and I to realize that the second part of her argument may not have been as strong as the first part. We then discussed ways that might help her improve this second section so that it was as effective as the first part (Writer’s Web). This is also when we discussed the possibility that she had fallen into the two-essay trap a little bit and we thought about how she might make the two parts more cohesive. As Taylor’s essay was already strong, we wanted “to go beyond the simple response level toward making suggestions for improvement” (Holt 388). In order to do this I looked over the essay again to see where I could ask questions or make suggestions, not commands, about how Taylor could potentially improve her work (Writer’s Web).
Through my consultation with Taylor I learned a lot more than I expected to. I had previously thought that it would be like reading over a paper for a friend and that it would be casual and not that difficult. However, I discovered that no matter what kind of paper I am looking at or who I am looking at it for it is still necessary to take the consultation seriously and remember the techniques we have learned. I found that the readings we have done were actually helpful to me when I was holding the appointment and I was glad to have that additional information because otherwise I would have had trouble with the consultation.