Lo final...tarde, como siempre...

I swore I was going to do this one on time, but again, no. I really, really apologize for not being able to get with the program on this, Melissa. But anyway.

I actually had some consultations with native speakers last week! It was pretty exciting. One gal wa applying to nursing school and wanted help with her personal statement. It was not necessarilly like applying to a graduate degree program in English, but it struck me as being similar to my boyfriend, Andy, and his application to medical school. Because I had worked with him on his last summer and had helped another gal with her application to veterinary school, I felt like I had some background in the weird genre presented. I think this situation loosely falls into the discussion over experts vs generalists, though, in that in this consultation as in the veterinary one, I don't think it necessarily helps me to help the writer for having seen other papers like this. In every case, I have felt that the writer needed more specific, concrete, and personal details to add to their narrative, which I think most consultants would have wanted as well, just as readers. But I wonder if that is what the committee members look for, or if they prefer a more impersonal style of writing because of the scientific nature of the work. At any rate, I think that this gal, as well as the veterinary student past, were able to integrate some meaningful, personal details into their text that allowed it to speak to who they are and what they care about and why more so than any c.v. of their would. As writers, I like to think that they place more value on specifics, and on their own experiences. But whether any of these musings are correct or not, I do have to say that it is so interesting to see the very, very different ways that people write, in terms of their formatting, structure, and the language that they use, particularly when they come from other disciplines.

I found the discussions about non-directive and directive tutoring styles to be reallly interesting this week, as well, and I'm glad that what I get from the rest of the 303-ers is not that they are die-hards in either extreme, but approach each as a possible means of helping a particular writer in a paricular situation. I think that the group that I was working with seemed to lean towards being non-directive in situations where the writer had more knowledge of the task and subject, and to being more directive in those situations where the writer was clueless about one thing or another. I think this is a natural way to approach situations, in that you aren't going to tell a quite knowledgeable person what to do and how to do it, yet you might inform a person who is lost of how to get back on the path, which may include sharing of specialized information that they don't have. Yet my group didn't come up with an end-all, be-all procedure for how to approach these very different kinds of writers, probably because they have already picked up that each writer is unique and individual, and that they as consultants must assess those writers where they are and adapt accordingly. I'm just really glad that the Shamoon piece, even if we didn't like the tone and style of it, set forth that in some instances it is more than appropriate to be directive in a consultation. I think they know, too, that one doesn't have to be consistent with that strategy throughout the session, though; they can shapeshift as needed, which I think is where we want them to be. I think it is essential to have the mindset that it is okay to try new techniques and strategies and to not be worried about "breaking the rules" set forth, because in that environment, our consultants wouldn't be able to flow with the situations that evolve in front of them, and they would be less effective at giving our writers what they need, when they need it.

scrawny thoughts are an understatement of the matter at hand...

For this week, what I got out of our readings was really just what you said in class Thursday: that while none of the ideas they set forth are new and earth-shattering, they are nonetheless indicative of good consulting practices that we should be using with all writers.

It is so important to take each writer as they are and to adapt to work with them as unique, complicated individuals for whom we reach into our tool box of writing strategies to pull out the ones that work best for them. If one doesn’t work, it’s just like reaching in for a different size or a different tool to approach the issue at hand. I agreed with your combination of the various “types” of writers, from NNES to those with learning disabilities to non-traditional students, because while these are all distinct groups with distinct sub-categories that writers may, or may not, fall into, working with these kinds of writers emphasizes that to work with them, we just have to do more of the “good stuff” we already do, and to a higher degree.

We need to read people, be sensitive to their needs; we need to try different strategies, be patient, and both phrase and present things in a variety of ways to make sure that the writer catches our drift.

I know this one is short, Melissa L I will try to add more later…

Renaissance and email...

I loved getting to visit Shawna's students at Renaissance! It was so exciting to see a high school Writing Center program, and I just cannot believe how invaluable the service is that they are providing. It is a very unique situation, though, as it is really due to the special nature of the school that it can make the program work. Firstly, the school is specifically a college-prep type institution that has incredibly high standards for students. Because of some of the specific programs that they are enrolled in, students are required to perform volunteer work. Thus, they are able to work as writing center consultants as a way to fulfill that requirement. This allows the program to have thoughtful, highly motivated and free consultants. Shawna mentioned that because the consultants are working for free, though, that they do not have a great deal of time to devote to training. Thus, they have completely a very comprehensive handbook that consultants are introduced to at the beginning of the year and that they can refer to throughout. Shawna noted that during the center's downtime the consultants are called upon to read articles on writing center practices, or to brush up on their grammar skills by reading one of the many grammar texts available in the space.

Overall, though Renaissance's program works only because of the nature of the institution, it works, and students are able to get great feedback from their peers on their writing, which helps them to grow as writers. What an amazing and unique program, and what a fantastic opportunity for enrichment of all at that school.

In meeting with the consultants, it was immediately clear that although their center was very different from ours at Boise State, like all writing centers, it had its key sticking points which seem to transcend all programs: multi-lingual writers and email consultations. It was crazy to think that these young consultants experienced the same issues as we do at the college level, but I think these complications just attest to the continuity of writing centers throughout the country.

As a note on email consultations, Sam's lesson went fabulously on Thursday. It was so good for each consultant to have to write a response to the same piece and then have an open forum (along with small group work) to identify what was said, what needed to be said, and how to go about doing it. I think it helped the 303ers to have a "game-real" experience to really see what doing an email consultation is like. Even more, I think it was valuable for them to see how others responded so that they could gauge how others responded to the piece, to see where their responses fit, and to see that they likely experienced the same challenges as did other consultants. On that note, I took mine to class in digital format, so I'm sending it your way this morning.

I hope you had a fabulous time in San Diego, Melissa! I can't wait to hear all about the conference, and especially about how Dory's presentation went. What a great opportunity for her and for the other consultants that went. Wahoo!

a little bit of this, and a little bit of that...

I really enjoyed this week’s focus on multi-lingual writers, but I think you already know that, so I’m sorry if the rest of this seems a little redundant.

As I have thought back on my consultations this semester, I feel like most have been with multi-lingual writers. Even though many can find these interactions more frustrating than consultations with native speakers, I just so enjoy them. I love getting the opportunity to help these hard-working students further their proficiency in English speaking, and it is so rewarding to feel like you’ve actually helped someone at the end of thirty, or even just twenty-five minutes.

I connected to the readings for this week in several different ways. First, I think we got to read about the snazzy language acquisition business this week, even if we read it last week, I’m still going to talk about it, because I was so excited to read about Krashen and Asher again. I think it has been five or six years since the last time I encountered their theories. Yet again, as I mentioned in last week’s blog, I think a lot of what these second-language acquisition theorists talk about is appropriate to most language learners/users in general. For instance, both the concepts of the “Monitor Model” and the “Affective Filter” are very important to bear in mind when working with writers in the center whose native language is not English. These concepts are the reason why it is so important to connect with multi-lingual writers on a personal level and to be extra sensitive to their needs: be supportive, be engaging, be kind… Yet these theoretical SLA concepts also inform other facets of writing center practice that have absolutely nothing to do with writers from other countries. For instance, the very intentional design of the Writing Center space is created as such to be inviting and to make writers feel comfortable so that they are not afraid to “expose” their writing to another human, to ask questions, and to take risks. This very much follows the idea of lowering the students’ affective filter to enable learning to take place. It also helps reduce the depth and frequency of students’ over-active monitors. Further, in the writing classroom, I think the goal of creating a community of writers is also born out of a desire to lower the affective filter so that students, again, are comfortable enough to ask questions and take risks to develop their writing skills.

On a totally different note, I so, so appreciate the conversation that we had last Thursday, Melissa. I finally added up where my hours were for the internship, and I’m actually sitting at eighty already. To earn three credits, I think I only need to have 120 hours by the end of the semester. So, I think that writing a shorter, more practical piece for my final paper will work beautifully, and I think we can chat later on in the semester about how things are shaking out time-wise, and as far as the contributions I’m making go. I know you had mentioned something about pay for the hours that accrue after meeting my internship requirements, and I think we can talk about that later, too. I am pretty flexible, so I’m not worried about where we’re going, but it is nice to know that I’m sitting on the fuller side of required hours at the moment.

As for the practical piece, I really want to do something on working with our multilingual writers. I think it would be fun to look at the kind of folks we have that fit into this “category”, and to come up with some good tools that our consultants could pull out of their toolkits to help them with the nuts and bolts associated with some of these interactions –how to explain pronoun issues/articles/ablout(strong) verbs– I will also look into our mission statement…More on these ideas later. Have a great weekend, Melissa!

Muriel Harris’s article offered some great insights into how we approach working with multilingual writers in the center. I was interested that most of the writers who participated in her study were male, and in addition, I felt that she highlighted the Asian demographic more than any other. I appreciated come of her commentary about the values and work habits of this group in particular, but that reaction makes me think about our discussion in class on Thursday about how important it is not to label members of a perceived group and just shove them in a corner.

 

I think the overall takeaway from Harris’s piece and from the others we encountered this last week on multilingual writers is just to be patient, empathetic, and kind. When I think about non-native English speakers in the classroom, I feel like I approach them as any other student, and I think this is true of my behavior with writers in the writing center. The only differences, though, are accommodations like allowance of more time (being realistic for assignment deadlines/being patient one-on-one) and in my mind, making a more concerted effort to perform with/for them the good things we already do, like providing clear and appropriate comments and explanations.

 

I really love working with non-native English speakers. I feel like I learn something new about their culture, about myself, and about both of our languages. Of course, it if frustrating to often end up working at the sentence level of writing, but despite that, there is always a greater depth that is being reached in those consultations. I still remember this little Hispanic gal that used to come into the center when I worked under Mike Mattison. She was a pretty classing generation 1.5/ English ear-learner. We would work together mostly on her organization, though. It was so rewarding as the year progressed to see the development of organizational processes in her texts. As you mentioned in class Thursday, so often it is the multilingual writer who returns to the center. I have seen this to be true, and in true teacher-lady fashion, I love being able to work with one person and then be able to track their progress over time, besides establishing some sort of relationship, too.    

 

On another relationship note: I think the MARTY was a huge success. Everyone was hanging out and having a good time!

Challenges of an Ideal: Theories of Learning and Teaching Documentation

I loved Carol J. Singley and Holly W. Boucher’s article, “Dialogue in Tutor Training: Creating the Essential Space For Learning”. The audience was more for Writing Center administrators than for me, per say, but Singley and Boucher brought to the fore some fascinating ideas on how to facilitate learning, which to my teacher brain, is great. Their focus on conversation as “the essence of peer tutoring” is so true, and I love how they support their position with the ideas of Paolo Freire, who discusses the typical power structure of education as “the banking model” in The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. By making this move, and by adding support from Knoblauch and Brannon’s Rhetorical Traditions and the Teaching of Writing, Singley and Boucher illustrate how crucial it is for learning participants to engage with one another outside of the classic, hierarchically structured teaching model. This allows them to interact more fully and collaboratively, “where the ‘class’ becomes a conversation, and teacher and learner cannot be distinguished” (14). I am not a student-centered kind of gal, neither am I a traditionalist-style writing instructor; and for these reasons, I like how the framework that Singley and Boucher argue for is one that masquerades as student-centered, but is still facilitated by the teacher. I think that whether in the Writing center, a writing classroom, or a in a tutor training course, this adept model can be applied. Nevertheless, there are always challenges, and one that arises to tug against the desire to be non-traditionalist is that of documentation in writing.

So many writers come into the center with no other purpose than to “fix” their citations, whether MLA, or APA. I think they believe that we consultants must know everything about these documentation styles, and yet, as they often change within a few short years, how could we? I think in many cases writers come to us expecting the storehouse-model of instruction to be laid upon their faulty citations, yet what they get is much closer to the interactive dance that Singley and Boucher offer in their article. Yet to the writer’s growth, I think this is no detriment, but rather an advantageous practice. In such a situation, Freire’s ideal learning situation is epitomized, that education is “‘problem posing,’ as a consideration of reality’s disjunctions in an attempt to overcome them” (Singly and Boucher 14).Here again, the lines between “teacher” and “learner” are blurred, as the consultant and the writer work collaboratively to figure something out with the resources at hand.

On another tangent, I did appreciate the handout that we received, which highlighted some of the key differences among the MLA and APA documentation styles. I think this reading did a nice job of calling attention to some of the delicate nuances between the two styles that are not always understood, if even noticed. Having some of the philosophical implications for each in the back of our tutoring heads may not turn us into storehouse consultants, but it will allow us to have more effective dances while we negotiate meaning with the handbooks and our writers on different kinds of documentation.

 

I found it!

I finally found my blog! Now I jsut have to remember that it is under my student email account an not my faculty one. Anyhow, reflections for the week... I really loved the article that we read for Tuesday that focused on different styles of tutorials by McAndrew and Reigstad. The strategies and techniques used, in many cases, were very applicable and useful. I loved that the piece was organized into the different foci that consultations often take, including focus-oriented, developmental and organizational. I really loved the headline/bumper sticker idea, as well as nutshelling and making a promise. I think these are all easy, effective strategies to use in a consultation, or for me, even to articulate to my students. I was happy to get a few new ways to pull ideas out of readers brains, and in the structure secction, I was stoked to see the coloring technique, as it is one that I have personally used and have often recommended to others.

I felt that Muriel Harris's article, "Talk to Me: Engaging Reluctant Writers", discusses an issue that many new tutors may not have though existed: the reluctant writer. I even forget that they exist sometimes. Then I encounter one and I remember, like the writer from 102 that came into the center to work on a research paper. She obviously wasn't happy about needing to come to the center, nor did she like writing research papers at all. Luckily I was able to make her trust me and to buy in to my assistance, and we had a really great session that highlighted how she could choose to organize her paper to make it clearer and better overall, with the focus being on her choice, and not on her having organizational issues. Reflecting on "Talk to Me", in light of this encounter, I appreciate that Harris gives several scenarios for how these writers may act, and why. Even more importantly, her structure of the article gives comcrete examples for tutors to learn from that actually show how to deal with these situations. I know that I will refer to it just to keep in mind some of the strategies I may need or want to employ in some of these "unsuspected" resistant-writer encounters.

One thing that we have mentioned in class and that had come up in our GA meetings with Clyde is how great it is that as Writing Center consultants, we really get to learn a great deal while helping others. This was very evident in my consultations this week, as in most of my appointments, I got to work with non-native speakers. In one, I worked with an assistant professor from the Math Department on a research paper that he (and I assume some of his colleagues) had been working on. It was incredible to me to have this absolutely brilliant Asian man to work with who not only was able to understand, interpret, and work with numbers at an incredibly high level, but who could also communicate those ideas in textual form, and in a totally different language from the one he grew up speaking. I had huge respect for this man, and yet, I was really grateful for the fact that I think I did actually help him. There were a few instances where the subject/verb agreement was an issue, and there were a few other minor grammatical mistakes that, in reading through the piece together, we were able to catch. Also, I think this comes from the FYW program's approach to teaching composition, but as we read through his work, I felt extra-sensitive to the genre conventions that he was working under, which though I am not familiar with research papers in Math, I mentioned he might need to check on. I mentioned this in reference to how he was noting the number of the figures he used inline, and I was grateful that he agreed to check in other texts produced for the same purpose to determine how best to indicate those details.

Overall, I just felt like the whole session was a fantastic opportunity to work towards the "justice and fairness" that we have been discussing all week. Though this was on a very small scale, I just really appreciated that in this consultation I was able to genuinely appreciate this man and his work, and to learn about something that I never would otherwise have been exposed to, just by working in the writing center. So, we may not have been working on pronouns, but this epiphany came about from really sitting down and actually working on other "little things". So I just want to end by saying, that yes, we may deal in details at times, but overall, somethimes it is the little stuff that matters, and in some cases, it does add up to help us work on much larger issues, like those of justice and fairness.

Pensamientos Iniciales

I am so excited to be working with the Writing Center again! I can't wait to be back in action, although, I know I need to re-learn how to use the scheduler and do the paperwork. I feel very fortunate to be in the position I am in, and for many very different reasons. One that has come to the fore during class is how lucky I am to not be terrified about actually doing a consultation, about really working in the center and talking with writers about their work. It dawned on me the first day of class that most of the people in the room had no idea what consulting with another writer felt like. I hope that my brief expression of thoughts helped quell some of their feelings of anxiety, and if not, I hope that I can become someone that the new consultants can speak with.

Another fortunate part of being back in the midst of Writing Center theory and practice is the fact that it allows me to get back to my roots in terms of what I privilege in teaching writing. I was lucky to grow up being exposed to writer's workshops and to thereby focus on process at a young age, but working at the Writing Center cemented this approach for me. They weren't always successful, and they certainly weren't nearly as effective as a consultation in the Writing Center, but I always tried to incorporate workshops in the English classes that I taught. Even when I couldn't, my work with writers in the past led me to approach my students and their texts in a similar way. After being out of the Center for so long, though, I forgot that it was the practices I had learned them that had so informed my teaching, and for that reason, I am so grateful to be "getting back to my roots".

I'm now one of those obnoxious students, though, because I just finished reading the book assigned for the GA's. The trouble was that it was just so cohesive, and the ideas were so well presented, that I just couldn't put it down. I bring up this malfeasance, though, because I'd like to connect something I learned from the book to the previous paragraph. From the earlier passage, it might seem that after working in the Writing Center and then teaching, I feel that I have some special level of expertise at helping writer's with their work. But the truth is that I still feel like I have a great deal to learn. The GA text (which I am too lazy to go grab and look at the title, presently) says a great deal about the dance that goes on in the moments in-between, those hazy gray situations where one can "follow the rules", or can slice, quickly evaluate and respond to the circumstances using strange gut-instincts that are actually complex amalgamations of previous experiences and ideas. The text notes how effective this artful slicing is, at getting to the heart of an issue and doing so pointedly and efficiently. I have to agree, yet the matter remains that this is an art, not a science, and I feel that to improve such a thing, practice, in addition to study is required. So, after digressing terribly, my point is that I am excited to learn more about this artful dance and to have more of those ephemeral and beautiful interactions that really are just like magic, because no matter how many such experience you have, there are never enough to prevent one from being enchanted, or from learning something new.

Also, from the reading I was actually supposed to do, I think at least, that I agree with the scholarship done in 2008 on North, that I like his first piece better than the second. I think I prefer it because as idealistic and unattainable as some of the ideals set forth in it are, I like having high expectations, and I like having goals to work towards. I do appreciate that he qualifies his remarks in the second piece, though, because sometimes people do get too caught up in the ideals to the extent that they can no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel.

As for Andrea Lundsford's piece, I love that she calls out the notion of collaboration and breaks it down into the ways that the positive term can be abused when the power being shared in the name of "collaboration" is really not being shared, or is so inequitably. I am so grateful for the shift in education that has made the institution at least more aware of its inherent propensity to lean towards models like Lundsford's "storehouses". In my education to become a teacher, there was a definite focus on how to shift the control away from the teacher and towards the students. The ideal we worked towards was not to let the students be in total control, but to be more a facilitator than a "pontificator". My experience is only at one institution, but at least the seeds were sown to reject the absolute teacher-centered, student-deficit model of education.  After reading Lundsford, I am so thankful that the perceptions of collaboration have shifted as well, as it was just mortifying to read the injustices she noted of what others had been denied after working collaboratively.