The Great and Terrible Lozz (blog 13)

In thinking about what kinds of things I would need to look at, I used my "When the Tutor Doesn't Know" thought.  I think breaking it down into a timeline is a logical way to go about it.  
(Note: for lack of not thinking of anything better yet, I'm referring to the act of not knowing what to do as "the loss" - as in "I'm at a loss for words.")


Signals preceding loss 
Is it a sudden loss or has it been progressing?
-Were those sings nonverbal or verbal? 
 - What were they?


During loss
What is tutor doing nonverbally? (i.e., eyes looking off, backing away...etc.)
Is tutor saying anything?
Does she do something? (i.e., look up an answer, ask colleague)


What is student doing nonverbally/verbally?
Does he recognize the tutor is at a lass?
- If so, is he comfortable or uncomfortable? (What are those signs?)
- If he doesn't notice, why not?  (Did the tutor disguise; how?)


Recovery
Is there indeed a recovery?
- How?  What was done? Who did it?


Resolution
Do they discuss the tutor's loss?
How does tutor act?
- Is she bothered or not?
How does student react?
- Is he confused or not?




So I think this could actually turn into a sort of checklist.  Woop woop.  Some tricky aspects of it, though, are that it's pretty detailed, so it might be a little challenging to remember everything until the session is over.  And on the flip side, it might actually be hard to recognize in another tutor when I'm observing - in my session today, I had a mini-loss at the beginning, but the student actually recovered for me, and if I had been observing, I don't know that I would have even noticed it.  Annnd then again, if I'm hyper-sensitive to it, I might notice it a lot more than I ever have.

brainstorming part deux (blog 12)

1.  Back to the when-I-don't-know-what-to-do-as-a-tutor idea...  I tried to notice on Wednesday night what happened when Dr. Chandler seemed to be trying to figure out what to say, etc.  That made me realize that those situations are probably really common in a session.  Nobody knows exactly what to say right off the bat every time.  
Some of the signals were non-verbal - eyes looking off or up.  And there were verbal cues as well - talking slowly or repeating Sam's question while Dr. Chandler thought of what to say.
So I think there's definitely somewhere to go with that... though I don't know exactly where it would go.  I might need to narrow it down even more and focus on just nonverbal or just verbal stuff.  And then there's got to be some.. analysis of it.  Like what's good or what you should do or even how it's perceived.  
I keep thinking of wanting to have like a debriefing with the student about how he perceived certain aspects of the session or tutor.


2.  Last Monday I thought about what the most important elements of a session are.  I would venture to say that the very beginning and end are most important.  In the beginning, the tutor has to understand what the student needs/wants/says/doesn't say and get on board pretty quickly.  Then, in the end it's pretty important to make sure the writer knows where to go.  But then again... if the middle is bad, nothing else matters, right?  
And there are elements beside just beginning, middle, and end.  The necessary things to do will vary from session to session, but maybe my question is more like, "If I had to make a list of things to accomplish that would work with (almost?) every session, what would those things be?"  This might be too broad. 
And how would I research it?  Perhaps I could compare what was done in each session and see what the common threads are and if those things are essential. And also try to consider what I'm not doing that is essential.  Hmm.


3.  "What makes writers come back to the center?"  I think we read something about grades being a big factor, but we also noted that grades are hard to change in one session.  Let's face it; a student could spend an hour with a tutor and still have a not so great paper.  It may take some real dedication for some students to keep coming back, and how do we encourage them to do that when we can't do much about their grades?  Is it connecting well with a tutor?  Is it being strongly encouraged to come back?  - Maybe being really specific and saying, "Hey, next time we can work on __________."  Or is that too overwhelming?  Okay so go home and work on this, and this, and this, and then you're still going to have a lot left to do.  See you soon!  (For the rest of your college career!  Mwahaha...)  (It's like at the dentist when you get the lecture about flossing, and then they schedule your next appointment right then and there.)
This is another one of those things where I would like to have some kind of post-session questionnaire for the writer where they can rate how helpful the session was and if they're likely to come back.  I don't know if we can do that though.

prepare for battle! okay not battle. that's completely the wrong idea... (blog 10)

Going into this, I'm feeling alright since I've had some experience before.  I am a little nervous, though, because it's been a while since I've done any... -formal- tutoring (I've helped some friends since then, but that feels quite different).  And even when I worked in a WC, I think that environment was pretty different than what this will be tomorrow.


Okay... strengths.  I think I'm pretty comfortable talking with the writer about writing stuff.  I also think I have fairly decent exposure to different kinds of assignments.


I need to keep looking through the different strategies so I can have them really fresh and hopefully I can do whatever the writer would benefit the most from.  I think I will need to remember not to go too fast - it's better that the writer has a good grasp of what's going on than for him to be exposed to a whirlwind of ideas that he only sort of gets.  I also need to be careful with any "writing lingo" I use and not throw it out without the writer knowing its meaning or explaining it in a way that's demeaning.


If I'm notetaking... being still will be a challenge.  I shift around in my seat a lot.  Gotta get settled and comfortable quick, Laura!


And if I'm coaching I need to turn on my multi-tasking hard drive so I can stay focused in the session while trying to remember important things to write down later.  Ah!


Alright.  I got this.  I'm excited.  =)

research brainstorming (blog 9)

For my project, I really want to do something that will help me become a better coach.  So that leads me to think about aspects I'm not comfortable with/skilled at.  
One of those things is what to do when I don't know what to do.  I could break that into when I don't know the answer to a student's question, when I don't know how to help a student or what style/method/technique to use, and when I don't know how to figure out what the student means.  I think all of those together are pretty broad and I would need to focus on maybe just one or two.  And relevant to all of them is how I do present myself when I'm at a loss and how I should present myself.  I think taking notes on how I handle these situations as well as how another tutor handles it would be beneficial (along with reading what the experts have to say).


Another idea I have is about what to do when I disagree with a student.  I think it sort of connects with the above stuff, but it's also different enough to stand alone.  By disagreeing with a student... I guess I mean about either the topic she chooses or how she chooses to present her ideas.  For instance, say a writer wanted to write about Kean being the worst school ever.  (Okay, yes, this is an unlikely paper topic, but I've heard people say this...)  I would have a hard time being objective.  I might even argue with the student and give examples of how Kean is definitely not "the worst school ever."  Now, I could say I was doing this to help improve her argument, modeling the process of developing an argument.  Buuuuuut there's also a good chance I'm thinking, Uhhggg she has no idea what she's talking about.  If she had ever gone to another school, she would see that parking is almost always bad, lots of schools have gone 'paperless,' and.... < That is not good coaching.  
But if someone has a really bad topic (okay, or at least what I think is a really bad topic) that she is 100% sold on, what do you do?
And also like I mentioned, what if she has a pretty good topic, but insists that she wants to present it in X way, and I just think she's delivering it in a really bad way?  
Maybe these are things that as a tutor, you sometimes just have to concede to? So maybe they're not even good research questions...


I do feel a little more confident about the first set being research-able, though.

checklist 1 (blog 8)

I think once I figure out what I want to research, I'll modify my checklist.  But for now, this checklist evaluates me as a tutor, as well as including general info about the session.

Who set the goals for the session?

Did I decide what approach I would take?

Did that approach work?

If it did not, what did I do?

Who asked the most questions?

How was most of the session spent?

How did the student respond to session?

What did I do when I didn't know what to do?

What happened during silences?

Did the student explain what he/she was going to do at the end of the session?

notetaking; take 1 (blog 7)

When I took sociolinguistics (it was called Language Variation in Society at the time, but I think they're changing the name.. either way it's ENG 4120), we filled the whole board with a detailed list of all the things that go on during a speech event, and it's really too much to get all of them.  I noticed that I was looking so closely at how the participants were talking and moving that I really didn't know what they were talking about.  I did write down specific things they said, but it was stuff like, "Do you have any ideas?" "Let's look at the organization."  "So what I hear you saying is..." (can you tell I mostly did tutor quotes?) I knew what was going on; the writer was unsure about what the essay was about.  But I wasn't so in tune that I would have been able to answer a detailed question about the session.  Does that makes sense?

I think it is more important to make note of the hows instead of the whats.  Because no two sessions will have the same content, so it will be hard to make generalizations and comparisons.  But how the session is handled - what the tutor does and how the writer responds can be looked at on a larger scale.

But that still leaves a lot of options for what to write down!  In the sessions I observed in class, I was writing down what stuck out to me most... But I don't know if that will yield consistent notes throughout the sessions I watch.  So this is still a conundrum to me.  

ma philosophie: the sequel (blog 6)

I'm going to try to take some of Tim's advice and not over think this.  

The writing center is a place for writers of all degree at any point in the writing process.  They come because they want to become better writers, they are struggling with a specific piece, or they are advised to come.  The center's overall purpose is to help people become better writers - get better with the writing process.  And process is how we try to address problems.  That said, when a writer comes in with a particular problem with a particular piece, we don't gloss over that and just preach in glittering generalities about The Process.  We start where the writer's at, and aim to help him walk out of the center feeling confident about what he's working on and will work on in the future.

I feel pretty solid about that.  *victory arms*

I'm still hanging on to my mix of romanticism and collaboration - a lot of knowledge is already in the writer.  At this point, we've been in school for at least 13 years, and I know that plenty has been taken in through all that.  Not to mention all that plain old life teaches about how to think things through and then communicate them.  But I'm also becoming increasingly aware of how helpful, and dare I say needed, collaboration is.  

So coaches and writers work as a team.  The coach lets the writer think/write/talk through as much as she is willing to.  This means that the coach has to be very attentive to the situation.  The coach will probe and ask questions when he thinks the writer has more to add but hasn't quite articulated.  

The coach should also be more than willing to give his input.  They will ideally be comfortable enough to collaborate - this means neither coach nor writer is superior.  

Above all, the coach must be flexible!  He should be familiar with exercises for an array of issues likely to come up in a session.  And he should be able to adjust if said exercise doesn't work out like it "should."  And if he just doesn't no what to do, there's certainly no shame in collaborating with someone else.  

Political realities.... Hm.  Ideally the administration as well as faculty would support the writing center - its presence and its mission.  But the reality?  I guess we can't make anyone like us (but we sure hope our efforts will have that effect!), and I still only think it's right to never outright disagree with a teacher.  Sure, they give some awful assignments, but out in "the real world," bosses are going to do the same thing.  So as a Writing Center focused on developing writers better equipped for writing anything, we help the writer make the best of the situation, sending her back to the teacher if necessary/possible.  

To possibly help curb some of these issues, we would let teachers know we are absolutely more than willing to collaborate about assignments.  Or at least give them some pointers.  Also we would let them know that we can be more helpful to their students if we get feedback from teachers about what kinds of things they're looking for in an assignment.  We welcome open communication, but don't demand it.  And at the end of the day, we help writers as best we can without stepping on teachers' toes.  

Okay.. not so wordy this time!  Maybe...