"Minimalist Tutoring" Response

This reading was amazing! It was wonderful to get a to do list of how to run a session. After reading North's article last week I've been hoping to get specifics upon what to do during a consultation before starting work next week. And now Brooks has given me a great starting point.

While brief this article was full of information, I felt the need to read it more then once in order to ingrain the ideas into my brain. Brooks starts with the basics, ideas on how to motivate the student to take charge of their own paper. This is a principle I hadn't fully thought of before. Even after North's article I was still picturing a session similar to the worst case scenario session he uses at the beginning of his article. He used this worst example in the best way, to teach us exactly what we must avoid.

In our goal to help our clients become better writers directing them to take ownership of their own paper is essential. The moment we take a pencil or pen in our hands and begin to edit their paper, we have lost some of our power. The power that we have to guide our clients toward becoming better writers lies in forcing them into paper ownership. They must care about their writing in order to be able to become a better writer in the future.

We must not sacrifice their long term needs of becoming a better learner for their short term needs of getting a better grade. Ideally each time we meet with the same writer, they have gotten better because we guided them towards better writing methods and practices. I have seen this first hand in myself when I worked with consultants throughout my first semester at CWI. I wasn't fully prepared for all my sessions, so they did not all go as I planned that they would, but I became a better writer because I was willing and eager to learn how to be a better writer. Sadly not all our clients will feel the same way. Which is when we should act as Brooks suggest and use body language and blatant honesty about what our clients and consultants goals are during writing consultations.

One of my favorite ideas presented by Brooks was having the writer read the paper aloud. Not all clients will agree to this, but perhaps even offering to read it out-loud in their stead, with the paper in front of them, will help them to hear and correct when necessary on their own. We will still be there to compliment and guide them as Brooks recommends. There was so much that Brooks offers future writing center consultants to think about I believe I will need to read this article again, especially before my first scheduled consultation.

Reflections on North

Reading North’s “The Idea of a Writing Center” and his follow-up article blasted me back to the early 1990s when I first began my education at the University of Texas. As an English major, I read academic articles and essays about the English language and literature daily. A decade later, I moved into the education field. With its emphasis on “learning theories” and “brain-based research” my days of basking in skilled rhetoric were over, so this was a very refreshing read.

I appreciate North wanting to improve his colleagues’ understanding of what a writing center is and isn’t. I have spent much of my career in public school education fighting similar battles (For example, what being an English Language Learner means and doesn’t mean, i.e., being an English Language Learner and needing modified assignments does not mean one is stupid or illiterate).

I was surprised to see that all the way back in 1984 the new writing center “represents the marriage of what are arguably the two most powerful contemporary perspectives on teaching writing: first writing is…a process; and second, that writing curricula need to be student-centered” (p. 49). These two philosophies still abound in public education today. Writing is taught as a process throughout the grade levels, and instruction is supposed to be student centered.

I must admit that I muttered a less-than-mild expletive when I read North’s assertions that writers are “genuinely, deeply engaged with their material, anxious to wrestle it into the best form they can: they are motivated to write” (p. 54). Please forgive me. Remember, I have been somewhat jaded by my 12 years in middle and high schools, so I was relieved to find North himself chuckled at this somewhat over-the-top statement ten years later. The man does have a sense of humor.

That is not to say that helping writers become more excited about writing shouldn’t be our goal. Why not inspire the writer to become this “anxious wrestler” by the time they leave the Writing Center and head back to their "solo ritual"? As North says, “An hour of talk about writing at the right time between the right people can be more valuable than a semester of mandatory class meetings when the timing isn’t right” (p. 67). I couldn’t agree more.

One of the strategies for doing this is described on p. 55 and is what we in education call the “think-aloud”. It is a sure-fire way to help students understand the thought processes of a successful writer. I am fairly certain I will be using this technique when working with our clients. I also like the suggestion of both the consultant and the writer responding to a prompt and then comparing opening strategies.

Finally, I have to share how much I loved the analogy of the university as a lumbering stegosaurus whose brain is so “physically small that it needs a second neural node just to operate its hindquarters” (p. 66). I like, literally, LOL’d!!!*  Thankfully, students at CWI may not feel they have to negotiate such a beast, but if they move on to a larger university campus, it’s often the unfortunate reality.

*How do you write “LOL” in the past tense?

"The Idea of a Writing Center" Response

Given that up to this point I have had no good excuses to read scholarly writing about my chosen major, English, I was ecstatic to begin reading “The Idea of a Writing Center”. While this is still scholarly writing, I was not disappointed by the reading in the slightest. There some few topics elaborated upon during the course of this article which stood out to me while also catching me off guard.

What stood out to me was the misconception that most writing centers and english majors in general have when thinking of the writing center and what it is here for. Perhaps most shocking was my own preconceptions appearing right there on the page in black and white. I was most happy to join the numbers of the reeducated.

I have been itching to be a writing consultant from the first time I heard there was a writing center on campus. After reading this article I am more passionate about becoming a consultant because the idea of assisting students in reaching their educational goals makes me so much happier than anything else could. Becoming a facilitator for and teaching students about the best ways to become independent and confident writers is something I feel very strongly about. It is one of the most important forms of learning and will assist them in retaining the knowledge they are absorbing at such a fast pace.

There is very little to disagree with in this article. But whether English focused or not, all groups are difficult to reeducate when it comes to explaining what a writing center is actually for. People tend to get set in their ways, thus asking anyone who can benefit from a writing center to drop all previous misconceptions in order to remember the actual use of a writing center is a challenge. The virtue of teach-ability often goes unsung.

Having joined the teachable, I am so happy that the article speaks of writing centers as much more then “fix it” shops. I learned this firsthand after using the writing center almost every week of my first semester at CWI. The writing center consultants assisted me with much more important writing concerns than grammar. They helped me focus on my writing process, organizational skills, and smoothing my transitions between paragraphs. What I have since learned are mostly considered H.O.C.s, or Higher Organizational Concerns.

My writing is still a work in progress, but I feel more confident with how I am writing now because of my experiences with the writing center consultants. I look forward to sharing these experiences with fellow students as we explore together the best ways to make them into a better writer. Becoming a writing center consultant is an opportunity I simply could not pass up. Becoming part of this particular branch of the tutoring services at CWI is a perfect fit. As I continue to educate myself about my passion, writing, I will do my best to remain open and teachable to any ideas that will help me, and in turn help those who consult with me, to become a better writer.

"The Idea of a Writing Center"

From North's assertions on the purpose of a Writing Center, as tutors, we can get one major message: we are commentators, not editors. It is blatantly obvious that most of the college community does not understand the purpose of a writing center, so they treat it like any other tutoring lab and only come in if they are at the lowest level of comprehension. Like North says, only "the others" come in to seek help. From this, the Writing Center gets a reputation that it is only there to help "pretty up" papers and fix the little problems, when this is not, nor should be, the case. 

Our goal as Writing Center staff should be to help students improve their writing ability, not their specific papers, and certainly not their English abilities. Through developing a relationship with the students, we can get an idea of their initial writing ability, come up with tools they can use to improve their papers, and use specific methods to help them take their abilities to the next level. This main idea focuses on the progression of the student, rather than the perfection of the assignment. When their progression is the focus, we are to hope that as time goes on, their writing will improve. No amount of "fix it" work will teach the student how to write a better paper! As North says, "our job is to produce better writers, not better writing." 

The most efficient way to help a student take their writing to the next level appears to be engaging in discussion about their writing. North emphasizes the demand for tutors who will engage their students in the topics they are writing on, asking questions and trying to expand their minds on the topic, rather than constraining the student to where there paper is and perfecting what they have. Our job is to take what the student has and to stretch it out a little bit more. From my own life, I can attest to the fact that an engaged writer is a better writer. When people actually feel connected to their papers, they take ownership of it. If we get our students literally interested in their writing, it is bound to improve! College writing classes are all about learning to write well. They are meant to help students find a voice in their writing and maybe even form a writing style that they can use in any of their classes. When a student is able to find a voice, writing becomes an almost natural activity. If we can help students actively participate in their writing assignments, we have done about 80% of our job. 

After reading this, I am much more excited about getting to work! Engaging in actual discussion about writing rather than just taking a red pen and a highlighter to a paper seems much more beneficial to both parties. North provides a lot of wonderful insight on how we can improve the student's writing abilities. I imagine if we put these tools to work, we will see a lot of improvement!