Reflect(done)

AHHHHHH!

I just wanted to get that out of the way. Holy shit it feels good to be done! This is my very last assignment for this semester (that is, unless Melissa emails me and says I need to re-do in order to get a passing grade)--ha!

A crazy thing happened this semester--I fell in love with the writing center (and the emdash). When class first started and Melissa was balls-the-wall about how cool the writing center is, I was oh-so skeptical! I had seen it as an opportunity to get credit for something I enjoy anyway, but soon became pleasantly surprised that Melissa had been right all along. I really feel like the writing center has become a second home for me (unlike Phil who has made it his first home). The people are great, the work is rewarding, and I'm magnetically drawn to it whenever I am on campus.

The writing center has taught me some things about life, writing, academia, etc.

1- Writing truly is a process. I am never done--even when I want to be done soooo bad!

2- There are lit people, MFA people, and rhet. comp. people--I'm a rhet. comp. and that's pretty cool.

3- When you teach someone something valuable they will appreciate it, but most likely forget it. That's ok--this is why we have lots of teachers in this world.

4- If I want to, I can actually make a difference in the way things happen.

5- Unlike literature, not everything has been tackled in writing. There is still lots to explore and invent.

6- Helping another student write is all about negotiation.

7- It's ok if a student pisses me off. I just need to excuse myself, get some water, and come back fresh.

8- It's really all about the student. No matter how much I enjoy my writing center time, its focus should be entirely on helping students become better writers.

9- Melissa is in love with Steven Seagal--weird, but kinda fitting.

10- It's ok to not get Kolln right now. It should seep in eventually.

I know this is not a super amazing list to anyone who is casually reading, but it's the important stuff to me. Without the writing center I would have drowned this semester. I can't wait to get back next semester and I really am going to feel a little lost over the break :(

-Ryan

I'm getting there

At this point in my "career" as a student consultant, I feel I am finally getting the hang of the basics. True, there are about a million and one different things to learn in this field--and I don't expect to learn or experience them all in this lifetime--, but I feel comfortable enough to tackle these as they come with much more confidence than I had in the beginning of the semester. Out of this weeks readings, I found two articles that were of particular interest to me and were relevant to recent questions that had arisen from my experiences in the center.

The first article is Jeff Brooks’ “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work.” Since I’ve begun working in the Center, we’ve been talking about all these different approaches and philosophies and I can honestly say that none of them have really given me the warm fuzzys. Brooks’ approach/philosophy is probably the closest thing that I can embrace for my own--for now. Maybe this makes me sound like an asshole. I’ve heard about Brooks before he was even assigned. I remember Jenny asking me one day, “are you going to read Minimalist Tutoring? That guy is weird. He suggested basically ignoring students.” This did two conflicting things inside of me. At one end, I couldn’t wait to read this crazy guy’s rant. And, on the other hand, I didn’t really want to read it at all because I figured it would be a huge waste of my time. Little did I know, I would end up idolizing this guy way over in left field.

Honestly, I think Brooks is pretty brilliant. Although his approach is “minimalist”, he does capture the essence of what this type of “peer-collaborative” tutoring should be. It can be compared to modern art or fine dining. The ingredients are few and the process is simple and“far more important than the product”, but the outcome is precisely what’s needed--nothing more and nothing less (170). I agree that writing--especially academically--can be a “dull and unrewarding activity for most students” and that “students write to learn, not to make perfect papers” (170). This is why Brooks’ approach is so gratifying to me. According to Brooks’ (notice I didn’t say North, Bruffee, or Elbow) all I basically need to do is sit next to the student, make sure the paper is in front of them--not me, make an effort to make the student do all the writing, and have the student tackle the paper by reading aloud with a pencil in their hand. In addition to this simple process add a few key ingredients: a compliment about the writing, ask leading questions, and give the students a task--and make sure they execute it (this is a huge confidence boost to struggling students). I also agree that if a student is expecting a “fix-it-shop”, I should give them the cold shoulder. It’s not that I don’t want to help the student, but rather that I am not willing to do a student’s work for them; it is simply not my responsibility to edit.

The second article that interested me was Carol Severino’s “Avoiding Appropriation.” I felt like I could relate to the desire to sound like a native speaker in my writing. When I was in the Defense Language Institute learning Russian I was required, every day, to write stories about different aspects of my life and experiences in Russian. This was always a difficult and daunting task. Even after a year of eight-hour-a-day training, it still took me four times as long to write a story in Russian than it did in my native language. I would constantly stumble on writing English phrasing and structure in Russian, rather than writing the way a native Russian would. This was extremely frustrating to me because I was not trying to preserve my native language’s voice. I needed to sound as Russian as possible.

This experience has enabled me to empathize with ESL students who come into the Center wanting to make sure their “paper sounds ok”. But, how do you accomplish this using Brooks’ approach? Severino provided a method to accomplish this by defining appropriation and when it would be appropriate. It is all circumstantial, only using appropriation when needed to reach an end goal outside of the student’s control.

I felt like both of these articles helped me out and I’m really looking forward to seeing how they work out in practice--I will be testing them both!

My brain works!!!

It’s been another busy week, both in life and in the Center, but I’ve been brainstorming. I was really disappointed with the response my post on Peer Centered received. I was hoping for some more positive feedback or at least a “hey that’s a good idea”, but I have yet to run across anything like that. Instead it’s been a bunch of “that will never work” or “that’s not what the Center is for.” Although I haven’t gotten the response I wanted, I still feel it would be a great venue for our Center to explore and each time I share the concept with someone else in our Center, they seem to think it’s a good idea.

I actually was talking to Jenny earlier today and we got to talking about new ideas for our Center. She expressed to me that she would like to see our Center embrace embedded Word comments for our email consults. I think this would be a great idea! But, how would we implement this for our Center? It would be difficult because there are so many different versions of Word and many people are still unfamiliar with comments. Then, you’d have to tackle the computability issue--PC vs. Mac and newer computers vs. older. Anyway, we grappled with it for a few minutes and then I had an idea. What about Google Docs?

Google Docs is available to every BSU student via their Bronco Mail and it is all web-based (thus, axing the computability issues). It’s also really easy to use. Anyone who is familiar with a word processor should be able to catch on to its features very easily--there are also a ton of Google “how to” videos on YouTube to help--and they are directly built in to the document’s help screen! Google Docs is bare bones, but that may not be a bad thing and it could be very effective for our email consults. Through Bronco Mail’s system we can easily share documents with anyone that has a Bronco Mail email address (every student and faculty member at BSU). Documents can also be shared with us--The Writing Center--so that we can comment and give feedback. Another benefit to using Google Docs is that we would no longer have a formatting problem. Since a Google Document looks the same on a Writing Center Screen as it will on any other student’s. This would help us be more effective with formatting questions in email consultations. Google Docs also gives the user the opportunity to create templates, both for sharing with a group or for our own person use. How cool! I’m sure there are a lot of great benefits that I am forgetting about, but I think this is a good idea worth exploring. I used Google Docs for my EdTech class and it was very easy to get the hang of and great for collaborating!

Loooong Week

So, by now I’m in the full swing of things. Consultations have been going smoothly and I’m enjoying working in the Center. This week our reading was focused on long-distance consultations--in our case e-mail consults. To me, it sounds like an entirely different way to work. The reading gave a few examples for approaches. It sounds like it can be easy to come across too authoritative. I don’t think this will be my problem. Instead, I think I’ll be on the other side of the spectrum. Talking in an easy going manner has always been my thing and this has worked really well for me in the Center. In fact, now that I think of it, I can’t remember a time in the center in which I have had to speak formally. Maybe this shouldn’t be a concern for me at all. I know I won’t be able to please everyone all the time and I suppose that means stepping on a few toes here and there.

I’m pretty anxious to try an e-mail consult. I’m not sure if it will be my thing or not, but it is new-and I love to try new stuff. E-mail consults look like they will sort of be like a blog because you only have limited information about your audience or a really long facebook comment since you are expanding on one particular thing online. I really hope it’s something I’m good at. I’m not always the best blogger or facebook user, but I do always have something to say and that seems like the most important part to these.

I’m a little curious to see how internet consulting will develop in our center. After reading about some of the different methods centers use, I wonder if ours will eventually adopt them-or maybe even create our own. I wonder if a chat-type session would be more effective than a face-to-face or an email? It’s hard to tell until it’s been tried out. Maybe that’s something I could ask about on Peer Centered. Speaking of Peer Centered, I was totally bummed out about the responses I got back. Over half of them were from our Center and none of them (besides Michael’s) said what I wanted to hear. I still believe a creative option for our students would be a good idea. In fact, I thought much of what we read about this week reflected our idea for a “creative option.” I think maybe my first post wasn’t clear enough. There has got to be other centers that are doing something like this, but for some reason I just didn’t hear from them this time. Possibly, it would be a good idea for me to draft out a plan and then submit it to Peer Centered. I have a feeling there were just too many holes and not enough specific information about the need for something like this. I don’t want our Writing Center to be just about academic writing. Because, let’s face it, when most students gradated they are not going to be doing academic writing. And I know I have never done academic writing unless it was required. However, I and many others like to write for fun (poetry, fiction, etc.) and it’s important to develop our creative writing as well. I think the Writing Center is a perfect venue for this and I’m hoping we can get something that will work out for everyone. I know it’s something that I would use.

Enough about that rant. I want to talk a little bit about my consults for this week. Today was my first time in the center where I had back-to-back consults. It was a little intense. I hadn’t even started on my coffee this morning when my appointments started rolling in. It was pretty nerve wracking, but I made it out ok. At least there was a good variety of papers and I had a good time working with the students. I have a feeling, though, that I’m going to have to get into the habit of getting into the center earlier; that way, I avoid the “shock”.

Everyone is welcome

This week our class went deep into how to work with ESL/ELL/NNS students. From the reading I’ve found a few different ideas. One is that you consult these students in the same way you would any other. The alternative is to approach an ESL consult in a different manner. I think I fall into the second way of thinking. While I plan on treating ESL students the same way I would treat any other, I do think that ESL students need a different type of consultation.

So what are they-ESL students-looking for when they get into a consult. Nine out of ten times, it’s grammar. When I first began working in the center this was a major “no-no” for me. I immediately would think, here’s another slacker-expecting me to do a ‘fix-it”; this really isn’t the case with ESL students. Sure they say grammar, but they mean does this sound native. I can appreciate that. When I was learning russian, I wanted to do everything possible in my writing and speaking to sound like a native russian speaker. It was intimidating bringing my work before native russian instructors, hoping they wouldn’t think I was “stupid” for not having the same innate, native ability they possessed. So, on that level I can totally relate with them. No one wants to sound stupid, so I have to be careful in the way that I treat those looking for help with “grammar”; it is intimidating.

I’ve actually been working with a guy named Galo for a few weeks now. He was actually my first consult. This friday he came in looking for the usual “grammar” help. Galo is a cool guy and he is really smart. I learned he’s from Homedale and I can tell from his accent that he’s hispanic. So, I figure he’s the type of student who spent time in American high schools using English, but maybe just never perfected it. When Galo and I are consulting, I try to be as positive as possible. I circle what sounds out of place and ask him how he could say it to make it clearer. He almost always has the right answers. In fact, this last time he came in, I noticed an intense improvement. It made me feel pretty good that he was getting the hang of it. I think in this case a “grammar” session is really what students like him need to become better writers. I have noticed there are some lazy ESL students who come in to the center looking for an easy way out, but they rarely make repeat appointments.

I’ve also been trying to take what we’ve learned about in 303-from Kolln-and put it into use in my own writing. I’ve been livening up my sentences with more varied punctuation. A few days ago, I also passed on my new punctuation sensibilities to a student who came in, looking for some help making a research paper better. I passed her the comma handout and did my best to explain all its glory to her; I think she got it. This was my first time using a handout in class and I’m thinking I’ll use more of them in the future (quite handy). This, like any other week, has been one in which I’ve learned a lot of new stuff and tried them out for the first time. I’m looking forward to more productive weeks. :)

It's official; I'm official

It was exciting getting on the schedule for the first time this week. As I’ve been a consultant, I’ve been trying to make myself as approachable as possible. When it was time to write my bio, that’s what I went for--approachable. I’ve become extremely aware of my shortcomings--knowledge and inexperience--as a tutor and I’m trying to work on those as I go, but I figure what I’ve got going for me is my ability to make the students coming in comfortable. We read a lot this week about ESL students and how some of them have cultures that may take offense to my casual approach, but I’m going to stick with it. I hope not to offend anyone, but this is me. Hopefully there won’t be any future journal entries exploring this as my previous folly.

It was strange that this week was my first week on the schedule and reading into how to tutor ESL students, yet I didn’t have a single one for a consult. Most in the past I’ve consulted with have been, but this was a unique week. I don’t really feel like I learned much from this week’s ESL reading that I didn’t already know, but I still haven’t had the chance to put it into practice. I did enjoy the work we did on punctuation, though. I’d always been foggy about how to use punctuation, but the reading cleared a lot up. I realize that much of punctuation use is style. Now, I’m trying to use if for exactly that. I think knowing this will help me in my own personal creative means, but also will help in the Center too.

---

I had my first “um” moment in a consult. A girl came in for an appointment. We did the whole “hi how are you, nice to meet you, what are you majoring in hello”--kind of what I try to do with everyone--and it went well. So, it turns out she was here as a required visit for a University 101 visit, but she brought in a profile sketch that she had written for English 101. Cool, right?-Except that she didn’t have to change it for anything, wasn’t looking to change it, and wasn’t even sure if she was going to use it for a “potential” future paper. Great. Where does that leave me? What in the hell am I supposed to do at this point? Oh, wait. And let me throw this one on you too. It turns out, this profile sketch is about a friend who died--super sensitive stuff. We talked a little about structure and I hope that was helpful; God knows she needed it! But, overall I had to take a different approach. Instead of working on making a paper better, I had to figure out how to “teach” her how to go into the deeper layers of description. She grasped a little, I think. It was really tough to feel her out. She showed no emotion. I took that a cue to try something else....”um” how about a few let’s pull teeth about a delicate subject and see if we can figure this out without making you cry? It worked--sorta. She did not burst into tears, but I’m not sure the consult really went anywhere either. I guess that’s ok, but I mean “what the hell?” She was wasting my time and I dunno. What can I do? Nothing. I gave it my best shot and maybe that was enough for her to actually bring something in worth working on next time.

Ok, It would be nice if you could just go away now...

I had an interesting experience happen to me in the Center a few nights ago. It was just after 4 and the Center had just closed when I showed up. Like usual, I was in search of a quiet place to study before class and on that night the Center's couch happened to be that place. As I was settling in, a student walked in through Mikhal's doorway looking for help with a paper. I tried to explain to him that the Center was closed for the day and he'd have to make an appointment for later. He did not get it. He explained to me that he had a paper due that night and he really needed a little help with it.

After poignantly clarifying that I was helping him out of the goodness of my heart and this was highly unusual, I went over his paper with him. The paper turned out to be a disaster. He was also not a native English speaker and this only added to the problems in the paper. I told him there was no way that we were going to be able to fix everything, but I went over the first paragraph and helped him find some patterns of mistakes he was making. There was no time to go over content, so this was one of those "oh shit, you forced me into a fix-it shop" situations.

When we finished up I showed him the website for making appointments and the hours posted on the door. He left happy and I was glad to help, but seriously frustrated with the situation. This is the kind of "being taken advantage of" that Singly and Boucher are talking about in this weeks reading. I ended up being 20 minutes late to my class because I didn't have enough time to finish the work I had set out to do in the "closed" center.

Phil was in my class that night and I told him about what happened. He said he would have just told the guy too bad, come back tomorrow. Maybe that's what I should have done. I want to help, but I've got to have limits too. I really did feel taken advantage of and it sucked. I just don't want this to ruin all the good sessions. (grunt)

Part 2 (Observing Jenny)

I spend a lot of time in the Center while Jenny is working and I’ve sat in on quite a few of her consults. There was one consult in particular that I focused on for this weeks prompt.

A Music 101 student came in and needed to write a paper about his personal experience with music. He felt like his paper was all over the place and didn’t really “say” anything. Jenny made eye contact and focused on what the student was saying. He spent most of the time doing the talking. Jenny would prompt him with questions about his piece and the goals he had set whenever he paused.

After talking about the piece the student realized his main problem was that he had never really liked music to begin with. He had been trying to fib his way through the paper. Instead of encouraging his agenda, Jenny suggested that maybe he try writing about why it was that he didn’t like music. This was a real wheel turner for him. He had so much to say and felt like he’d easily be able to write his paper on that topic. He left feeling refreshed, confident that he would be able to re-write something worthwhile.

Entry 4 Part 1

I've been in the center a lot this week. Mostly because I had a difficult paper to write and wanted to "try out" the center from the other side. I had consults with both Justin and Shawn that both went really well. Even though they are both new as consultants, I really got a lot of good ground covered in each consultation.

While working with Justin we went over some basic brainstorming. I knew what I needed to write about and I had some of the main points I wanted to cover with some relevant quotes, but I just couldn't seem to get the paper jump started--that's where Justin came in. He basically looked at my stuff and started asking me questions. I responded and we began to have a discussion about the overall themes in the paper. It was helpful and fun. I never doubted Justin's ability as a consultant, but I was pleasantly surprised with how beneficial our consultation was.

After writing a draft, I met with Shawn to get some ideas for expansion and to see if I was getting my points across clearly. Again, this was a very successful consult. Shawn helped me realize what points in my paper were interesting and worthy of expansion and he also helped me figure out my shortcomings.

Overall, I was really impressed with the quality of our new tutors in the center. I got so much from my consults and feel like it helped me write--and re-write and re-write and re-write-- a great paper.

What a Week!

This was one of those "if it could go wrong it did go wrong" kind of weeks for me. I was sick, overwhelmed with too many credits in school, and my eternal hunt for a new house turned sour again. The only thing that really did seem in my favor this week was the Center.

At the beginning of this week I had my first consult. I had been sitting in on consults earlier in the morning with both Cassie and Phil; and both of those had gone pretty well. With Phil’s consult, it had been more of a tag team than an observation and I had the opportunity to contribute quite a bit. So I guess you could say the consulting juices were flowing hot in my veins when my opportunity arose.

It was a point in the center when everyone was busy and I was all alone in front of the computer recording the prior consults of the day. In walked a student without an appointment who was looking for some last minute help. I turned to Joy and she asked if I wanted to take it. I hadn’t expected that, but I was totally pumped. Eden became handy, so she joined me and we tackled the consult together. The consult went pretty smoothly. The student was mainly in the final revision stage and just wanted to make sure he was getting his point across (which he was). We helped him clean up the paper a bit and made his paper sound more “native” english, since he was spanish speaker. The session went a little beyond a half hour, but like Melissa said in class, that was ok not to be concerned with that.

In hindsight, I would have approached the consult differently. Eden and I made corrections for him, but we didn’t really teach him how to fix his own mistakes--talk about “fix it shop”! I was observing a consult with Jenny later in the week and saw how she let the student squirm a little. It wasn’t that she wasn’t helping him, she just didn’t do the work. Instead, she’d offer a few suggestions or explain why what they wrote was wrong, but never outright fixed anything. I thought this was a much better approach than what Eden and I did.

Even though our consult wasn’t perfect, I (of course) got super excited and wanted to start consulting regularly. Our reading for the week also got me fired up. I was super into Fulwiler’s piece. To me, it was incredibly inspiring and an eye opener. He had so many great ideas to help writing students! I know that not all of them are always feasible in the Writing Center, but I’m willing to get creative. If anything, these are great ideas for my future students. Melissa reigned me in a little from jumping on the consultant bandwagon, but I can feel it coming. Bring the Walk-In’s on! I’m (almost) ready.

Alright, this is me...

So, it’s my second week experiencing the writing center hands on. I was pretty bummed that Monday was a holiday. True, it was nice getting some extra “me time” in, but I’ve been really excited about getting some more experience in the center. Ever since beginning the class, I’ve had this personal goal of mine to start doing consults before the 7-week deadline. I know it may seem a little over zealous, but that’s me. I don’t do things any other way, if I can help it. The only problem is I’ve hit a few roadblocks.

First off, I’m getting more intimidated. It seems like one of those “the more you know, the less you know” kind of situations. This week in class we tackled a lot of interesting stuff and one of the big things that rocked my boat was the grammar game. I didn’t have all the answers; in fact, I had a lot of wrong answers. This really gets under my skin! I carefully read the book, taking notes and highlighting like a mad man, but I still failed to get it. That freaks me out! I’m just not comfortable with not having all the answers.

Another thing that bothered me actually took place in the center--several times. It seems like every thing I do, I have to look for re-assurance. I know Melissa drilled us on “manning-up”. I get it, and I feel like I have done just that. But, with everything I do, I am constantly looking for a conformation--that yes, Ryan you did put that in the computer right, or yes Ryan that is how you handle that situation. I know that I’m new and don’t have all the answers, but I feel like it’s time for me to “man-up” in my self-assurance. I wonder if this is something other people in the center are also witnessing or if it’s strictly internal. Either way, I know it’s something I need to get over.

On a more positive note, I really feel the bonds beginning to form with all the consultants in the center. Even though I haven’t been able to become comfortable as a “ready” consultant in the center, I am at least comfortable with my team. I wasn’t sure how that was going to work out at first. I know Melissa assured everyone that we would all become a big family, but I was honestly a bit skeptical at first, given everyone’s different ages and interests. I’m glad my skepticism was totally wrong. I think I’ve made more new friends in the center, in the last few weeks, than I have in the entire 3 years since I’ve moved to Boise. No joke! Rob and I grabbed a bite to eat after class on Thursday night--very cool. Then, I’m watching the BSU game with Justin tomorrow--awesome! And, Rachael’s husband’s band needs a bassist and I just so happen to play bass. So guess where will I be Sunday night? You guessed it--jamming!!!

I know this journal entry may not be as scholastic as the one before or the ones that will follow, but I really feel like I needed to get some things off my chest. I have more insecurities, now, than I realized at first. But, I know I’m ready to tackle them head first. And, I feel way more confident knowing that I have a good team of friends to take this on with. It’s still my goal to be ready before the 7 weeks is up. So now, it’s time to “man-up”!

First Timer

Today I had my first experience sitting in on a consultation with Jenny. She was working with a student who, for one, was not a native english speaker, and two, also was a business student. As soon as the consult began, I thought to myself, here we go. This is exactly some of the “tough” stuff we talked about in class. I watched carefully to see how Jenny worked and was surprised with how it unfolded.

First off, she asked exactly what the student was looking for. I expected that. The student was given an assignment to write an “introduction” based on a short reading. She had already written the “introduction” and wanted to make sure she had done it properly. Jenny had her read it out loud and took notes while she listened.

I was impressed with how well the paper flowed. It made sense and sounded like something a native english-speaker would have written. It sounded like more of a summary than an “introduction”. However, after looking at the assignment sheet from the professor, we realized that he had called it an “introduction”, but really wanted a summary. Jenny proceeded to help her clean up the paper a bit. There were only a few minor corrections to be made so the paper really didn’t need too much help.

After the session, Jenny asked me what I thought and we talked about how it went. I told her that I thought the paper was pretty good. Jenny told me that she never tells a student that their paper is pretty good. She said it’s like giving them a stamp of approval to send them on their way. Instead, she offers them some suggestions and attempts to help them get their own thinking going. It made a lot of sense. I realize that it’s never a good idea to give a student a “pretty good stamp” or they may never grow as writers.

I think this goes back to a lot of reading we’ve been doing about collaboration. It’s important to bounce ideas off other students. That really seems like the best way to help the people coming into the writing center to become better writers. Giving students a “pretty good stamp” is a real road block to the creative process and should be avoided at all costs.

One more lesson I learned from the session was about how I mentally approach the students coming into the center. Honestly, I expected the students paper to be in bad shape because english wasn’t her first language. I was very wrong. Her writing was really quite good. I realized I had made a negative stereotype, in my head, about students who were non-native speakers. I came into the experience expecting the student to be a sinking ship, but her writing skills were great.

I know now that I have to keep a really open mind while in the center. Each writer has their own individual skills that they bring to the table. Just because they are in the center does not mean they are bad writers. Instead, they most likely need collaboration and a few grammar pointers. I’ve got to be careful not to judge the students, but just help them out as best I can with wherever they may be at in their writing development.

First Informal Test Post

Welcome!

This blog will serve as a my "Getting Centered" Journal for English 303.

Here you'll find out about my experiences in the English 303 classroom as well as the Boise State Writing Center. I don't have much to report at the moment, but this should get really interesting rather quickly! :)