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.
Hi, Ryan.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, I wouldn't worry about your version of "casual." The casual that the reading was talking about was more along the lines of tutor-with-his-feet-on-the-desk, not-really-paying-attention kind of casual. The casualness you describe is more along the lines of being a friendly, approachable peer. So no need to worry about that.
Now, as far as the consultation with the UNIV101 student, this has been a common problem. I am, though, working on a course redesign of UNIV101 with the librarians and instructors of these courses so that we may work together to make the Writing Center component more effective than it is now. The original idea behind those required visits was just to get the student in the door so they'll know we're here--I'm going to try to push it further than that, though.
Thanks!
mk