final reflection 12/4

My experiences working at FSU’s Reading and Writing Center have been both challenging and rewarding. I have had many different kinds of students come in with all different writing styles and talents. It is so cool to see such a diversity of people here at Florida State. And it so cool that we can all help each other in some way.

This week was one of those weeks that was both challenging and rewarding at the writing center. The first student I tutored this week was a junior majoring in social work, so naturally, her paper dealt with social work. She was most concerned with grammar and APA formatting. I asked her if there was anything besides that (e.g. organization, formatting paragraphs, etc.) that she would also like to discuss, but she kept on insisting on grammar. So, we ended up reading over her paper and talking about various areas of concern. She mostly had questions for me, rather than me asking her questions about the paper. At that point, it was kind of like she knew what she wanted and did not want to do much else. When the appointment was over, we got through six of the twelve pages and she immediately made another appointment at the writing center. Although I was happy she was utilizing the RWC, I still felt unaccomplished. We both knew thirty minutes was not enough time to go through a twelve-page paper. And in addition, I’m not 100% familiar with APA formatting, so that was difficult too. I felt like she didn’t trust me as a tutor. Is there something I can do next time that happens?

My next appointment was for an hour and it was for a Chinese graduate student. We were going over her paper regarding Chinese and American government. Once again, her paper also required APA formatting, and we had to research what goes into APA. That took up unnecessary time. I think something the Peer Tutoring class can benefit from next semester is going over properly formatting papers, besides just MLA. Especially because the RWC allows any major. Other than that, the appointment went smoothly and we worked on sentence structure. She was an awesome English writer for having Chinese as her native language!

In all, I feel like me working at the RWC has benefitted me in multiple ways. I’ve learned so much by working with all different kinds of students and it is so rewarding, as I had mentioned earlier. I am so thankful for this opportunity and I cannot wait to intern in the spring!

Final response

         I got positive response from everyone that they liked the idea of my mock tutoring session followed by interview questions.  I asked the class if they think this could be done in 30 minutes and most agreed that it could.  A few suggested an hour session.  I ended up doing a 30 minute session and finished with time to spare in all 3 sessions.  One person in the class did question how ESL students worked within my research question of tutoring reading in the RWC.  Because of this, I decided to add one more question to my interview questions.  "What, if anything, would you have done differently in the tutoring session if I were an ESL student?'  In each interview, the tutor had already touched on that subject by the time we actually got to that question, showing that it actually does play a big part in their tutoring for reading, so I am glad I got the advice to add that question.
       Finally, I wanted to add a brief description of my last tutoring session which was, quite simply, the worst session I've ever had.  The student signed up for my last 30 minute slot and took up 90 minutes of my time and would not leave.  The student basically wanted me to write the essay for them and kept bringing out more work that she "needed help with."  This student simply had no respect for my time or what I had to do that day. Yes, I get it, I should have spoken up stating that I had to go and the session was over.  However, I'm a shy person, and confrontation is hard for me.  Maybe if we had actually gone over what to do in a similar situation in class where the student just won't leave, I would have been prepared.  But I was never prepared for this, and therefore had no clue how to handle the situation or how to correctly represent the RWC in the situation.  On top of it all, I basically paid FSU to be disrespected like this.  I am an unpaid tutor who in fact pays to take this class as credit, and I've never felt more used than I do now.  I am very disappointed.

Last Reflection

This is all of the wonderful feedback I received and why I will use it:

“I would personally phrase some questions differently; instead of “frustrations” maybe ‘are your experiences with students who are required to be in the RWC different from the typical student?”

I will absolutely use this advice because frustration definitely adds a negative connotation that I don’t want.

“Focus on how to improve the morale of students rather than why.”

I will use this advice because that is, after all, what tutoring is all about. Following this advice will make my project more helpful for tutors in the future.

“I would do less questions because 20 questions will take a lot of time. You can combine some!”

I will absolutely follow this advice because many of those questions were repetitive.

“Interview was really thorough-would you interview in person or over email?”

As previously mentioned, I will condense the interview, and they will be in person.

“I would define ‘comfortable.’ How exactly do you want these students to feel? I would also narrow down the # of interview questions. The large # might be a little overwhelming. “

I will follow this advice because comfortable is a very important, and vague word that must be defined in my project.

“I would break down my paper the same way your power point was organized.”

This is wonderful advice because that will help me immensely with the structure of my paper.

“If it were mine I’d be cautious of subjective evidence. Stick to your data and 1^st hand experience.”

This advice is fantastic and I will keep it in mind.

“Maybe include a question about how often tutors actually see required students. “

I will include this question.

“You have a lot of questions…how long are your interviews going to be? Maybe consider condensing the questions?”

As mentioned earlier, the interview will definitely be condensed.

“Interview-it’s a lot of questions.”

“I feel as though the interview questions may be a bit much and because there are so many they will be too broad.”

I will revise them.

“I feel like a lot of this data relies on feeling-might be hard to quantify.”

“If it were mine, I’d use observations instead of interviews, as tutors might be biased in their responses.”

Thank you everyone for all the great feedback! 

Final Reflection

My question for the research project regarding resistance in the writing center received lots of varying feedback. Some students suggested drawing many comparisons from my literature review. There are those who mentioned questioning who was required to come to the reading and writing center, but considering that was one of the special topic suggestions from project two, I likely won’t consider that suggestion as much. One of the suggestions I enjoyed most was recognizing patterns, though this wouldn’t quite illuminate on resistance as a whole, I think it might work in terms of identifying different resistance responses. I’m not sure who wrote this specific suggestion, but one student emphasized the recognition of resistance as more important than techniques. I agree most with this suggestion because we have reviewed a multiplicity of techniques to counter resistance in class, and a more interesting paper would draw upon how tutors recognize the initial responses. Some people wrote comments about imploring body language questions further, which I do plan to do. I’m not sure if I will get a significant amount of feedback from those whom I interview on body language, because I personally haven’t paid much attention to my own while tutoring, but I do hope that there will be some information as I think it will be an intriguing subtopic. All together I enjoyed the feedback I received from my classmates, it gave me good insight on topics that would be most interesting to people, and those which have been covered time and time again and would likely result in a boring paper. I’m really looking forward to begin analyzing my data, I think I will likely interview three people rather than two, because I would prefer a wider range of results as far as tutors personal observations. I will be looking into further research about body language and it’s role in tutoring, especially it’s role in countering resistance. I think most of my annotations were well done so I plan to integrate that research into my questions, and keep most of that information in mind before my interviews, so that I can make coherent comparisons and contrasts to the works.

Feedback

I thought the feedback I received was very helpful. I find myself to be sort of struggling with the direction I’m going with as my topic of resumes. I also found it kind of difficult to decide what my concentration was going to be. One idea I will use as I continue with my project is to go to the career center to see what they do that the writing center does not or things that they do have in common. The employees at the career center are trained to help students on specific topics such as creating a resume. I’m not sure if there are tutors that are specifically trained to do the same. 

Something many students in class thought would be interesting to know was the background knowledge of the tutors I will be interviewing. I have included that as a question in my interview to know more about their own experiences with professional writing. Someone mentioned maybe speaking to multiple tutors (possibly through a survey) to find out how many tutors have been approached with this particular session. I don’t think I will take this last piece of advice because that doesn’t really help me solve my research question, but maybe I can find out how many people have come in just by looking at client reports online. 

I’m interested to do more research and see what answers I can find. I’m hoping that the interviews don’t contradict each other and help me answer my questions.

Feedback

There wasn't much of a variance to my feedback in that they all pretty much stated the same thing. However, a lot of it was positive in regards to the data and my analysis of it. Since I didn't have to go out and collect the data, because it was provided by you, I am able to do a more thorough analysis of it. I have the time to really sit and compare studios and find trends  within the data. As I stated during  my presentation, I did not have a main question that I wanted to answer. Maybe it was because my tactic was opposite of everyone else's that they were unable to help much with that part, I don't know. I just know that I was kind of left off where I started, without much advice on how to move forward.

Although I didn't get much help in the way of my essential question, at least I know I am on some kind of track. My data was clear and showed obvious signs of trends. I was able to deduce which majors were visiting the digital studio, for which projects, using which programs, and even in some cases, for which professors. In some of my feedback, people raised questions about what this means for the digital studio and for the students-- that is the question I am essentially trying to answer. Other feedback were about my question in regards to why we don't see a lot of returning students. The only returning students that I was able to find were those who were working on a post card research project with a professor. I think that this may be part of the larger question that I want to answer.

Feedback Response

Overall, I received a lot of positive feedback about the direction of my project. From everyone's comments and suggestions, I feel very confident about my observations and my thesis. Many people noted that they liked my idea of comparing and contrasting the two tutoring styles that I divulged from my data. I was hesitant at first to include that in my paper because the names and concepts were of my own creation but according to my feedback I should include it in my paper. Another student suggested that I draw comparisons from my literature review write about how they measure up to the actually tutoring sessions that I observed. There are many theories that I've read about concerning working with student athletes but not all those on paper turn out to be efficient in practice and I think that would be an interest concept to unpack.

In regards to the advice that I probably won't take, someone suggested that I ask the student athletes specific questions about their opinions about working as a registered student. I originally included that idea in my data collection but I didn't want to overwhelm myself with subjects and so I wanted to focus on my personal observations only. If I interviewed actual students that could provide valuable information for a different angle.  Another difficulty with interviewing students would be biases, as a registered student they are required to come visit the RWC and so many of their attitudes about the center itself might already be less than stellar. If they happen to have a personal vendetta against a specific tutor that could come out in the interview. My data is to strictly focus on the physical aspect of the tutoring session and different methods that are used as well as their actual effectiveness. The majority of the feedback that I received confirmed the direction that my project is going and I plan to continue and hopefully produce an effective research paper.