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.

“What feedback did you receive? What advice will you take? What advice won’t you take? Why?”

I received a lot of good feedback from my fellow students. I liked the way we presented our ideas and had our class critique what they thought was working and what they thought was not working.

From what I heard back from everyone was they said it was a good idea for me to be doing observations, rather than interviews. That way, I can see a tutor in action, rather than just have them tell me what they do to help students brainstorm thesis topics. Only around two people said I should either interview the tutor or the student after the sessions, which I probably will not do. I believe I can get enough information from observing sessions.

The question I had asked the class is if I should observe “revising” sessions. My main concern is that I am not finding enough “brainstorming freshman” sessions. What I said to back it up was that a lot of freshman students would come into the writing center and have an entire paper written, but no thesis. Regardless if the student makes a session specifically for “revising,” they still might have to brainstorm a thesis. With my lack of time/sessions left to observe, four people in the class agreed with me, four had no comment, and one disagreed. I don’t see how observing revising sessions would hurt me—I can simply add it into my question. If I observe both, I will be able to have enough information to support my question. Otherwise, I do not think my project will be successful, which people in the class agree with.

So, the advice I will take is to consider observing revising appointments, in addition to observing appointments with freshman. The advice I will probably not take is interviewing a student or a tutor. I will not have enough time to do that and I want my information for my projects to be real and honest. If I do interviews, I do not know how honest people will be. And personally, if I got interviewed after an appointment, I would not know what to say as a student or as a tutor. It’s sometimes difficult to be put on the spot.

Key Concepts

I've used multiple techniques that we've discussed in class in my tutoring sessions, but what they all seem to come down to is reflection. Yancey, in her piece "On Reflection," describes reflection as a "growth of consciousness," (4). Essentially, she claims reflection (in the context of writing) is the process of both looking back at what we have accomplished, as well as looking forward towards a goal, and then putting those perspectives into conversation with each other, thus creating knowledge and insight. When I ask my students to tell me what their essay/paper/etc. is about, they are reflecting on what it is they have already written (or think they have written) by summarizing their thoughts and arguments. When we begin to read their piece aloud and catch mistakes or areas that need improvement, they are participating in another aspect of reflection: revision. When we near the end of the session, and we look at everything we've changed or fixed in the paper, we take part in reflection again as the student looks forward to how the piece will be improved after they make the necessary revisions. After the student leaves, having put their previous work and their future work into conversation with my help, they have gained knowledge about themselves as writers, as well as about their writing. If you think about it, the entire peer tutoring process consists of reflection; Yancey was definitely right on the money when she wrote, "reflection is a critical component of learning and of writing specifically" (7).

11/20

In the last tutoring session, I had three 30 minute sessions with students who were all working on the same paper. I believe their teacher required them to come to the RWC at least three times before they turned in this paper. According to the students, the structure/style of the paper didn't really matter as long as the content was strong and they answered the questions that he presented in the rubric. I spoke to each of them about whether or not he wanted them to create a thesis statement, whether he ever required them to create one in any of their previous papers, and they said no. Two of the students weren't even sure exactly how to create a thesis statement. I am so surprised by the amount of students who don't know how to create a thesis statement or have never been required to do so in any of their papers. I asked the students to describe their previous papers, what worked and what didn't work, and focused on those aspects when we discussed the new paper. Their task was to interview three different generations about food: how they acquire/acquired it, preparation, consumption, cost, etc., and to use this information to analyze how these generations interacted with food and how these interactions have changed throughout the years. I thought it was a very interesting project and one that could say a lot about our society. The students all had the same sort of plan: they wanted to interview their grandparents, parents, and friends. There would be quite a difference between the way our grandparents acquired and prepared food and the way our parents did. One of the biggest things I encouraged the students to do was ask the people they interview about the state of the economy, historical context, and how these things effected the way interact with food, how the prices of food has changed, what has been available to them throughout the years. Has the quality of a certain food improved? How often do they go out to eat? And told them Thanksgiving break would be a perfect time to ask them all of these questions. It would be interesting to ask them about past Thanksgivings and what they prepared for those meals, if they are more traditional or if the dishes change every year and why. All of the students had very good ideas and were only in the brainstorming stages of the paper but seemed to have a good grip on what was required of them. I tried to point out what I believed would be very useful to them in the rubric and what they should pay attention to. I encouraged them to keep the questions consistent for every interview in order to really see the differences between generations.

Response 11/20

The most common key concept that comes up while I’m working is reflection. I generally start every tutoring session by reading the paper or excerpt with the students. After that I ask the student “Where do you think the strengths are in your paper?” followed by “And where do you think the weaknesses are?” I like to start this way to get a general feel for the student’s awareness of their own writing and to see if the student and I are on the same page. I feel like this is a great way to start every session because the first question generally seems to improve the mood of the meeting as the student gets to reflect on their own success and may get to hear other successes they hadn’t consider before. The second question usually gets the student to talk a little more and open up about issues other than “grammar” or “this just sounds weird.” I also like to end the session with some reflection by looking at what we’ve talked about in the session and what we’ve improved/changed over the course of the session. Overall I feel that this process gets students to open up a little more during the session and to feel better about their writing.

The second key concept that comes up the most in my sessions is the rhetorical canon. I like to take time to ask about the specifics of the class (what are the key terms used, what’s the general attitude of the professor, did the professor emphasize anything). I take time to remind the student that they’re writing to both their professor and possibly to the community of the school of academics the particular class falls in. I then shift focus to talk about their overall argument (I usually ask “what’s your point in writing this essay”) and then I check this against their thesis statement and overall essay to see if the two line up. Finally we talk about any other issues that may have come up during the session until about the last 5 minutes where I stop and ask if they had anything else that we haven’t looked at that they want me to give a quick look at.  

11/19 response

A key concept that always comes into my head at the end of every tutoring session is reflection. I find that one can reflect over a paper at basically any stage of the writing process. It’s necessary to reflect in the beginning to make sure you know what your process will be or what your goal is. In the middle of your paper, it is important to reflect on the work that has already been done; do you like the work so far? is it getting you towards achieving your goal? And of course, at the end of the paper reflection is necessary to make sure your work meets your standards and can be presented to the audience in a way that they would understand it. 

I think along with reflection, observation is an important concept. It can almost relate back to reflection because they have some similarities. Observing can help a writer find those places where some extra work needs to be done. I think its important for multiple people to observe my paper and my writing process. I, alone, cannot catch mistakes that I have made; they can be caught with the help of a couple of other eyes. 

As a tutor, I feel like I have spent most of my tutoring hours helping ESL students. For the most part, they all come in wanting specific help. I try to focus on that help they ask for- usually it something like spelling or grammar. Sometimes I find further problems. I’m also glad students come into the writing center and learn that there are other problems in their writing than what they see. It’s interesting when they find the problems even before I bring them up. The important term seen in all students is the need for conversation. Conversation allows students to share their goals with the tutors, help students find their audience, and make sure that their message as writers is getting across. 

11/19 Response

conversation- I may not always know what to say to a student to help their writing, but writing is a conversation, and I need to keep the conversation going.  It's ok to ask questions to keep the conversation going.  When the student answers your question, the tutor learns something and most of the time, so does the student
reading backwards- I got the idea for this from the reverse outline.  I started to realize that I wasn't really able to make thoughtful comments on a student's project just by looking at it.  Most of the time I had to read through each paragraph and understand the meaning.  Once I've read through everything, I start making sense of each paragraph, starting with the last one.  I have the student clarify what they meant, and make comments.  By the time we get up to the top, most of the time the student has a clearer idea of what they're paper is actually about, and consequently, what their thesis should really state.  Once we've figured out what the whole paper says, we can sum it up nicely in the thesis.
critical incident- A student is always going to hear what you want them to hear.  A lot of times, they are going to hear what they want to hear.  I am also guilty of this.  Sometimes, no matter how expertly you deliver advice to the student, the student will not take it.  Sometimes a light bulb has to go off within the student's head for any real change to occur.
reflection- On some days I hate reflecting on my work, but on others, I love it.  Reflection is proven to be helpful, but the trick is you also have to leave time for reflection.  Writing can't be a one and done process.  If you finish your first draft the night before the paper is due and consider a quick read through for grammar issues to be your reflection, reflection is never going to get you anywhere.  For reflection to be meaningful, you've got to let your writing sit and marinate for a little while.  You've got to come back to it when you're a little less attached.  If a writer is too attached, they won't be willing to make the necessary changes.  I appreciate it when students come into the RWC multiple times because this shows they really planned out a time table for their writing.

Key Concepts

Two main concepts that I have found to be extremely helpful in my tutoring thus far are the idea of reading aloud and writing as a conversation. It was surprising to me that the majority of  students that I worked with had never read their papers out loud to themselves or someone else. A practice that seemed so commonplace in my writing experience is in reality, not so common. So many students come in the RWC looking for "grammar help" and "line editing" although that is not the primary purpose of a Reading and Writing Center, by just reading the paper aloud, many of the grammatical errors that students seemed so overwhelmingly concerned with are easily solved.

The second concept that I find to be recurring in my sessions is the idea of conversation and writing as a social aspect. In the beginning of my tutoring sessions I try to ask the student what their understanding of the prompt is and then compare that to my understanding as well as what content they have already written. Often times just transferring the information the student has written on paper into a conversation where they put into words their ideas clarifies their thesis as well as the rest of their paper. In this way it also helps to check if their spoken ideas match what they have written down. I find these two practices to be extremely helpful in the tutoring process so that students better understand how to approach their own writing and also learn concepts they can use on their own to review and revise their work.

Some Key Terms

The key concept that has helped me the most in the writing center has been reflection. Almost every time I have tutored, someone has asked me something like, “does my thesis make sense?” “is my argument clear?” “did I answer the prompt?” I think reflection has played a big role in my experience as a tutor. As a writer, you consider your intention for the paper, consider the prompt, read it, and reflect on it. But, as a tutor, you consider the prompt, read the paper, and you compare the two. The tutor perspective is more difficult because you are missing a few steps in the writing process. But it’s also easier because you can view the writing objectively and critically. I think that having this perspective as a tutor has enabled me to better reflect on my own writing. 

Another important concept has been constraints. I’ve been working with a lot of international students and it’s impossible to approach their work without a constraint: the language barrier between us, the language barrier on paper, the cultural influences of the international student. Some things are just hard to translate into English and it’s hard to help them when you don’t understand their language! It’s frustrating. The constraint remains no matter the audience.

Collaboration and conversation are two concepts that I think go together well. Collaboration I see as a little negative in the writing center. Sometimes I feel like I’m putting myself into their writing—while we are re-constructing sentences and re-phrasing and brainstorming, I feel like I’m infringing just a little bit on their original writing. But conversation is good. I love talking about writing. My favorite tutoring sessions have been the ones where we brainstorm and talk about their draft and their ideas. I think conversation is so important when it comes to writing because I feel like sometimes students in other disciplines don’t know that there is a community of people who write and care about good writing and talk about good writing. I also like to know that I’m part of that community.