10/2 Response

This week, I experienced one of the same students as last week.  The student is an athlete that is required to come to tutoring at the RWC.  However, he is still pretty optimistic during his tutoring.  Unfortunately, he did not have a lot to work on, so the session only last for about 30 minutes instead of the allotted time of 1 hour.  During the 30 minutes, the student read through his past poems.  Jonathan read some of them aloud, and I read the others aloud.  From this, the student picked his top 4.  These were the poems he was planning on putting in his portfolio for his professor.  Jonathan and I mentioned what we really liked in each poem, but ultimately, the decision was up to the student.
    Once this decision was made, we then gave short suggestions for each poem.  Jonathan suggested cutting a few lines from one poem.  The things he wanted to cut were not as concrete as the other images in the poem.  I suggested adding question marks to 3 lines in one poem.  When each of us read the poem aloud, we were already reading the phrases as questions, so why not put a little punctuation in the poem?  Jonathan then suggested restructuring another poem.  The student agreed to this because the action of the poem really started in the "middle."
          The next session was with an international doctoral student.  Obviously, this student was academically above Jonathan and I, and his paper was on economics, something neither of us knew much about.  Yet, this student still needed help making sure he was practicing correct grammar and English phrases.  Initially, it was very hard for me to understand this student.  After a couple of minutes, the student became a little more comfortable and addressed questions to both Jonathan and I.  When he started talking more, it became easier for me to understand him.  This was encouraging.  Mainly, this student was struggling with articles and prepositions.  These were easy fixes.  The trickier fixes were those caused by overly wordy sentence structures.  Jonathan and I would suggest possible sentence alternatives until the student heard one that he thought best fit his intentions for the student.  This was an example of necessary line editing.  Unlike most students, when this student asked for "grammar help," he really meant it.  His paper was already 36 pages long, so obviously he had well developed ideas.  This student just wanted to make sure he sounded as smart in his second languages as he presumably does in his first language.

Reflection 1

My first observing session took place Tuesday evening in Strozier library, my mentor was scheduled to work that evening for just two hours, so I decided to stay for the entirety of his scheduled time. Fortunately I was able to experience a few different situations with tutee’s as well as a combination of approaches to the situations on my mentors end. The first appointment he had was with a girl who came decently prepared, with an entire written paper, and a brief explanation of her prompt. She didn’t come with questions and informed us that her coming to the writing center was due to a requirement in her class. He asked very basic questions, but in a very subdued/kind way, it wasn’t threatening and he made it easy for the girl to comfortably respond. I also enjoyed a lot of the positive remarks he made about certain aspects of her paper, I could tell she responded well to these compliments and I think it helps manifest confidence in continuing writing towards a good paper. The next girl was a little less prepared, she showed up about fifteen minutes late to her thirty minute appointment, and had half of her paper completed- she basically approached us with a ‘I need x more words to finish’ sort of situation. He asked briefly about the class and the topic of the paper, and if there was anything specific she wanted him to look for, to which she responded ‘Just see what I wrote..’. He took a more direct approach here and read her paper quickly and silently while helping point out and expanding on some flaws along the way. She had the paper up on her laptop and so did he, which made it easier to go through it despite the time constraints. He did a really good job of explaining other options she could take and places where things might sound weird (by clarifying what makes it awkward/incorrect) and not simply editing or correcting.

The last student was a student-athlete with a poetry assignment, a tutee he sees regularly. The environment was already comfortable so I really just used this time to see how he worked with a student that wasn’t particularly focused on the work or actual writing, but one who had to be there. It was far more conversational and friendly; we basically brainstormed with him and talked him through his assignment for an hour. I found that the comfortable setting and indirect approach to him and his assignment was best in getting the tutees mind thinking and when on his own, I could see him knowing where to start with his writing because of it.

Tutoring Observation Reflection

           This week, in my tutoring session with Sean, I was fortunate enough to observe two students from both ends of the academic spectrum. Our first tutee was a student athlete, and he very clearly did not have an interest in being at the RWC. When he spied me sitting with Sean, his first words were, “Is my session cancelled?!” Immediately, the tone of the session was set. Sean did his best to converse with the student, asking him how football was going and making small talk, eventually inquiring about the schoolwork the student had brought in. The student claimed he really didn’t have much to work on, explaining that, as it was Friday, all of his assignments had already been turned in earlier in the week. Sean kept probing him, though, questioning him about how the ENC1101 class was going and asking what they’d been doing in class and what they were doing next class. The student revealed that his class would be workshopping a poem on Monday, which led Sean to ask if we could see the poem the student planned on using. We moved to the computers, because the poem was on Blackboard, and read through the student’s chosen poem, a love poem which was actually quite charming, after which Sean asked some questions and found quite a few good things to say. There was a bit of a lull, and then Sean asked about other poems the student had written recently, so he showed us another piece. This one was very touching, clearly closer to the student’s heart, so after Sean tried subtly suggesting that the student use this poem for workshop instead, I asked him which poem felt closer to him. He responded that this second poem was, and decided to submit it in for workshopping. Once we’d discussed both poems and settled upon the second, Sean asked if the student had any other questions or assignments he wanted help with. The student said no, quite obviously itching to leave, so Sean let him go 15 minutes early. This tutoring experience was actually very educational for me, as I greatly fear having a student come in with nothing to work on and being at a loss for what to do. After this session, I have a better idea of how to approach a situation like that: asking a lot of questions and being persistent.

            Sean’s second student was essentially the complete opposite of his first. She came in with her paper fully written for her ENC2135 course, only needing help with her citations. She was unfamiliar with MLA format, so she asked Sean to take a look at her in-text citations and works cited page. He went through her citations, letting her know how to correct them and explaining the purpose of MLA in-text citations. The student was very willing to accept and apply the corrections, and once they had gone through her works cited page and fixed some small errors, she said she had no other questions. Sean did ask her if she wanted to read the paper aloud or have him read through it and see if there was anything that could be revised, but she said she felt that would be unnecessary so the session ended a bit early. This session was extremely clear-cut and simple, providing a great example of an ideal tutoring scenario. I can only hope that I get plenty of students like her, who know exactly what they need before they come in!

9/25 Response

Overall, I really enjoyed my Observation session with my peer tutoring mentor, Clare. She is a graduate student studying comparative literature. During our email correspondence she asked that I come earlier to the session so that we could go over the parameters of the tutoring. I found that I learned the most from her before, after and in between tutoring sessions.

Before visiting the RWC I composed a list of questions that I planned to ask Clare before her session so that I could understand better how she personally liked to work with her students. Some of my biggest concerns were how to work with students who had no idea where to start and students who had to write about topics concerning areas that I am unfamiliar with. Her biggest advice? Ask lots and lots of questions. That was her most frequent answer. I also asked her if she ever felt any pressure to go straight into line-editing when a student came into a session. Clare explained to me that her best interest was to focus on what the student needs most, so if that is only proofreading than she does just that. But, she makes it a point to pay attention to grammar whilst going through the writing assignment no matter what the student comes into the RWC for. She also noted  that she makes an extra point to always check grammar if she is tutoring an International student because often, their use of English language in their papers are more prone to error. In Clare's opinion the most important part of the tutoring process is listening to the student and applying whatever you know to help the student understand the writing process.

On Wednesday Clare had three appointments. One who was an international student, actually did not show up and she took that time to explain to me the "Client Report Form." All Peer Tutors have to fill our this form at the end of each session, it acts as a sort of reflection on how the session went. The tutor can include what they worked on with the student as well as what they will work on for a future visit and if they did not show up for their session at all, it is recorded through the online RWC system.

Clare's second appointment was an international student who had a short story assignment. The student asked Clare if she could read it to make sure that it "made sense," a phrase that I noticed students commonly used but did not really understand. Clare started off by asking the student what
her understanding of the assignment was and if she had a rubric or assignment sheet with her. Clare then began to read the short story aloud to the student and along the way would make small grammar changes, asking questions like "is this what you meant to say?" and "What did you mean by this?" Posing these questions after reading it for the student to hear how their thoughts sounded helped to clarify this student's paper. By the end of the session, Clare had only made grammatical changes and switched the order of a few sentence Afterwards, she filled out the Client Report Form and we waited for the next student.

The student in the last session had a final draft of an essay about Thomas Paine's "Common Sense." In the assignment, the student had to analyze how "Common Sense" had affected the audience of the time. Clare posed similar questions in the beginning of the session like "what would you like me to look at?" "Would you mind if I read this aloud?" From there Clare read the essay but there turned out to be not many errors. The students main concerns were the flow of the essay, if she had repeated herself too much in the conclusion in reference to the information she talked about in her introduction paragraph, and if her works cited page was correct. After reviewing the entire essay we went to the conclusion and compared it to the introduction. Clare explained that the idea of the concluding paragraph was to summarize but also introduce a new idea, which the student did in fact do. Lastly, Clare looked at the works cited and saw that the formatting for an MLA paper was not correct. She brought up what the requirements were on her laptop and share an OWL Purdue online resource that many students reference for MLA questions.

Clare is a very attentive and helpful tutor and I really like to see her work with her students.  It was definitely apparent to keep in mind that the students interest is what the tutor should focus on and to let them guide the session because most of them they have more knowledge about the assignment that the tutor does. I will definitely be recalling the tips that Clare shard with me during my tutoring experiences in the hopes that I can successfully help students in the way that Clare has.

Observation 1

My first sessions shadowing my mentor, Casey Whitworth, really helped put my mind at ease. For some reason I’ve had this idea in my head that the tutoring process is a lot scarier than it really is. The sessions that I spent with Casey were very laid back, the students were receptive and curious, and my mentor created a relaxed environment which is exactly what I would like to do for the students that I eventually meet with. I also realized that it was ok to start a conversation with the students, to ask them how they feel about the project or even the class itself. We don’t have to delve into the material right away unless, of course, that’s what the student wants.

            The first student brought in a poem, which I was extremely excited about. Poetry isn’t the easiest thing to critique in my opinion but it’s so exciting to work with someone who is right in the middle creating it. Right away, ideas were popping into my head and I felt so relieved because more than anything I was worried that I wouldn’t have anything to say to the student, that I would freeze, my mind would go blank, and I wouldn’t know how to help. But I knew almost immediately how I could help in a way that wouldn’t intrude upon the student’s process of writing the poem, just shed light on a new approach. We talked about adding more concrete images to explain the abstract ideas he had written within the poem.

            The second student wanted to brainstorm ideas for a speech that she had yet to write. I thought it was cool that I was able to observe two very different sessions in one afternoon and during both I felt excited and eager to help. She needed to write an informative speech about any topic of her choosing, which provides her endless with paths to travel down. I told Casey that I think the most difficult part of her project will be settling on one topic because of how many we came up with. This is a good problem to have!

            After these sessions I’m even more excited to start tutoring on my own and putting what I’ve learned to the test!

My mentor's name was Megan, a grad student who's also in my Russian lit class so we knew each other prior to our RWC session. She's is working toward her master's in literature and always participates with very insightful comments, so I was really looking forward to getting to learn from her. All in all I can say I did learn a lot from our first session.

Her first meeting should have been a one-hour session but ended up being a no-show. He was a regular Wednesday appointment but didn't email her ahead of time to opt out. Megan advised me that it's typical to wait fifteen to twenty minutes for hour-long appointments to show up, and about ten for thirty minute appointments. At that length of time it's acceptable to take walk-ins. After the twenty minute mark when we didn't receive any walk-ins, we discussed class, her experience as an English major and the kinds of students she's encountered in the RWC. She spoke kindly about the next appointment, who was a bilingual male.

He showed up exactly on time (at 5:00) with a positive attitude. He was Brazilian so Portuguese was his first language, apparent from his heavy accent. He also schedules regular appointments with Megan so this appointment was to work on pronunciation as they usually do. Megan had him read news articles of his choosing the entire time. He did so without any fuss and pronounced most words with ease but got stuck a few times and had to ask for help. He got stuck on one word repeatedly, which was "office." He kept pronouncing it like "offs" but Megan was persistent, and eventually she wrote out the phonetic spelling to give him a visual representation ("offess.") He had trouble deciphering the meaning of some words as well, like"bury."

While as an undergraduate student I don't think I'll be paired with as many English-as-a-second-language students I feel that now I'm more prepared. I've learned it takes diligence and encouragement.

Observation Reflection 1

I shadowed Colleen for an hour and half on Wednesday. She has three regular appointments on Wednesday so there wasn’t an issue about having to wait for a student to come in or anything. When I walked in, she was in the middle of one of her sessions, so I just sat to the side and waited for an opening. While I was chilling on the side, I made sure to still listen to what was going on and take notes of how she was interacting with the student.  I noticed that it seemed that she was familiar with the student and he was open with her about his work and other classes. She gave him some time to write without her being there and then came over to me and introduced herself. After a couple of minutes she introduced me to the student and we talked about what he was writing. Instead of her telling me what they discussed earlier on in the session and catching me up, she allowed the student to do that. In doing so, he was able to talk out some ideas or concepts that he was thinking about for his poem. I soon realized that this was a common thing that Colleen did throughout each session. She encouraged them to just think aloud so then they can talk it out together. Also, by saying things out loud they either found that they didn’t like something that they were doing or came up with new ideas.

All three of her sessions were with student athletes and for the most part they were open and funny and intelligent. So, it kind of showed me to not enter any session with prejudices or stereotypical judgments. One was writing a love poem for a poetry technique class that was very good and another was writing a speech that was smooth and funny. There was an issue with one student because it was obvious that he just wanted Colleen to tell him what to do. Colleen did very well at providing ideas, but encouraging him to come up with his own or expand on the ones that she provided. She then told me that this was an issue that she normally had with this student and we talked about me bringing it up for discussion in class on Monday. 

Observation Reflection

In first appointment, for a half hour, didn't show up, so I had a chance to just talk to my mentor, Margaret, about her experience with the RWC, working with ESL students, and writing in general.

The second appointment, again for a half hour, didn't show up either, but luckily there was a walk-in. He was a freshman in a composition course, with a paper due on childhood memories. He was dyslexic and shied away from reading the paper aloud himself, so Margaret did. He meant for the paper to be kind of tongue-in-cheek, and so Margaret laughed a lot and pointed out parts that she thought were clever right off the bat so that he felt comfortable. It was a second draft and there wasn't really much to critique. It seemed like he was mostly there because he wasn't sure that he was following through with the assignment correctly, so Margaret just pointed out things she thought were definitely working, a couple of the grammar issues because there wasn't much else to take issue with, and asked him if what she was getting out of the paper was what he was trying to communicate (it was). As we started to run out of time, she just asked for his own synopsis' of the last few paragraphs and if he had any real issues with them.

The third appointment, last half hour, was a girl with a "genre paper". She was also a freshman in one of the composition courses and the first thing she told us about the paper was that it was "so stupid". She was mostly done with the paper, actually over the word limit, but still hadn't written her conclusion. She didn't really want to read the paper out loud, but when Margaret hit really weird spots, like the thesis, she would ask her to read those specific sentences out loud and she would. Margaret pointed out the really strong spots as well, again sort of boosting the writer's confidence and getting her to talk more about her paper and its subject, which she was actually very passionate about (Relay for Life). We spent a good chunk of our time on the thesis statement. The problem was that, given the rubric for the assignment, the writer was trying to use words like "exigence" and "rhetoric" and "discourse", but they really weren't applying in the way she was using them. After she talked it out for a couple of minutes, she sort of teased out a more coherent thesis that she seemed to like a lot better. Because she was over the word count, Margaret would point out where a paragraph "really started for her", and the writer was more than happy to cross out blocks of text, admitting that she felt like they were rambling and not really helping the paper.

Both sessions were really cool, and it was interesting to see how comfortable both of the writers were after they had their confidence bolstered a little bit. Afterwards I asked Margaret about the sessions, like if they were really standard or if she felt that they went well, and she told me that when she first gets a paper in front of her she looks for something to compliment first, rather than something to critique.

Observation Reflection 9/24

Observing my peer tutoring mentor for the first time really brought to life all that we have been learning in class. I found it interesting that, for the post part, my tutor (Christina) followed the steps that Longman suggested. The first student that came in to be tutored was writing a paper about beagles for a food/economy class. This student had seen Christina before and was noticeably comfortable in the environment. After greeting the student, Christina asked to see the rubric set by the professor to understand what he was looking for and to make sure she would be able to help the student. Once she looked over the rubric, Christina was then able to know what specifically should be included in the essay. She continued by reading the student’s paper aloud. Longman suggests to have the student read their own paper in front of the tutor and although I do think this is a good idea, I would rather the student have their paper read by eyes that have yet seen it. I noticed that this also allowed the students to catch mistakes without the tutor even bringing them up yet. This student’s paper was very well written and did not need any major changes. Christina went back to look at the rubric and made sure all the points were presented throughout the paper. 

The second student was also getting her paper reviewed for the same class as the previous student. Christina started the process the same way; she asked the student for the directions and continued to reading it out loud. While she read, she would stop and ask the student what she meant if she found something unclear. Together, they would try to come up with a way to better express the thought. After reading it, Christina asked the student if the health and economic factors of the subject were important and recommended expanding on those topics by creating new paragraphs for them. They reorganized some of the essay to allow the ideas to come together in a better way. Christina let the student know that there were ten minutes left of their session and asked if there was anything she specifically wanted to focus on during the remaining time. 

I found it interesting that Christina did not take notes on the papers and allowed the students to make any changes they wished to make. I found this to be important because it is, in fact, the student’s paper and their grade; the student should be the one to make the changes. I am excited to continue mentoring and hope to run into challenging sessions that will allow me to learn more about peer tutoring sessions. 

9/25 Response

I observed Jonathan Mundell in Strozier from 7:30-9.  Jonathan explained that a lot of his students are student athletes.  The first student was a freshman golf student who had to write a political poem.  He also stated that he was happy he was with Jonathan that day because he doesn't really like his other tutors.  To start off, Jonathan asked the student if he had any political feelings.  The student didn't have any but showed Jonathan an example poem the professor had shown in class.  Jonathan then asked the student to think of something that upsets him, because it didn't seem like it had to be political.  This example poem was useful because everyone involved was having trouble understanding what the teacher really wanted.  The student didn't want to write about something that only occasionally made him angry, but rather, something that constantly bothered him.  To this, Jonathan asked him to describe his schedule and stop when he reached the part of his day that bothered him.  This was a good question because it turns out what the student hates the most is his schedule.  As a student athlete, his whole day from 5 AM- 9 PM is already planned for him.  After one month of school, he is already tired of it.
        But then the student was a little confused.  While he hates his schedule, he does think it's worth it because he does love his sport.  Jonathan then explained that one poem can contain both positive and negative emotions.  It was also helpful that Jonathan is actually a poet, so he could really help the student out with the conceptual parts of poetry.  The student then began writing down some lines for the poem and let Jonathan look over past poems they had worked on and see how they had turned out.  Jonathan also suggested a poem for the student to read to help him with this poem.  Jonathan then looked over the first stanza the student had written.  Jonathan suggested getting more specific.  "If you could cut anything from your day, what would it be? Use concrete things."  Jonathan also explained that you don't have to write in complete sentences for poetry to be coherent.  This prompted the student to then start listing parts of his day in his poem.  This was definitely effective and really worked for the poem.  Jonathan then asked if the hectic schedule was worth it.  Why was he putting himself through this?  These were questions that the student could also answer in his poem.
      By the end of the session, the student had a full first draft of the poem and was very happy with it.  The student and Jonathan then made plans for what they would work on at their next session together.  Overall, the session was very productive.  Jonathan and the student worked very well together.

Observation Reflection

My observation session was on Tuesday. After arriving at the RWC a little earlier, I saw that my mentor Calvin was still with a student from an earlier appointment. He waved me to come in and I sat at a table nearby and waited for the session to end. Almost immediately, when that session was over, the student for his 3:00 PM appointment came in. She was a first-year student working on a paper for an ENC 1101 class. Apparently the student has seen Calvin before and came in with a future draft of her paper. The draft was a peer reviewed one where several of her fellow students wrote various comments on it. The topic of the paper was a personal one where the student wrote about her past experiences in high school and how they led up to her current time in college The time was spent talking about the various peer comments, and both she and the tutor came to the conclusion that most of them weren't that helpful. The paper itself was almost done with only a few grammatical mistakes that needed correcting. The session was scheduled to be an hour long, and since both the student and Calvin finished up talking about her paper a bit earlier, the session then went to her discussing brainstorming ideas for a future assignment. It was for a modern popular music class where she has to make a playlist of songs and write about them (why she chose the songs, common themes in each, etc). She already had the songs she wanted written on a piece of paper, so her and Calvin went into writing about what she can discuss on her paper. The student talked about how she wanted to talk about the common themes in each song and why the songs were important to her. Calvin agreed that that was a good topic to write about. The student seems to be someone who goes to the RWC often. It was very clear that she was there before, and when the session ended, she told Calvin that she will be back again next week when she has a draft written.

The session ended with about fifteen minutes to spare. In that extra time, Calvin showed me the client reports that need to be filled out after each session. He advised me that when that when I get to tutoring by myself, that it would be best to fill out the reports as soon as possible while the session is still fresh in your mind.

After that, the student for his next appointment came in a few minutes early and the session began. The student had a draft for a research paper for her Advertising class that was due the next day. She told Calvin that she only wanted him to look at grammar, but he suggested that they talk about it a little deeper as well. Before he even took a look at the paper, he had the student explain to him what her paper was about. She explained her project, and the research data she gathered for it. After that, Calvin went into reading her draft. He noticed that from a grammatical standpoint the paper was fine. The main issue was clarity as there were several parts of her paper that were hard to tell what she was trying to say. The main area where this was a problem was her opening paragraph, where her thesis statement was not clear. As a result, Calvin had the student read that particular sentence to herself for about a minute. After that, he gave her a pen and a piece of paper and told her to rewrite the sentence without looking back at her paper. The rewritten version was much more clear and more effective at conveying her thesis. This process was repeated throughout the paper.

Overall, I thought that Calvin is a great tutor. He was very friendly with the students which made them more comfortable and less nervous. He also wasn't afraid to engage in a little small talk, just to get to know the client a little better. His technique where he had the student rewrite a particular sentence seemed to work wonders every time, and after seeing its success, it is definitely something that I will be doing myself with students when I get to tutoring.

Observation Reflection 9/24

         Observing Holly Horner in the RWC this week was a pleasure. On the first day of observation, Holly tutored two ladies in one session, both working on a very intricate paper about Magnesium Corrosion. Both tutees had a bit of a language barrier because their native language happened to be mandarin. Holly worked very well with them despite this, communicating all of her helpful points with clarity and understanding. She broke down specific sentences in text to find diction that would work best to describe what both tutees were trying to depict in their papers. She helped both tutees achieve perfect grammar in their essays, and she did an excellent job finding out exactly what the goals were of both tutees. She was very encouraging, and the tutees seemed to truly feel more confident about their papers by the end of the session. As Holly wrapped up the peer tutoring session, she asked the ladies if they had any more questions. They did not, because Holly seemed to cover everything they needed her to cover. She did an excellent job.

         For the second session I observed, Holly was tutoring a gentleman writing a paper about racism in the police and school systems. Despite the very controversial topic, Holly was able to expertly guide him in the direction he was trying to go, helping him make points that were strong and stood out powerfully in his paper. Before she read the paper aloud, Holly asked him if there was anything specific that he would have liked to work on. He said no, but she immediately dove in to how he could revise and correct his paper for the better once she started reading. After reading the paper, Holly asked the tutee what his specific argument for the paper was. She helped him with clarifying his thesis. She proposed very helpful points the student could use for the paper while encouraging him throughout. Holly pulled up specific articles relating to the student’s paper so that he could use more citations and more resources. She focused on main points/reasons for main points that student could utilize and wrote them on the back of his paper. She made sure that student understood the layout of his paper, and she helped him understand the bigger picture of the topic he was focused on. Holly has been a wonderful tutor to shadow so far and I am looking forward to more sessions next week. 

Observing in the RWC Reflection

I had my first tutoring observation this past Tuesday from 2:30-4pm. My mentor’s name is Danielle and she is getting her Masters in English and Literature. She had three appointments back to back, so I got there fifteen minutes early to chat with her about what typically goes on in a session and to get to know each other as well. Her first appointment arrived shortly after, so we were able to talk with her before the session began. She is a freshman and is taking the new ENC course for new students. The paper topic was an argumentative essay comparing two genres. After asking the student about the class and topic, Danielle read the essay aloud. I learned that majority of students prefer the tutor to read his or her paper. Once Danielle finished reading, she asked the student what she heard and she said that she heard some errors throughout, such as misplaced words and repetitive language. Danielle then discussed with her the language, audience, and organization of the essay. The main thing the student wanted to work on was formatting. Her essay was extremely unorganized, so we gave suggestions as to what she could do to fix the format, such as reverse outlining and considering what is most important and what information should go in each area. As we went over the student’s rubric, Danielle and I learned that she was confused as to what her professor was trying to say. Danielle then broke it down for her and told her what she thought the professor had intended. However, Danielle made it clear that the student should go ask her professor to clarify as well.  Overall, the session was very difficult. Danielle said it was one of the most difficult sessions she had ever encountered. On the other hand, it was good for me to witness and learn from it. Danielle handled everything so professionally, which is something I really admired.

The next session went a lot easier. The student is taking a dance class and her assignment was a personal essay regarding how dance and other activities relate to experiences throughout life. The first thing we did was discuss the rubric and then Danielle read the student’s essay aloud. Again, the student was not comfortable reading it. The essay was very well written. Overall, the student just wanted to know if she followed the rubric, and she did. Danielle gave her a few suggestions for her essay/topic, but for the most part, the student was pretty aware of what she intended to accomplish. I learned a good way to breakdown a rubric in order for students to understand. 

The last student did not show up for her appointment.