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.