Reflection number two

        One of the sessions I co-tutored with was extremely beneficial because of how unprepared the student was. The session was with a student athlete who had to write an essay about something that bothered him. He was distraught about how broad the topic was, so we basically asked him a lot of questions about the class and the professor. Him discussing out loud with us the expectations of the class, and even reviewing his syllabus, made the expected results of the paper a lot clearer to us both. Ironically enough, picking apart the syllabus was where he found inspiration for his paper- he decided something that bothered him was the consequences of plagiarism. Har har har.

At that point we were able to get some ideas flowing, and my mentor begin writing out his ideas as they came to him, chronologically. At the top mentioning his initial ideas, and writing key words that we thought would be useful to reflect on later. This seemed to really help him a lot with constructing his thoughts for the paper into an organized stream of consciousness. He kept the paper at the end of the session for reference, this way when he takes the time to write it later on he’ll have a sort of guided approach, and hopefully the idea of organizing his thoughts that way is something he took with him as well.

His last appointment was canceled, so we decided to make the time block constructive. We sort of switched roles at this point, he handed me a paper he had drafted for one of his classes, and I began reading through it. As I pointed out (minute) imperfections and some structural ‘issues’ he would talk me through how I could point this out in a coherent way to a student/tutee, to help sharpen the distinction between editing and tutoring. This was very helpful on my end, there were some things that I did simply point out, that I would likely need to expand upon, and show how it works/doesn’t work in a way that someone who is not so natural at writing would be able to comprehend. 

Reflection Post 9-30

This week I shadowed (and co-tutored a little) Molly Peel in the RWC again. The first session was a no-show, so we talked about what a usual tutoring session is like for her.  First she introduces herself and then asks the student what class they are working on. Then they discuss the assignment: is there a prompt? Do you have the rubric? What phase of the writing process are you in? Is there anything specific you want to work on? If they specify an issue or section, she asks them to read it out loud. If they say no, she asks them to read the whole piece out loud from the beginning. (Here she usually asks if they prefer to read or if they want her to read out loud. Usually they prefer to read it. Giving them that choice makes them feel more comfortable.) 

Then one student athlete came in and talked to us about his annotated bibliography. It was in Chicago Manual Style and Molly wasn’t familiar with the requirements. He was really on top of the assignment—he didn’t have any specific areas of concern and it sounded good to us.

Molly also told me about paper she looked at with a co-tutor last week—it was for a philosophy of sex class and the girl’s argument was something really conservative and offended Molly a little. Both Molly and the girl who was observing the session were at a loss for words. The session challenged her to see beyond the content of the paper and be able to identify structural or large-scale issues.

A second student athlete came in and was in the beginning stages of a persuasive paper about cults and religions. We spent the session time brainstorming. It was really fun! He kept a running list of everything we came up with and then we went through the list and tried to find patterns. We connected some of the ideas and came up with a few good directions for the paper. Afterwards, Molly said that this was the ‘best case scenario’ type of session for her.

10/2 Observation

This week my observations were far more interesting and less traditional than last week’s. The first session I observed was via video using a Google video program and Google docs. Erica is the graduate student that Christina has been working with for a couple of weeks. She is working on her dissertation from South Florida. Erica is an international student from Brazil. I think this was important to know before starting the session because it really changes the way a tutor views the paper. It also allows a tutor to know what things to look at like grammar differences between two uncommon languages. As in every other session, Christina began by reading out loud. As she continued reading, Christina and Erica both noticed some errors in clarity and organization that could be fixed. The interesting thing about this session was that Christina could immediately see the changes being made by the writer on the google docs page. I also noticed that Christina would not make any changes on the paper itself but would discuss the issues with the writer and would allow her to do it herself. The only times Christina typed on the document was through a comments feature that does not directly change anything on the paper but rather creates a side note. 

The second session I observed was a traditional face to face session. Two students came in to review a paper that was to be done with three group members. There were many problems that occurred during this session. For starters, not all the group members were present. One of the girls was out of town and could not make it to the session. Out of the two girls that did show up, one showed up about fifteen minutes late. Another issue, that Christina explained to the two present writers, was that each session could only take place with one student at a time. They resolved this by deciding that one student would work with Christina in the first 30 minutes and the other would use the last 30 minutes. These were not the only issues; the students were extremely unprepared and had not looked over the writing portion of the member that was not present. Immediately upon reading the first paragraph, they both agreed that it did not meet the rubric or their own standards. Christina then asked if they would prefer to focus on their own writing rather than someone’s writing who was not present. The girls both replied by stating that they had not begun their own portions. 

Overall, I found that this weeks sessions to be interesting and I gained a new insight on tutoring. I learned how a video session worked and I learned that not every session can go as planned.

Week 2 Co-Tutoring Reflection

The first appointment Calvin had was the same girl who came in last week. This time she was brainstorming ideas for her next writing assignment for her Composition class. It was another personal essay where she had to write about how past experiences changed her perspective on a certain topic. Me and Calvin both took a look at her prompt and Calvin asked her if she had any ideas. She said that she wanted to write about how various experiences changed her perspective on fear, and she went on to describe various experiences of hers that she wanted to write about. Both me and Calvin agreed that she had good material for a paper, so for the rest of the session she went in and started writing her draft. Calvin suggested that she just go and free-write since this is only a first draft. He told her that the main important thing with first drafts is that she just get stuff written on the page, and that she can always go and edit it later. Me and Calvin both just let her write. Whenever she had questions, both me and Calvin offered our suggestions. Our suggestions mainly came in the form of alternate word choices she could use, and we both also asked questions pertaining to her story if we felt she needed to add more details. When the session ended, she already had two paragraphs written, and was pretty pleased with what she had written so far. Me and Calvin both agreed and told her that what she had was pretty good for something written on the fly.

The next student came in a little late for his appointment. He was working on an essay for his Editing, Writing, and Media class. He had an almost complete first draft. All he was missing was his conclusion. He explained the assignment to me and Calvin and showed us his draft. Before the session started, Calvin suggested that I go and tutor him solo for the first half of the appointment. I started by going along and reading his draft aloud. Stopping along the way whenever I had any questions, or was unclear on a certain point of his paper. I made him aware of some issues he had with his opening paragraph, since he wasn't clear on his thesis statement. I pointed out some minor grammatical errors and typos he had in his paper, and I had him mark those mistakes himself on his draft. I gave him a few suggestions on how he can start his conclusion as well. After I was done, Calvin gave his own suggestions. For his thesis sentence, Calvin had the student do the same thing he had one of his students do last week. He had him read his thesis sentence quietly to himself for thirty seconds, and then write down what he was trying to say on a piece of paper. The student seemed a little resistant at first, and gave the impression that he thought the exercise was pointless. Calvin kept insisting, and eventually he played along. The student was surprised with the result as the revision he wrote down was much more clear than his original. With the last few minutes of the session, the student explained how he just added an English major as he had always loved to write. He asked me and Calvin for suggestions on writing in general. Calvin let me answer first. I told the student to let as many people as possible to read his writing. I told him that while each person will have their own suggestions, there is a chance that multiple people who read your writing will all point out similar things, which is a good clue as to what you need to work on. Calvin then suggested to him to read his drafts aloud to himself as any mistakes will become apparent. The student seemed to take our comments into serious consideration as he went on and wrote what we told him in his notebook. And with that, the session ended.

10/2 Response

During my second observation with Clare, another peer tutor from a different section sat in on the session. It worked out perfectly because one of three of Clare's appointments cancelled and she suggested that myself and Tara, the other peer tutor, each take a student. We would help them with their assignment and when Clare felt the need to add in her suggestion, she would.

I took the first session, a young woman who needed help brainstorming for a paper on racism. We read the prompt together and she had to compose a five page paper discussing racism and use a theory to help support her claims. Her theory was Afrocentrism but she was unaware as to how to incorporate that theory into her paper. She told me that she knew racism was bad but that this theory was  positive but did not know how the two were related. I then reread the prompt aloud and explained to her that she was supposed to examine the idea of racism through the perspective of a person with an Afrocentric viewpoint. After asking her to explain the assignment and what information she had compiled already it was obvious that she not only had the wrong definition of Afrocentrism but she had yet to fully research the theory.  I asked her what she learned so far about Afrocentrism and she told me that it was a theory stating "African Americans thought they were superior to Whites."  It was challenging because I did not want to outrightly state her definition was incorrect although I knew it was. Another issue that I faced was trying not to use first person when referring to her theory. Because I identify as an African American woman, I didn't want to use the phrase "We as a people believe" because I did not want her to feel uncomfortable or that I was attacking her.  On the positive side, my Prior Knowledge helped me to alleviate the situation.

I have taken a number of African American studies courses at FSU and used that information to  sway the student to learning about Afrocentric theory in a way that was not imposing. "So we know that Afrocentric theory is the idea that African Americans value the community more than the individual and the basis of this theory is to reclaim the glorious past that was taken away from them during slavery." I tried inserting this definition multiple times throughout the session in the hopes that she would better understand what it meant to identity with Afrocentrism as a means to uplift an oppressed people and not overthrow the majority by utilizing ethnocentric values. After showing her my definition, Clare took the time to explain to the student a bit more in depth about Afrocentrism. Then the student read the two paragraphs that she has previously written. I read them aloud but since she was still mainly brainstorming her thoughts weren't coherent. I emphasized that since she still had more research to do, she should focus on the structure of her paper first. What was her thesis? What was going to be explained in each paragraph? Then I gave her a small list of groups and people like Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington, and the Black Panthers, so she could better understand Afrocentrism as less of an abstract idea but more as a concrete movement.

Although I was worried that I overwhelmed the student with information, after the session she said she felt a lot more comfortable about the topic. Overall, it was challenging and I definitely had a chance to encountered some of my personal fears of tutoring in the RWC. Clare told me that she was pleasantly surprised after the session and that I did very well. Hopefully the student comes back for help developing her paper!

Response 10/2

Both sessions that I went to this week were with freshmen student athletes who were working on papers for English classes. The first student was a football player in a freshman comp class who was very resistant to tutoring. He said that class had been cancelled for that week and as such he didn’t have an assignment for us to work on. Instead Ashley and I invited him to talk about how he was doing in his other classes and what he felt he’d improved on or needed to work on. The session was really tedious as the student offered little to no help with the tutoring. We ended the session a little early after talking about the new strategies he had learned.

The second student was a soccer player originally from Europe working on an interesting prompt. The prompt required her to interview her family about an heirloom recipe passed down through the family. The girl was struggling with this as her family doesn’t tend to use recipes when cooking. Ashley and I asked her to describe her most memorable meal she had eaten with her family. After hearing her story we asked her what was interesting to her and what she might want to do for this assignment. She decided that she would ask her dad about his time learning to cook in general instead of focusing on one recipe. The student had a lot of trouble coming up with questions. Ashley prompted her to write down what she did and didn’t know about what happened and to start there. I had a little trouble co-tutoring on this assignment as the student was very focused on the prompt and forming interview questions was hard to frame into a learning experience for general writing. We ended the session talking about American dialects as the student was still struggling with English and wanted to know how to sound more American in her writing. We discussed accents, expressions, and phrases that were common in Florida and in the south in general. It was honestly really funny to remark on cultural differences between the three of us. 

Megan's two sessions on Wednesday consisted of a one hour appointment and a half hour appointment. When I walked in at four she had already begun. It was a google hangout session with a grad student who had written a 6 page paper about servant leadership. He made it clear that his goal for the session was to condense the paper so that he could get everything across within the max page limit. Megan was able to highlight and change things on the paper in real time so the student could see it from his computer. However, during the session she didn't make any big changes herself, only highlighted passages and added her notes on the side.

Megan read through the paper herself, quickly so that they could get through all of it. As she did, it was obvious that his main problems were sentence fragmentation and lack of clarity. Megan recognized immediately that the best way for him to condense the paper would be to eliminate passages where he repeated himself, and highlighted problem areas. Often, as soon as she would read through passages the student was able to point out his own mistakes. One example of an adjustment to match the discourse of the paper was an edit to the sentence "Servant leadership develops employees..." The student agreed that it sounded like employees were being literally molded and that the diction choice didn't match the formality that the paper required. The student was able to point out another informal sentence, which began with "Another interesting fact about leadership..." that sounded like he was selling servant leadership instead of providing an analysis.

Megan offered encouragement by telling him that the paper was strong, he was just too caught up on how to say what he was thinking. This was obviously a subject that he was passionate about but as  Nurse, he was taught to write concisely and with fragments. Megan suggested that he use a dictation program to make his writing truer to his thought process, something I don't think I would have thought of myself. The next appointment was her regular ESL student who she works with to help improve pronunciations by having him read through news articles.

What stood out the most to me was Megan's ability to take authority while ultimately allowing the students to make decisions themselves. They put a lot of trust in her because she knew exactly what to do, so she had their attention from the start. But she was not condescending in the slightest, only helpful and supportive.