Chapter 2. What Line? I Didn’t See Any Line

There are so many great take away points from this piece. The guiding question for the chapter is, “When is a session becoming unproductive?” and “How do I find that line?”. Molly Wingate discusses two different types of sessions where the tutor can cross the line and help create an unproductive session in that the tutee is not doing most of the work and is not learning much that they can take with them. The first type of unproductive session is when a tutor over-empathizes with a tutee discussing their life issues rather than bring the tutee back to their writing. The second type of unproductive session the overwhelming session, which can take a couple different forms. One form of an overwhelming session is when the tutor gives the tutee too much to work on. This usually happens when a tutor tries to help a tutee by working sentence by sentence in an essay. Another form of an overwhelming session can be when a tutor gets too excited about a topic or how to improve a paper and begins feeding the tutee a lot of information, rather than helping the tutee come to their own ideas and realizations.

Thankfully, Wingate discuses an solution of sorts for each of these scenarios. She says that first you have to trust your senses to tell you if the session is becoming unproductive. Then tutors need to reevaluate where the session is going. She alerts the readers to some possible signs that they have stepped over the line, like the writer isn’t talking, seems disinterested, or is always taking the tutor’s suggestions. The tutor has to be able to recognize what they are doing that is unproductive and stop that action and find a way back to the writer and their ideas. Wingate suggests that while offering another counseling service for students can sound harsh, it will benefit the student. She also suggests that checking in periodically with a writer about the changes they’ve made will help tutor’s avoid taking over a session or overwhelming a tutee. Mingate believes that tutors must take risks and not worry too much about making mistakes. Finally, I really enjoyed her point that some of these strategies are going to work for some and not for others because “[e]ach writer is different, each session is new” (14).

This piece is an eye-opener for me because I can attest to sometimes getting the that conflicted feeling of not knowing how much to help a tutee. I know that there have been sessions where I have gotten to excited and out of that excitement taken over some or most of the session. Thinking about how I may have done this in the past is really helping me think about how I can avoid it in the future. I need to keep checking in on myself and checking in with the tutee to see if I have inadvertently taken over.  My excitement is obviously a good thing, but I need to do my best to channel that to the tutee, share it with them, put it in their hands. After reading this chapter I feel like I am better equipped to do that.

Chapter 1. Setting the Agenda for the Next Thirty Minutes

What I took from the reading is that it’s really important to make a plan for a tutoring session and that you share it with the tutee. I really like that William J. Macauley, Jr. adds how important it is for the tutor to collaborate with the tutee on this plan; sometimes the tutee knows what their trying to achieve better than the tutor. Macauley’s map is flexible and can be abandoned if it’s not helping the session. His last piece of advice to let the tutee take the map home also resonated with me because the tutor can’t do it all and our truest goal is to empower the tutee to be able to succeed on their own once they leave us.

I don’t necessarily have any questions, but my reaction to his motorcycle metaphor from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance made me realize that I haven’t always been the best with explicitly setting out the agendas with some of my tutees and that not doing so is a disservice to them. Most of the time I like to at least verbally discuss what they would like to work on and try to match that up with what I think they need to work on, but I think keeping track of it visually will tremendously help the tutee and me.

Self-Introduction ENG 704

Wow! Where to start? It has certainly been a long and windy road here. I’ll give you all a few facts about me to start. I grew up in Southern California, in a city called Rancho Cucamonga, which seems to mostly be known as the butt-end of jokes or from the movie Next Friday. I suppose I can’t complain. I’m a fan.

I went to Cal Poly Pomona for my undergraduate education. I started out as a Psychology major and by the end of my second semester I decided I wanted to switch my major to English. All went well and I graduated and applied to a only a few schools in Northern California. My heart was set on San Francisco. While living in SoCal I worked in the restaurant business and decided to continue that up in the Bay Area.

I’ve spent the last two years working at a few different restaurants and Starbucks while earning my Master’s degree in English Literature here at SFSU. Last year in the Spring, as I was supposed to start working on my thesis, I decided that I really needed to get out of the restaurant/service industry and get some experience teaching. So I began tutoring at the ETC and also began training for a summer teaching job at the Institution for Reading Development. My summer was busy, but I was able to get great experience teaching reading to kids of all ages, high school students, and even some college students. It was exhausting (I was working 50+ hours between IRD and Starbucks), but I am so glad I did it. While working for IRD I found the confidence inside myself to be able to go in front of a class and teach. At first I was so nervous, and sometimes I still am when in front of others, but it’s a lot easier for me now. Some of the rewards from teaching at IRD was having kids draw me pictures and making so many new little friends! Also, I was so happy to hear from both parents and students that I had changed the way they felt about reading. They actually enjoyed it! I think my favorite part was nurturing those personal relationships with students. I really treasure those memories. Of course, there were several challenges along the way. One of my challenges was learning how to balance fun with more strict instruction. I was not the best at switching from having fun to reining the students in and getting them refocused. Luckily, I had a supervisor who coached me through it and I improved as the summer went on. I still have a lot to learn and I am happy to continue adding to my teaching skills in the composition program.

This passed Fall I began my thesis, which is now mostly completed (hurray!) and in the final revising and editing stages. It was around mid semester last year that I realized I would benefit from a composition certificate. Composition seems to be one of the areas I’m lacking in. I know that doing the work for this certificate will add to my own writing development and  add some more depth to my resume. So, in a very large nutshell, that is how and why I am here.

I know this is going to be challenging but I really look forward to getting through it with all of you. Cheers!

Hello Blogosphere

This is most certainly my first ever blog post. I know it’s not easy and I know it takes strength, but do try to be gentle and kind.