This year at the Writing Center has been enlightening and transformative for me as a Secondary Education major. As a student at Roosevelt pursuing a career in secondary education, I took my Writing Center job as a special opportunity to exercise and hone skills that would transfer well to teaching. If there is anything, I have learned, it’s that peers teach each other far more than I knew or expected. The exchange of information that happens between peers is casual and unlike teaching, where a concept is first introduced, then applied practically, the introduction and integration of the concept happens almost simultaneously. Students get to see in real time how the changes they make to their writing benefit them.
I had some fears and reservations when I first started at the Writing Center. I knew that group sessions were going to be frequent and that there were going to be times when I doubted myself. however, as time went on, I discovered that as a tutor, it’s important to be able to take your job day by day, I think it’s important for all tutors to remember that we are not claiming to be experts or professionals. We are claiming to be active, persevering learners. As a learner, I understand that when I struggle with something, it means I am about to grow in some respect. Whether it’s insight about how to deal with a specific writing issue or about the writing process in general, whenever I struggle, I learn something.
One thing that I struggled with this year was group sessions. Towards the end of the year, I was starting to notice that the quality of my group sessions was going down. These were not isolated incidents, but were happening back to back. Even when I tried different techniques to engage with my groups, I was not successful. It became necessary to reflect on my tutoring style and figure out where I was going wrong. I’ve come to the this conclusion; more often than not, writers have questions and want to improve their writing. When students mentally “check out”, it’s likely because they don’t want to ask for help and look “inept” in front of their peers or they doubt the effectiveness of a Writing Center session, but are required to visit by their professor.
An effective way that I have devised to combat these issues, is to first build the writer’s confidence. Instead of asking students right off the back, “Do you have any questions? Did any of you have a specific issue you wanted to discuss?” I will start my sessions by asking all the students to underline or highlight something that they have done well in their paper and then ask them to explain their process. Students are more forthcoming about what they did well, and it will give them a chance to articulate their writing process. This will help students be more open to talking about their struggles, because the previous conversation will make them feel they are on even ground with their peers. Additionally, by having students modeling what they did in their papers, they could inadvertently answer a question or solve another student’s problem.
I’ve found that one of the hardest things to do is to get the students talking about their writing. Most writers are not used to talking about “the writing process”, and when they think about having a conversation about writing, they might view it as simply proofreading or a tutor punitively saying “This is wrong because…”. However, a writing center session can be a very rewarding experience. We focus on the positive, direct students to fix their own problems with their own thinking, and help them extend and hone their writing skills. I think the changes I have made to my group session strategy will help me implement this.
