Blog Posts

September 15th 2010 From Blackboard "...and far too much work with writers whose writing has received caustic, hostile, or otherwise unconstructive commentary." Nancy's term "writing therapy" is perfect for what I have been doing in my short career (two weeks) as a writing consultant. I had not realized that I would be dealing with so much emotional content. Anxiety September 22 th 2010 From Blackboard Garri, If you wish that teachers would grade more harshly, you are going to love being in the L&L MA program! Tags: None September 14th 2010 from Blackboard

Hey guys, I know that I wasn't part of your group but I'm all alone up in my group and you are doing one of the same chapters as I. The writing process is fascinating to me because I have so much trouble with it. Not all the time, some times and some subjects and with certain audiences it is very easy for me to write. Other times, the writer's anxiety that I experience is so intense that I can make myself ill. I always find that the universe will cooperate with your opinion of it though. On Monday night I had my first experience as a writing tutor, the student was a middle aged black woman who was having an anxiety attack. She had begun a paper and was unable to get past the first few lines of the introduction. She was returning to school after more than a decade and was terrified. It was like looking into a mirror. I never thought that the anxiety and rage that I felt in my first semester would be of help to anyone. I was able to get her through an outline of the paper. Knowing the writing process was really important and a little empathy went a long way.

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September 14th 2010 from Blackboard Regardless of a paper's topic, you can determine whether the ideas are presented in a cohesive and persuasive manner." (Bedford Guide p.87) The lists in this chapter are going to be very helpful to me. I find it easier to check my own work with lists. Once again the authors are giving the recipe for writing, even though they said that there should not be one. One of the question that Prof. Gleason posed as a discussion guide for this chapter was; "Are there any forms of writing (described in Ch. 7) that ALL writing center tutors should be familiar with prior to being hired? If so, which genres should ALL writing tutors know about?" I believe that the tutor, or writing consultant, should at least be familiar with the grammatical conventions and the rhetorical forms used in academia. Since the expository essay was the most common assignment for college students, the tutor should be very familiar with that form. September 11th 2010 from Blackboard "As you can see, we cannot outline the writing process as we can a recipe in a cookbook." (Bedford Guide pg. 8) That sentence made sense to me because every time I write the process seems to be a little different. I assume that it's because I'm in school and I am learning new things about writing all the time. But I might be wrong, suppose it's just different all the time? On page 10, directly contradicting the quoted sentence, the authors list the stages of the writing process. I liked especially the stage that is called, "Creating a workable plan". That's where I have the least difficulty with my writing. It's sticking to the workable plan that causes the problems for me. Theories on how to write seem to go out the window when I sit down to do it. They only come back when the draft is done, in the rewriting. I appreciated the chapter's exercises for reflecting on the writing process. So many people think that writing should come naturally, and by naturally they mean without forethought. ( I confess that I am one of those people.) Writers are supposed to be some kind of gifted individuals who simply have a knack. Maybe because most of us learned to write when we were very young, we have forgotten how hard it was. One of the questions in exercise 2E is "Do you read or show people drafts or parts of drafts?" I cringed when I read it. When I show people my work I both want feedback and dread it. I would never feel that way about algebra. What is it about writing that makes us so vulnerable? The article "Diving In" reminded me of the quote by Burke that begins our syllabus for the semester. On the surface, it might seem that Burke is talking about a different discourse community but both he and Shaughnessy are talking about the academy. I believe that they are describing different sides of the same coin. Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you arrive, others have long preceded you,and they are engaged in a heated discussion,a discussion too heated for them to pause and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your oar. Someone answers; you answer him; another comes to your defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the embarrassment or gratification of your opponent,depending upon the quality of your ally's assistance.However,the discussion is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress. --Kenneth Burke, The Philosophy of Literary Form (110-111)

From class blog December 16, 2010 4:36 PM

Thanks for reminding me of this poem and of Prof. Troyka's class. It meant a great deal to me when I first heard it. Around mid-term I start wondering why I am doing all of this. It helps to remember that I am not alone and that it's worth the work.

November 21, 2010 3:25 PM

When I read "Whispers of Coming and Going: Lessons from Fannie", I was struck by how invisible Fannie was to Morgan. The question that I asked in my discussion group was' "If Morgan wasn't really seeing Fannie, who was she seeing?" I thought that it was interesting that Morgan was relating to some idea of a difficult student and not the actual student who was sitting in front of her. Her newly learned techniques did not help her because she was still trying to communicate with her own mental construct and not the student. Even when Morgan saw that Fannie had a personality that was completely different from the one that Morgan had seen before, she (Morgan) was unable to consider that she may have missed something.

November 10, 2010 1:47 PM

I really appreciated Wynne's visit to our class. Her willingness to share her experience while conducting research on La Guardia writing center, and her generosity in allowing the class access to her work is a tribute to her commitment to teaching and her loyalty to the L&L program.

December 16, 2010 5:03 PM

The authors recommendation that as tutors we try to keep the student focused on the task helped me very much during one session. I had the experience of tutoring someone who was writing a paper about a very difficult experience. She was supposed to write about herself and the experience in the third person as if it were a report on a client. She sobbed through the entire session. As a new and inexperienced tutor, I was very disturbed but I knew that although she was describing a very painful time, it was in the past while her paper was due in the near future. The student was able to see the text she was trying to produce as separate from the experience she was describing and so she was able to work on the paper and hand it in on time.

December 16, 2010 4:57 PM

"What makes the situation particularly frustrating is that so many such people will vehemently claim that they do, really, understand the idea of a writing center." (64)

Most of the students at City College do not know the history of the writing center. In fact, most of the tutors at the writing center do not know the history of their writing center. Prof. Gleason said that writing centers support students and that says something that some institutions may not want to acknowlege, which is that their students need the support. There are some in the academy who believe that students who need to go to the writing center shouldn't be in their classes. If you follow the argument, and it's a common one, students who need the writing center shouldn't be allowed in their universities. Those students are seen as a drag on the schools reputation for good scholarship or a block to a reputation for excellence.
The writing center is not viewed, as I think it should be, as a place where a university's reputation for good scholarship can be improved.

October 31, 2010 3:20 PM

Jane,I don't think that Michelle talked about using rubrics in the tutoring sessions. I think that she talked about rhetorical conventions. How to write a certain type of paper, eg: a research paper, a compare and contrast essay, or a descriptive essay. I was very interested in finding out if the handouts she described still exist in the writing center. I was very interested and a little envious of her description of all the training she got as a tutor. It sounded thorough.
I also would like to put in a plug for my boss, Dan Wuebben, who was there also. Thanks Dan.

October 31, 2010 3:03 PM

It seemed to me that this tutor was fixing or correcting the paper, not helping the student. The paper was more important than the writer. The tutor ignored or dismissed the information that she was getting from the writer (the person was supposed to be helping) and attempted to get all the information from the inanimate object. It wasn't collaborative because she wasn't trying to interact just to direct.

October 31, 2010 2:50 PM

This session was much more of a conversation about writing. It was more in line with North's description of what tutors do with their tutees. This time the tutor was interacting with the writer not just the page.

October 31, 2010 2:56 PM

Prof.Gibbons's presentation was very helpful to me in several ways. Learning more about using the databases for searching was interesting, even though I felt that it went by too fast. The one piece of information that struck me as almost magical was that there is a data base that connects all of the libraries in the world. What an amazing and wondrous idea! Prof. Gibbons was patient and unflappable, just the kind of teacher that I am hoping to become. The presentation brought home to me Clark's concern about how important it is for modern college students to have access to digital information. I cannot begin to imagine trying to get through college without a computer. When I began my college career in 1980 the only people who had regular access to computers worked for IBM or NASA.
Today according to University Business magazine (I picked it up in the technology office on the first floor of the NAC) 57% of college students expect to be able to access the campus' network from an off-campus location.

October 5, 2010 2:17 PM