Tutee Report

Being Tutored

The Assignment

This semester, school and work have dovetailed so seamlessly that I am experiencing what could be described as on-the-job training. I am teaching a developmental workshop in Critical Reading and Writing and taking a class called Teaching Composition and Literature, and I am also working as a writing consultant in a Writing Center and taking a class called Writing Center Theory and Practice. This makes me a very motivated student as well as an interested and willing employee because I want to try out all of the new theories and practices that I learned in class when at I'm at work, and I want to talk about the results of my experiments at work when I am in class. I wanted to have the experience of being tutored because I thought that it would help me better understand my potential tutees and deal with my own crippling writer's anxiety. I was also very excited about seeing the way that inserting the reader's gaze into my process at such and early stage would affect my writing and my anxiety. I am always anxious about my writing but for this assignment I was both anxious and excited.

The CCNY Writing Center

Even though the CCNY Writing Center is less than twenty feet from one of the most trafficked entrances on campus, I have the impression that many CCNY students do not know where it is located. The center is bright and spacious with glass walls that allow the sunlight in. From inside the Center, the same glass walls allow a clear view out at the students going by or those sitting at the canopied café tables in the plaza. Your first stop is the front desk where appointments are made. Behind the front desk is a glass enclosed tutoring area where students and tutors sit in cubicles. Alongside this room is a larger, well-lit room laid out on an open plan with rows of Apple computers and computer chairs. A hallway between the two rooms leads to other rooms in the back.

Although it is possible to make an appointment at the writing center by phone or online, I chose to make mine in person. I always feel more secure when I have done something face to face. The front entrance to the Center was being re-tiled and so I had to go through the library. I had been to the Center several times before, but coming in from a different entrance made it seem like a strange place. I tended to use the Writing Center like a computer and copy center. I had never been there officially as a tutee although I have run in, in a panic, and asked one of my classmates who worked there to edit my papers for me on a few occasions.

The Writing Project

For this assignment I chose to work on a thank you letter to the head librarian at the college. I chose this because it seemed to be a low stakes writing assignment, but when I was in the Writing Center the letter suddenly seemed silly. It wasn't a research paper or an essay so it might not seem important to the tutor, and he or she might think that I was so with out skills that I couldn't write a simple letter.

My Process

The only time that I am able to write without anxiety is when I know that no one else will read my writing. The object of fear and anxiety for me is always the reader's gaze. Something as simple as addressing a greeting card will sometimes require that I first compose and rewrite on a separate page. For academic writing, the fear is so great that I will sometimes develop insomnia and stomach pains. The idea of my instructor's expert gaze creates panic. To get past all of this and begin to write, I usually need to do relaxation exercises that involve breathing techniques, visualizations, listening to guided-meditations on my iPod, or in dire cases, prayer.

Since the level of anxiety around writing makes me hyper-vigilant, I prefer writing in a quiet, calm place. The perfect spot would be very quiet but not secluded, well lit and just chilly enough to keep me awake. Because I am beset by the idea of reader's gaze, I never allow anyone to see my writing until I have at least attempted to edit the first draft. I am afraid that their comments will lead me astray and make me doubt my ideas. It does help to tell someone that I am stuck for a way to complete a thought or an idea. Having a writing partner who I can text, email and call on the phone during the first stages of brainstorming or free writing is a great help.

The Front Desk

I showed up for my appointment at 2pm on Wednesday the 27th of October. When my assigned tutor showed up, she was one of my classmates who apparently went by another name in the Writing Center. This classmate was in another class with me, not the one that assigned the project. She and I both felt that it was not appropriate for us to work together so we agreed to try to get me reassigned. The receptionist was very busy at the time and informed me that I would need to wait to be assigned. As I sat in the small waiting area near the front desk I became self-conscious about what I wanted to work on. The wait made my fears come out of hiding.

Incident

My name was called and I looked up and the Director of the Center was at the front desk. She told me that I needed a have a graduate student tutor because I was a graduate student myself and that was why it was taking a while to reassign a tutor. She seemed to have gotten the impression that I was there for a reason other than a tutoring session. The new tutor that was assigned to me was already working with another student. That student was assigned to another tutor and my newly reassigned tutor was told that I was there to evaluate the Writing Center and I should be taken into the back room. I felt that I had unknowingly done or said something wrong. Had there had been a chance somewhere to correct the mistaken impression that I must have inadvertently given?

The Back Room

I followed my tutor to the last row of computer desks in an empty room laid out on an open plan much the same as the computer room next to the front desk. The room was glass walled, very bright and looked out on the plaza. It smelled of fresh paint. My tutor sat next to me and although he was somewhat guarded, he seemed completely unfazed by the idea that he was being assessed. I was still disconcerted by what happened at the front desk and started to try to explain my reasons for being there again. In his article “Setting the Agenda for the Next Thirty Minutes”, William J. Macauley Jr. talks about the importance of planning the session: “Every tutoring session needs a plan on which the writer and tutor can focus, even if you wind up changing it along the way or scrapping it along the way” (Macauley 1). My tutor gently, but firmly, led me away from focusing on my frustrations and toward focusing on a strategy for tackling my writing project. Together we developed a plan for the session.

The Tutoring Session

My tutor and I sat side by side at the computer station. I was using a comment that I had posted to the class blog as the starting point for my letter. I explained that my letter writing was based on a Victorian model and that I wasn't sure what the current conventions of letter writing were. My tutor took notes and scribbled on a piece of foolscap paper as we spoke. We were able to print the blog posting so that I could work with it directly. I also cut and paste it into a word document on screen so that I could make changes there. My tutor pointed out some formatting problems but most of our focus was on expanding the paragraph-long blog post into a one-page letter. We talked about my visit to the library and what I found most interesting and compelling about the workshop. My tutor asked questions about my writing that were scaffolds and our conversation enabled me to move easily to the next set of writing decisions. In “Peer Tutoring and the 'Conversation of Mankind'” Bruffee described it this way:

What peer tutor and tutee do together is not write or edit, or least of all proofread. What they do together is converse. They converse about the subject and about the assignment…Most of all they converse about and pursuant to writing. (215)

I felt comfortable enough to accept certain suggestions and not accept others within the framework of our conversation.

Collaborative Intelligence

At one point I felt completely at ease and even excited about what we were doing. There was a moment in my tutoring session when talking about the writing created a closed loop of reader as writer and writer as reader that was almost tangible. This seemed to energize the connection between tutor and tutee. That energy was present in the room with us helping to move the writing process along. In her essay “Some New Approaches Toward Teaching” Mina Shaughnessy described the writing and revision process as a feedback loop. Being a tutee was like having another person in that feedback loop with me energizing it and it was a very powerful experience.

The hour was over before I knew it. Before he left I asked my tutor his name and shook his hand.

Intentional and Incidental Learning

Paulo Freire, in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, described true dialogue as the act of co-creating reality. He said of men and women when they engaged in dialogue that, “As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as its permanent re-creators ” (Freire 69). I experienced that with my tutor when I could sense that we were creating something that was a different reality than the one I came in with. This indicates to me that we create our reality; that our experiences at the Writing Center, deli counter, and on the planet in general, depend on how we conduct our side of the dialogue.

My intention during this assignment was to learn what it felt like to be tutored. I felt it could only enhance my performance as a writing consultant to understand the other half of the tutor/tutee dynamic. I also wanted to know how to write a better letter. I consciously set out to push past the self-imposed isolation of my writing practice. I always feel that I have to confront my deficiencies and fears with some of the acceptance and discipline that maturity brings, or should have brought. I looked at this experience of being a tutor as both pedagogical and professional training and paid really close attention to my feelings of being a problem at the initial contact zone of the front desk.

I felt unwelcome and difficult, like an unexpected visit from an IRS auditor. In our Writing Center Theory and Practice class, we discussed the writing center's various battles with the academy for respect and survival. Some of the articles we read included descriptions of professors' attitudes towards writing centers, writing center tutors and struggling students. We discussed the right way to tutor and the wrong way to tutor. However, we have not so far discussed the idea of a writing center's customer service.

Most students who are confident about their writing don't go to writing centers, but as Brandt puts it:

A so-called expert writer, placed in unfamiliar or unusually demanding circumstances, might very well start using strategies that are usually associated with generally reserved for “weak” readers. (Brandt 40)

This experience has taught me that the initial contact zone in a center is very important, as important as creating a comfort zone in a classroom to facilitate for learning. Just about everyone walking through the door of a Writing Center to seek an appointment with a tutor for the first time may feel a little lost and like a novice or a weak writer. A writing center's customer service goals should, I believe, include some attempts at recognizing and addressing that feeling.






Works Cited

Brandt, Deborah. Literacy as Involvement: The Acts of Writers, Readers and Texts.

Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1990. Print.

Bruffee, Kenneth A. "Peer Tutoring and the 'Conversation of Mankind'." The Longman Guide to Writing Center Theory and Practice. Ed. Robert W. Barnett and Jacob S. Blummer. New York: Pearson Longman, 2008. 206-218. Print.

Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. 30th. New York: Continuum Intl Pub Group,

2000. Print.

Macauley, William J. "Setting the Agenda for the Next Thirty Minutes." A Tutor's Guide

Helping Writers One on One. Ed. Ben Rafotth. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook Publishers, Inc, 2005. 1-8. Print.

Shaughnessy, Mina. P. "Some New Approaches Toward Teaching." Journal Of Basic

Writing. 13. 1. (Spring 1994): 103-116. Print.