I had to laugh this morning as I tried to respond to several of my tutors'-in-training blogs, and each time I would hit "post comment," my laptop would tell me: Connection Failed. My comments were lost, and after a few such occurrences, I gave up and stopped trying to comment. (Sorry, tutors!)
The irony, of course, is that my tutors-in-training this past week read about and then practiced online tutoring. Our readings concerned the "Anxieties of Distance" (Carlson and Apperson-Williams) and the unique challenges of "Responding Online" (Rafoth). In my tutors' blogs, I see a range of positions toward online tutoring, from C.'s wholehearted support of the online tutorial to Z.'s adamant denial that online tutoring can be as valuable as the face-to-face tutorial.
My own position falls somewhere in the middle. The greatest danger of online tutoring, of course, is that the connection will faill - not just in the sense that the technology goes wonky on us (although this does happen, I'm sure) but in the sense that we, as tutors, will fail to connect with our clients.
The writing center tutorial is all about connections, I would argue; the interpersonal relationship between tutor and client facilitates the verbal give-and-take that makes the writing center tutorial so valuable. If that connection fails in the online environment, especially in asynchronous tutorials like the "email tutorial" (which is all our writing center currently offers), what is the effect on the client?
I know some writing center directors see the online tutorial as a means of inviting clients into the face-to-face tutorial. The logic, simply, is that if the client has a good online experience, s/he will be less intimidated about coming to the face-to-face center. I'm sure this is true to some extent, that some clients choose online tutoring for its convenience ("You mean I can just email my paper to a tutor instead of spending 30 minutes in the writing center? Sweet!") or because it means they don't have to "face" their writing problems ("You mean I don't have to admit to another human being, face to face, that my writing sucks? Sweet!"). But in our technology-saturated world, I think many clients choose online tutoring because they have seen first-hand that excellent collaborations can take place online.
That is, many of our clients are fully immersed in online worlds like Second Life or MMORPGs like Halo; some of them no doubt blog or follow blogs; most of them probably use social networking sites like Facebook not just to keep up with old friends but to make new ones; a few of them may even contribute actively to messageboards on fansites or activist organizations, or possibly even compose and/or read fanfiction, a highly collaborative online activity, as I know from personal experience. Such techno-savvy clients come to the online tutorial with an expectation for how productive the online collaboration can be. But that doesn't mean that they are prepared to "connect" with a writing tutor.
How do we, as tutors, captialize on the willingness of our online clients to move the tutorial into a new, virtual realm, while also realizing that their online experiences may not have prepared them for the online tutorial anymore than being a student in a writing class has prepared them for the face-to-face tutorial? How do we ensure that the client-to-tutor connection that makes a good tutorial in any environment doesn't fail online?
I don't have an answer to this question. I think online tutoring is an area ripe for research; certainly The Writing Lab Newsletter devotes more and more of its pages to the online writing center these days, and we need even more formal research (my tutors rightly pointed out how dated the articles we read for class were - and I shudder at how quickly 1998 has become dated!).
In the meantime, my advice to my tutors-in-training would be to avoid the extremes of "technological determinism" - it will be a good tutorial because it is on the computer, as if the technology itself makes for a successful encounter - or "technophobia" - the online tutorial is always already inferior to the face-to-face tutorial because it takes place through technology. We need to recognize the online writing center as a REAL space; we need to take it seriously as writing center professionals, whether we are tutors and directors, by training our tutors to use the space effectively and by researching the problems and the potential of online tutorials.
Of course, the connection sometimes fails in face-to-face tutorials, too. But when it fails online, does it fail for the same reasons? And what can we do to make sure the connection does not fail in the online environment? These are the questions I leave my tutors-in-training with this week. I look forward to hearing (and reading) their ideas.
Sunday, November 22, 2009
Sunday, November 8, 2009
When the center doesn't hold
I began my tutor training practicum this semester with the penultimate comment on writing center ideology: Stephen North's "The Idea of a Writing Center." I did this with the best of intentions, believing it was absolutely essential to take this group of English majors - all good writers themselves, many of whom expressed a desire to tutor based on the irritation they felt when reading classmates' or friends' "crappy papers" - from a text-centered focus to a writer-centered focus. What I didn't appreciate at the time, despite my immersion in postmodern theory, was that in presenting my tutors-in-training with the "idea" of a writing center, I was asking them to create a center: one focused on the writer vs. one focused on the text.
Matthew Ortoleva's "Centering the Writer or Centering the Text: A Meditation on a Shifting Practice in Writing Center Consultation" offers a series of real-life tutoring vignettes that cause me to question how strictly we should adhere to North's idea of a writing center. Jacques Derrida once wrote that "the center" (by which he meant, to be incredibly reductive, an essential "truth" or core ideology that determines our thoughts, beliefs, and actions) may not be a reality - no Truth exists - but it is nevertheless an essential function: Before we can decide what we think or believe, before we can decide how to act, we have to establish for ourselves a "center" that will guide us. In the writing conference, we ask tutors to choose between one of two "centers." On the one hand, a tutor can "center" the writer; in this case, the tutor believes that the essential function of the writing center tutorial is to improve a writer, not to improve the writer's text. On the other hand, a tutor can "center" the text; in this case, the tutor believes the essential function of the tutorial is to improve the paper the client has brought to the center.
North's "Idea of a Writing Center" clearly locates a text-centered tutorial as outside the "ideal" of a writing center tutorial. However, as Ortoleva so aptly points out, and as my tutors have certainly experienced time and again this semester, clients quite often come to the writing center with a determined text-centered focus: The client has a text due in a few hours/days/weeks, and s/he wants a good grade on that paper/graduate school admissions essay/resume/etc. to be as good as it can possibly be. And as Ortoleva points out, a very unproductive session can ensue when the writer-centered tutor runs headlong into the text-centered client. In this situation, does the center hold?
Or, to pose a less existential question, who decides where the center should be - the client or the tutor?
Without promising that this will work in every case, Ortoleva offers some good advice: "We must realize that the text the student carries into the writing center is always the student's primary concern. As writing consultants, we must balance the student's desire to leave with an improved text and our desire to help students internalize the lessons learned during the improvement of that text...It may not always seem practical, but collaboration between writing consultant and student should start with a discussion and mutual agreement about the goals of a session" (4).
I want to suggest a way tutors can approach this "discussion and mutual agreement." Of course clients are always going to be concerned about their grades, but one thing we as tutors can do is point out to clients that, when they are writing for a class, the purpose of the writing assignment is both for them to demonstrate their knowledge and writing capabilities to their professors AND - this is the part clients often overlook - to learn about the subject of their writing and to improve as writers. The writing center tutorial cannot produce a perfect paper for clients while remaining writing-centered. But it can help the client realize the learning goals of academic writing assignments - and in so doing, prepare the client to do well on future writing tasks, in school and out.
When clients are writing for real-world purposes, however, such as the graduate school admissions essay or the professional resume for a job, I believe Ortoleva is right in pointing out that a text-centered focus may be appropriate. It is still important that we discuss this with the client; we need to be sure they understand that, given the real-life implications of this writing task, we are willing to focus more on the text, but that the writing center can be most helpful to them on their school-based writing tasks by working with them on their writing processes.
A successful writing center tutorial engages both tutor and client equally in a collaborative process. Whether that collaboration takes place on "the writer" or on "the text" may require negotiation - more negotiation that North's "Idea of a Writing Center" allows for. At the end of the day, it comes back to what I've been saying to my tutors-in-training all along: The value of the writing center tutorial is that it is individualized. That ultimately means we create "the center" anew with every client, in every session, every day.
Ortoleva, Matthew. "Centering the Writer or Centering the Text: A Meditation on a Shifting Practice in Writing Center Consultation." Praxis: A Writing Center Journal. http://projects.uwc.utexas.edu/praxis?q=book/print/209
Matthew Ortoleva's "Centering the Writer or Centering the Text: A Meditation on a Shifting Practice in Writing Center Consultation" offers a series of real-life tutoring vignettes that cause me to question how strictly we should adhere to North's idea of a writing center. Jacques Derrida once wrote that "the center" (by which he meant, to be incredibly reductive, an essential "truth" or core ideology that determines our thoughts, beliefs, and actions) may not be a reality - no Truth exists - but it is nevertheless an essential function: Before we can decide what we think or believe, before we can decide how to act, we have to establish for ourselves a "center" that will guide us. In the writing conference, we ask tutors to choose between one of two "centers." On the one hand, a tutor can "center" the writer; in this case, the tutor believes that the essential function of the writing center tutorial is to improve a writer, not to improve the writer's text. On the other hand, a tutor can "center" the text; in this case, the tutor believes the essential function of the tutorial is to improve the paper the client has brought to the center.
North's "Idea of a Writing Center" clearly locates a text-centered tutorial as outside the "ideal" of a writing center tutorial. However, as Ortoleva so aptly points out, and as my tutors have certainly experienced time and again this semester, clients quite often come to the writing center with a determined text-centered focus: The client has a text due in a few hours/days/weeks, and s/he wants a good grade on that paper/graduate school admissions essay/resume/etc. to be as good as it can possibly be. And as Ortoleva points out, a very unproductive session can ensue when the writer-centered tutor runs headlong into the text-centered client. In this situation, does the center hold?
Or, to pose a less existential question, who decides where the center should be - the client or the tutor?
Without promising that this will work in every case, Ortoleva offers some good advice: "We must realize that the text the student carries into the writing center is always the student's primary concern. As writing consultants, we must balance the student's desire to leave with an improved text and our desire to help students internalize the lessons learned during the improvement of that text...It may not always seem practical, but collaboration between writing consultant and student should start with a discussion and mutual agreement about the goals of a session" (4).
I want to suggest a way tutors can approach this "discussion and mutual agreement." Of course clients are always going to be concerned about their grades, but one thing we as tutors can do is point out to clients that, when they are writing for a class, the purpose of the writing assignment is both for them to demonstrate their knowledge and writing capabilities to their professors AND - this is the part clients often overlook - to learn about the subject of their writing and to improve as writers. The writing center tutorial cannot produce a perfect paper for clients while remaining writing-centered. But it can help the client realize the learning goals of academic writing assignments - and in so doing, prepare the client to do well on future writing tasks, in school and out.
When clients are writing for real-world purposes, however, such as the graduate school admissions essay or the professional resume for a job, I believe Ortoleva is right in pointing out that a text-centered focus may be appropriate. It is still important that we discuss this with the client; we need to be sure they understand that, given the real-life implications of this writing task, we are willing to focus more on the text, but that the writing center can be most helpful to them on their school-based writing tasks by working with them on their writing processes.
A successful writing center tutorial engages both tutor and client equally in a collaborative process. Whether that collaboration takes place on "the writer" or on "the text" may require negotiation - more negotiation that North's "Idea of a Writing Center" allows for. At the end of the day, it comes back to what I've been saying to my tutors-in-training all along: The value of the writing center tutorial is that it is individualized. That ultimately means we create "the center" anew with every client, in every session, every day.
Ortoleva, Matthew. "Centering the Writer or Centering the Text: A Meditation on a Shifting Practice in Writing Center Consultation." Praxis: A Writing Center Journal. http://projects.uwc.utexas.edu/praxis?q=book/print/209
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Distinguishing difference
Reading through my tutors-in-training blogs this week, I notice that the overwhelming response to Julie Neff's article on clients with learning disabilities is: "We shouldn't be labeling people as disabled; we should be looking for ways these clients are (a) extraordinary or (b) not so different from our other clients."
I understand this impulse. Honestly, I even share it. Learning disabilities come with such a stigma in our society. I remember the Special Ed room at my junior high: It was in the same hallway as the cafeteria, which always reeked of grease and garbage, and as we all filed down to lunch every day, we would see the LD kids in there behind a big red door with a small square window, eating their brown bag lunches at long wooden tables. They weren't even allowed to eat with the rest of us. I remember the jokes the boys in my grade would make: "Oh, look, it's the retard room!"
Reading my tutors' blogs, I get the sense that what we want to do is protect our clients from this stigma. Being dyslexic certainly does not make a person stupid, but it DOES make that client different from the student who simply doesn't like to read. More importantly, dyslexia requires a different approach from the tutor: We need to understand what strategies could help a dyslexic student manage the reading and writing process more effectively and efficiently, because when working one-on-one with students, understanding their learning styles - including their learning disabilities - is crucial.
In other words, recognizing the disability allows us to tailor education to that student's particular needs. Now, again, tutors should be doing that with all clients; the individualized instruction is what makes a writing center so valuable, at least in part. But working with a client with a learning disability requires different strategies than working with a client who is not learning disabled. The difference doesn't imply deficiency; the difference is, simply, difference.
I believe tutors need to know more about learning disabilities and how to work effectively with clients who have a wide array of learning disabilities. I would like to see this be one "tier" of the training for the writing center at our university. I want us, as Neff says, to approach every client with respect and sensitivity. That doesn't mean denying that learning disabilities exist. It doesn't mean valorizing a client with a learning disability to the point that we say, "Oh, they don't need special help - look at how extraordinary this person is, to have been able to overcome so much!" Yes, being in college with a learning disability is a challenge, and we should praise our clients for their hard work and perseverance. But our job doesn't stop there. The fact of the client's hard work doesn't mean she or he won't need a different kind of help than our other clients.
The best way to advocate for fair, equitable treatment of clients with learning disabilities isn't too pretend that the disability doesn't exist or that it doesn't affect the way they learn. The best way to help them is, simply, to help them.
I understand this impulse. Honestly, I even share it. Learning disabilities come with such a stigma in our society. I remember the Special Ed room at my junior high: It was in the same hallway as the cafeteria, which always reeked of grease and garbage, and as we all filed down to lunch every day, we would see the LD kids in there behind a big red door with a small square window, eating their brown bag lunches at long wooden tables. They weren't even allowed to eat with the rest of us. I remember the jokes the boys in my grade would make: "Oh, look, it's the retard room!"
Reading my tutors' blogs, I get the sense that what we want to do is protect our clients from this stigma. Being dyslexic certainly does not make a person stupid, but it DOES make that client different from the student who simply doesn't like to read. More importantly, dyslexia requires a different approach from the tutor: We need to understand what strategies could help a dyslexic student manage the reading and writing process more effectively and efficiently, because when working one-on-one with students, understanding their learning styles - including their learning disabilities - is crucial.
In other words, recognizing the disability allows us to tailor education to that student's particular needs. Now, again, tutors should be doing that with all clients; the individualized instruction is what makes a writing center so valuable, at least in part. But working with a client with a learning disability requires different strategies than working with a client who is not learning disabled. The difference doesn't imply deficiency; the difference is, simply, difference.
I believe tutors need to know more about learning disabilities and how to work effectively with clients who have a wide array of learning disabilities. I would like to see this be one "tier" of the training for the writing center at our university. I want us, as Neff says, to approach every client with respect and sensitivity. That doesn't mean denying that learning disabilities exist. It doesn't mean valorizing a client with a learning disability to the point that we say, "Oh, they don't need special help - look at how extraordinary this person is, to have been able to overcome so much!" Yes, being in college with a learning disability is a challenge, and we should praise our clients for their hard work and perseverance. But our job doesn't stop there. The fact of the client's hard work doesn't mean she or he won't need a different kind of help than our other clients.
The best way to advocate for fair, equitable treatment of clients with learning disabilities isn't too pretend that the disability doesn't exist or that it doesn't affect the way they learn. The best way to help them is, simply, to help them.
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