Hey all!
Today, I had yet another mentor meeting with Keenan. We collaborated about his weekly students - all which are going well. Like Steve said, I think I may come in on Monday to observe one of his sessions. I have yet to see him tutor, so I would really like to get a feel for his style. He had the same drop-in student as last week (the one that was extremely stressed about one of her papers). Keenan said that the student came in Saturday and didn't get as much help as she would have liked to. He handled this real well by telling the student that we're all different and that each tutor has his/her own style.
Keenan expressed many concerns to me during our sessions.
1) Grammar. He asked if I or any other tutor had encountered a student that just wanted to come in and work on grammar. I explained to him the situation that Kathryn had and how she handled it. I also shared one of my own experiences, where the student wanted to learn about semicolons, colons and commas. I told him that if the student comes in and wants to learn how and when to use these, then it would be beneficial to look up definitions and exercises on a resourceful site such as Owl at Purdue. I also explained that there is a grammar tutor that works with students specifically on grammar (located in the Journalism department).
2) What other concerns mentors had with mentees. I explained to Keenan that we blog about how our mentee sessions go and express/comment on concerns that other mentors have. He asked if mentees are allowed to see the blog. I don’t know the answer to this, so Steve or Brian?
3) Seeing your students at parties. I for one have never seen any of my students at a party. However, Keenan said that one of his friends had a party (he didn’t attend) and that one of his weekly students was there. He asked what to do in that situation. I explained to him that if you see one of your students at the party, you seem them at the party - however, when they come in for their appointment, the session cannot consist of talking about their social life and how spectacular the party was (being all buddy buddyy!!) We as tutors are here to make stronger writers, not gossip about who had sex with who...just an example.
** If anyone else has encountered this, feel free to comment or talk to Keenan.
Thanks all!
Kendra
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Hey Kendra, I really liked this post! I have two things I want to reply to.
ReplyDelete1) GRAMMAR! Yes! The majority of the students I get come in wanting to work on grammar and I feel like I really, really fall short in this department. I know a lot about what *sounds* right but sadly, not a lot about actually explaining how grammar works. I'm glad you mentioned that there's actually a grammar tutor in the Journalism department -- I had no idea! The approach I usually take when a student wants to work exclusively on it is just as you said: we look things up and sort of discuss them until the student gets a feel for it. Sometimes I sort of learn along with them, oddly enough. I attended the grammar workshop last spring but I felt like I didn't really learn a lot.
2) Students mixing with social life...I've had to deal with this before. One of my weekly students who I was paired with last semester ended up having a bunch of mutual friends with me, so we run into each other ALL over the place. He also signed up with me for a second semester, so we've gotten to know each other really well and have become good friends. I made it pretty clear to him, though, that I'm fine with being friends but when we're in a session, we have to be productive and try to keep the social stuff aside. Simple as that.
Since I'm a dance major alot of the dance faculty encourage students to come see me specifically if they need writing help. It's great because I love working with students who have similiar interests than me and it helps them because dance majors have really odd writing assignments that other writing tutors may not understand.
ReplyDeleteThat being said I find myself in situations where some of my students are in my classes or at the same events I am at. Generally I just try to not talk about tutoring them when I'm at the dance center. Likewise when they are here I don't discuss things going on at the dance center unless they have questions about dance center protocol.
I think developping casual relationships with students is sort of inevitable since we ourselves are students. It's a matter of being professional when we are tutors and being more ourselves when we are in social settings.
That being said I think when the relationship lines start to overlap it's appropriate to ask that they be placed with another tutor if more talking is happening than tutoring.
Hi Kendra,
ReplyDeleteYour posting brings out some very important topics about mentoring, so let me add to the discourse that you and your peers have already begun. Re: Grammar-all WC tutors should familiarize themselves with basic English grammar, and avoid deferring to people with more expertise (unless absolutely necessary). The resource room has some good materials to help in this area, and as mentioned, so does OWL. Granted discussing grammar issues can sometimes been be dry and academic but if this is what the student needs or wants to work on then we must honor that request.
Re: Mentees on Blog. Although I have no overt objective to mentees viewing this blog, I would like to extent an invitation for ALL MENTORS to "chime in" about this very intriguing request. We don't want mentees to get the erroneous idea that what we do here is some elitist, esoteric activity. On the other hand, if viewing this blog by mentees resulted in less-effective tutoring sessions then perhaps access should remain in its curent form.
As far as social activity with students...this is rather problematic for tutors since your relationship is less clear-cut than that between instructor and student. You guys are peers but also teachers and this situation only complicates matters when more friendly relationships emerge. I can only reiterate Alex and Coco's responses--always maintaining a professional demeanour when here at the WC, or requisting that the student work with another tutor.
*Some really good stuff here worthy of further consideration perhaps in a future workshop. Encourage your fellow mentors to respond especially to mentee blog access.
Steve