Emotions On The Job

Michael Perez

Blogger Post

Megan Wong

3/15/16

Emotions in the Writing Center

Agostinelli, Corinne, Helena Poch, and Elizabeth Santoro. "Tutoring in Emotionally Charged Sessions." 34-39. Print.

            Emotions are what make us human, whether we are happy about something or offended they remind us we that we all have different opinions and feelings that affect how feel about whether that joke that was just made was crass or hilarious. As an individual the authors of this chapter do give you the right to feel whatever is natural, though they stress on how to go about a tutoring session when emotions come up unexpectedly. The first situation addressed in this chapter was when a student writer comes in to the center with their paper on a particularly difficult topic.

Often times the topic is close to their heart for example a childhood abuse and the writer is too emotional when reading the paper. We have been warned that we are not therapists! Yes, it might be one of the several reactions we have to reach out and help the writer deal with the tragedy by talking but, that is how a session gets derailed. Remember why they walked into the Writing Center, it wasn’t for emotional help (36).  Like in any tutor session we are encouraged to set a goal for the session so we don’t forget the task.

Emotions are a two-way road, both writer and tutor may at one point or another experience an emotional reaction to a paper that was brought in. We are not told to curb or emotions but taught how to effectively communicate our thoughts to the writer. Let’s say for example a paper is brought in about how Christianity is sham used to brain wash and drain the pockets of people, and the tutor is a devote Christian. Rather than telling the writer that they are wrong and incorrect about everything the paper has said, they instead of the power of questions to get the student to see another point of view. Maybe the tutor acknowledges everyone’s right to their belief but asks why they believe this statement. Prompting the writer with, “Don’t most churches help abuse victims and often donate money to the homeless?”, can lead them to not making such sweeping generalizations. That is just one of the many ways we can properly deal with our feelings towards a paper, it is effective and follows the etiquette we strive for in the Learning Commons at Gavilan.

Writing Center etiquette and how to appropriately deal with some troubling encounters is also talked about. As tutors we do not have a policy of telling students that in fact they are wrong when they are, rather we try to guide them to the right answer and hope they realize that perhaps their previous thoughts or ideas were incorrect. We do however have a responsibility to our students to let them know when they care being politically incorrect, prejudice, or racist. Often times people do not realize that they are coming off in an inappropriate manner or that they are using a derogatory statement until it is brought up with them. We are here to aid the process communicating ideas and clear up any miscommunication on the way.