Michael Perez

Blog Post

Megan Wong

4/9/16

Tips to keep you on your toes

Since I have not had the chance to lead many workshops this semester I am forced to really focus on my drop-in hours even more than I did before since it is the only type of tutoring I am doing now. I decided to research some ideas, tips, and some general guidelines on participating in a one on one tutor session. I found these ideas reinforcing the structure we hear every Tuesday and some others gave some incite that I can relate to. More importantly I think every tutor we have at the writing center could definitely benefit from just hearing these tips.

                Walking us through the session the article lets know what will be going through your head when you first sit down and how to open up the session. First, is obviously the reading of said paper. This is where I struggle particularly because the papers brought to me tend to be rather long. Of course I am calm minded about the whole situation but when a student hands me a ten page paper and they stare at me for the next three to five million hours (minutes)  I feel pressured to skim the pages faster than maybe I should. The article said to right from the get go to give the student an assignment of writing down questions that they might have or ideas they could not fit into their paper or even an outline. The point of getting them to write while you read is to take their eyes and the pressure off you while read so you can calmly assess their paper adequately.

Some helpful reminders are about the meet and greet and the reaction to reading a paper. When we tutor a client that we are familiar with we tend to drop the formalities or introductions and in letting them know that we are eager to work alongside them. Even though we may know the student writers we are dealing with quite well it is always a good idea to start off a session with the right attitude and positive energy. I have noticed that the energy you start a session will determine how the rest of the appointment will inevitably go.

Something I have noticed that is very different in our writing center compared to other colleges’ writing centers are the lengths of the sessions/appointments. At Gavilan we have sessions/appointments for roughly fifteen to twenty minutes. The article of course goes down the whole list of setting goals for the sessions how to attack each problem and know which issues can be addressed in the short hour that they have. We have an incredible task of introducing ourselves, reading their paper, assessing the issues, creating goals, and helping the student writer with said issues. In my opinion being able to do all these things in such a short amount of time is pretty amazing but it was how we were conditioned to work, and even more so gave us the ability to time manage at work and at home with our own homework.

Works Cited

Institute for Writing and Rhetoric. "Advice for Tutors." Writing-speech.dartmouth.edu. Dartmouth, 26                      June 2013. Web. 09 Apr. 2016.