Essay 1: Symposium

North, Lunsford, and Cooper are all on their way to an important conference in Secaucus New Jersey to discuss the importance of proper protocol in the writing center and honor the great Bruffee for his largely respected ideas about the way a writing center should run. Much to their surprise, they find themselves boarding the same train. Throughout the train ride, they anxiously discuss their expectations for the meeting which is quickly approaching. North: I for one am endlessly excited about the stimulating conversation which we are undoubtedly about to witness. Lunsford: Agreed, and the fact that they’re honoring Bruffee is wonderful, he has many great ideas about the function of a writing center, some I agree with, and some I don't care for. Cooper (looking out the window): Guys, does any of this look familiar to you? Conductor: Next stop, Hempstead. All in unison: Hempstead?!? North: We must've gotten on the wrong train, why do I always do this? Cooper: How did we all get on the wrong train separately? Lunsford: That is strange...maybe we should get off at the next stop and try to find a train to New Jersey. All three of the scholars get off at the Hempstead train station, only to find that the trains had already stopped running for the night, seeing the many Hofstra students walking around sporting school gear, they decide to retreat to the college for the night, and try to find a way home in the morning. (Kate & Willies) Me: Holy crap! You're those writing center guys; I'm studying you in my writing consultancy class. How the hell are you? North: Really, well what are those teachers of yours telling you about us? Me: Well, you're all sort of similar in your ideas, but I guess there are some slight differences too. North: Me? The same as these two? Excuse me...my ideas about a writing center are both innovative and highly effective. Me: ...and a little extreme Lunsford: Cleary, I was your favorite out of this group. My experimentations involving the level of control required for a successful tutoring session were brilliant! Me: Well they were very clever but... Cooper: My ideas about the collaboration of the tutor and the student in fixing a paper, help the student become a better writer in the process. These ideas are the most developed out of the group...so surely you'll want my autograph.

(The three continue bickering for quite some time)

Me: Hey! Stop this! In my opinion all of your ideas are valid, but I’m kind of stuck on who thinks what. You’re all so similar in your theories.

North: Well surely you remember my ideas, I believe that the tutor and the student should work together to improve a paper. While the tutor has control of the interaction, they must evoke ideas for improvement from the student.

Lunsford: See, the idea of collaboration is a tricky one to master. Too much authority on the side of the tutor will inherit the student’s ability to learn from the meeting, but too little authority will leave the paper ridden with problems.

Cooper: I agree with North, some of the tutoring should be left in the hands of the student, but in reality, grades are important and so a common goal must be reached between the student and the tutor before the session. The tutor clearly must play a large role in helping the paper improve in order to better the student’s overall grade on the paper for which they are seeking help.
Me: True, but focusing on the letter grade which the paper will receive may sometimes be detrimental to the learning experience of the student…right?

North: Correct, the tutor must stay away from focus on grammatical errors. It is the tutor’s job to improve their peer as a writer, and focus on things like structure and content rather than spelling and punctuation.

Lunsford: It is very important to maintain a conversation with the student about what should be changed and what they are doing correctly. As Bruffee would say, internal thoughts must be externalized in conversation and put onto the paper. That is the circle we all, as writers, follow and must teach our clients to follow as well.

North: This also brings us into the discussion of normal or abnormal discourse. Normal discourse is an idea that is widely accepted and often published in textbooks, abnormal discourse being a new idea or concept.

Me: So if in a tutoring session, I were to teach the student something new that they have not previously learned from a teacher or professor, is that abnormal discourse?

Cooper: To that student, yes, the new ideas you are instilling are abnormal discourse, but to you and I, these are widely accepted ideas that have already been followed by many, so it is normal discourse to us.
Me: Okay, I think I’m beginning to understand Bruffee’s ideas, but as a tutor in training I’m still not sure which method would be the best to follow in order to truly help my peers.

North: Well, always focus on structure and improving the writer first, and grammar, if necessary, after.

Lunsford: Make sure you collaborate with the student, don’t take too much authority but don’t be so passive that the paper will remain untouched.

Cooper: I agree, share the authority, focus on the writer not the writing, but remember, the main concern of the student is the grade, so you’re job is to help them achieve a better grade and more confidence in themselves as a writer.

Me: Well, it looks to me like you three headstrong scholars have finally agreed on the best way to tutor.

All (towards each other): Wow, we have haven’t we? I thought we’d never agree, I always thought my ideas were far superior.

North (looking at his watch): Well, this has been very enlightening, but it is getting quite late.

Cooper: We need to rise bright and early if we’re going to make it to that conference tomorrow morning.

Lunsford: Well, thank you young woman, with your help and the help of the ideas of the great Bruffee, we three strong headed intellectuals have finally reached agreement.

Cooper: Here is my email, if you ever need any tutoring advice, I’m a message away.

(The other three follow suit in writing down their email addresses)North, Cooper, and Lunsford all make the train the next morning and arrive just in time for the conference they were supposed to be attending. At this meeting they present their new ideas and wow their peers with their ability to collaborate and accomplish a joint conclusion besides their well known arrogance and self centered attitude.



Works Cited
1) Bruffee, Kenneth A. “Collaborative Learning and the Conversation of Mankind.”
Bruffee has much discussion about how the conversation between a tutor and a student can help internalized ideas become very developed, and thus, this will improve the writing of the student who is seeking help. His ideas, in this symposium, help to tie together the ideas of the three other intellectuals.

2) Lunsford, Andrea. “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center”
Lundsford focuses a great deal on collaboration in her article. She conducts experiments in order to find which type of collaboration works best in a tutoring situation and found that equal collaboration seems to be the most effective.

3)North, Stephen M. “The Idea of a Writing Center”
North has a very specific idea of a perfect writing center. Throughout his article he details that the tutor should focus on improvement of the writer rather than improvement of that specific paper that needs work. He is against focusing on grades and feels strongly that the focus should be on helping the student to improve fully as a writer and teaching them how to edit themselves.
4) Murphy, Christina, Sherwood, Steve. “The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors” (Cooper. “Really Useful Knowledge” p.53)
Coopers ideas generally align with that of North and Brooks. His one main difference is that he is realistic in the notion that students are often focused more on the grade they will be receiving than improving as a writer. He says that while tutors should focus on helping tutees improve, they should not forget that the main goal of their meeting for the student is to achieve a higher grade than previously possible.

Cooper : Really useful knowledge

In Marilyn Cooper's article "Really Useful Knowledge: A Cultural Studies Agenda for Writing Centers" she critiques the role of the University on the learning environment, particularly in writing centers. She says that she believes "students should be intellectually challenged in their writing classes, that they need to be engaged in a struggle over complex ideas that matter to them". She also suggest that the tutor be an "organic intellectual" who throws away the rules and the "inventing the university" http://firstyearwriting.wikispaces.com/file/view/Inventing+the+University.pdf type atmosphere. In other words, rather than be talked at and lectured by a teacher who follows the criteria, she believes students can benefit from a change in the learning experience, and should be lead by the type of teacher who can be both quirky, up-to-date, and challenging. Students learn better when they are faced with a topic of interest or current relevancy, and become more engaged when an alternate teaching method is used. This shows that tutors who work in a writing center must be able to stand out amongst the other teacher figures who float around the university and encourage the student to be somewhat independent. As a peer tutor we must be many things, grade oriented, encouraging, passive, authoritative, passionate, and we must grab the students attention. But we must not be mundane.

Cooper is the most realistic compositionist we have studied so far. As she examines Brooks article she states "But i also think that is is this assumption that writing center sessions must focus on 9improving individual papers that leads to the trap Brooks descrips, the trap of tutors serving as editors of the student papers." She agrees that fixing the writer must be the main focus of the meeting, but observes that it is nearly impossible to avoid correcting the paper itself. She is also aware that it is nearly impossible to pretend that students are more concerned about learning than a higher grade. She admitts that there is a huge focus on grades and states that the tutor should keep that in mind during any session.

Mike Wesch

In Mike Wesch's "A Portal to Media Literacy" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4yApagnr0s, he discusses the effect of classroom size on a student's learning experience and enthusiasm for a subject. He mentions that in larger lecture halls students often ask questions such as "what do we need to know for this test?" and admit to habits such as "I facebook during most of my classes" and "my neighbor pays to be here and never shows up". This shows that there is a "crisis of significance", students in this learning environment lack interest in the material and an unhealthy focus on grades over education. He asserts, however, that in a small classroom settings with few students, pupils will ask more daring questions and become more engaged. This is significant to peer tutors because it shows that students will often learn more in a meeting held between them and one teacher figure than in a classroom full of students. This is an even greater reason to focus on the writer rather than the paper. If the student will learn more in a secluded environment when they are the subject of critique it further proves that we, as the tutor, must make a lasting impression or fail at our duties. This video inspired me to focus more on comments that will help the student overall and practice providing constructive criticism that is not only optimistic, but useful in overall improvement.

Bruffee questions

1) Is collaborative learning between a tutor and a tutee as affective as collaborative learning beween students of the same class?

2) Do new ways of learning (collaboration), in your experience, succeed more often than they fail? And how far can we take it? One day teachers may not be needed if we keep going.

3) Knowledge is established by communities of knowledgable peers. Once we get out of college and live and work with people of other "communities", how will that effect our previously established knowledge? Does knowledge always change depending on what community you are around?

4) What limitations do thought and conversation have and how do they effect writing?

5) When has a student mastered the "normal discourse" of a field and when is she qualified to explore/express "abnormal discourse"?

6) If the ability to socialize with others dictates one's ability to write, then why is it true that hermits and mentally disturbed people have been some of the most renowned writers in the past? (ie. Edgar Allen Poe, Emily Dickinson).

7) Thought and conversation go hand in hand, which leads to knowledge. If though is narrow, thinking will be too. But what if one's knowledge is so great that they can be narrow without it leading to lack of thinking?
In Bruffee's opinion, conversation is thought, and thought is conversation. They function largely in the same way. Through this confusing thought pattern may seem enigmatic, it really all goes in one big circle. external conversation->internalized to thought -> written to be a combination of conversation and internal thought -> collaborative conversing=normal learning discourse and vice versa.


**Last paragraph on 647 summarized in to one sentence- Conversation about what we already know and is accepted is normal discourse, development of new ideas is abnormal discourse. Abnormal comes before normal because an idea must be made up in order for it to be widely established and accepted and become normal. Knowledge is a combination of both normal and abnormal discourse. Normal discourse is to maintain knowledge that is already known (ie. history). Abnormal discourse is to make new knowledge (ie. pluto isn't a planet anymore).

Abnormal discourse can, before it's accepted, make people freak out. (Plato says- if you have been living in a cave all of your life, shadows become your normal discourse and reality is abnormal, but once brought out into the real world, after freaking out, reality becomes your normal discourse. And if some one who has seen the real world comes to the cave and tells them about reality, their ideas would be abnormal discourse to the people of the cave.)

Normal discourse = common sense, widely accepted and agreed upon ideas. A set of beliefs. Abnormal discourse can easily become normal discourse, not always but if the ideas become widely accepted, it then becomes normal discourse.

Lundsford

Lundsford performs an interesting experiment to try to figure out the best formula for learning in a writing center environment. She set up several tutoring scenarios and observed in which situation the student thrived and the main goal of the tutor was achieved. The first scenario was set up with a dominating tutor, assuming all authority over the studen which they were attempting to aid. The second, was an inverted version of the first situation, the student took complete control of the meeting, and took the tutor through the problems they think they had. The final, and most successful of the situations, was done with equal collaboration. Both the tutor and the student seeking help took control of the situation, they shared equal control and authority, and worked together through the entire meeting to try to touch on problems both of them had esablished. I agree that the last situation was the least stressful and most comfortable for the student because they are not intimidated by a tutor who assumes all authority, or pressured with the leading role in a meeting which they attended in order to recieve help. To Lundsford the writer is a delicate flower, too much domination or picky grammatical comments has the same effect as an overbearing gardener, flooding the flowers with water and drowning them with good intentions. Too little criticism and over complimentary tutors are not satisfactory either, however, this situation mimmicks a gardener who leaves the care up to nature itself. Eventually, without sufficient conditions, the flower will become starved of water and eventually whither up in a failed attempt to thrive on its own, much like a student who is starved of educational enlightenment and commentary from the tutor. However, a flower, or student, who is given just the right amount of water and enough space to bloom on its own, much like a student with a collaborative tutor, will thrive and flourish in a perfect atmosphere.

mock tutoring session

I found the mock tutoring session held in class today very helpful and informative. Previous to this exercise I doubted my ability to act as an effective tutor, but once I engaged in conversation with my mock peer seeking help, the words and suggestions just started pouring out of me. Although Stephanie had a nearly perfect paper on which she recieved an A, I still managed to find some suggestions to give her on expansions of ideas and new aspects to her arguments. I somehow managed to do all of this with a positive and collaborative attitude which encouraged her to insert her own ideas and use her own opinions. On the other hand, I felt very uncomfortable being the student in the situation. While Robert brought up many good points as to what my paper was lacking, I am not one who accepts criticism too well. I, personally, refuse to even reread my paper at all prior to turning it in. However, despite my distaste for constructive criticism, Robert went about tutoring me in a very constructive, positive, and gentle way. He made suggestions, not demands, and asked me my opinion before making any suggestions. The one question which resonated throughout the meeting was "what do you feel needs to change about this paper?" I found this question very effective and successful because he handed over the authority and control to me, valuing my opinions and fixing the paper to my specific needs.

tutoring video

The tutoring video we viewed in class today was not only very imformative, but it gave me a definition and scenario in which to view what the tutor actually does in a writing center situation. Previously, the role of the tutor was a gray area, it was clear that they were supposed to aid their peer in the writing and editing of their paper, but the protocol involved in the actual interraction was defined in a much clearer way, and I reached an understanding as to my actual role as a tutor in the learning experience. The two situations shown in the video were very different, this also provided a learning experience for me, as I saw that every interaction is different depending on the student, the assignment, and the current stage of the paper at hand. The favorite of the two peer-student relationships was the one which featured the woman tutor and the male student who wrote a music paper. Both members of this pair were very passionate, the boy about his paper, and the tutor about sincerely helping her client. She asked many important questions which are necessary in order to complete the paper and achieve the desired grade. Throughout the tutorial, the girl payed an immense amount of attention to her student, and provided input as to how to develop the paper and expand on the topic which he was so passionate about. I now understand the role of a tutor, and the way in which an interaction between a tutor and a student should take place.