Reading this article made me really ponder our culture’s obsession with judging everybody. We are so quick to jump to conclusions about why people do the things they do, or why they struggle in the ways they do. This often has detrimental consequences when we choose to use the behavior of others as an indicator of their cognitive abilities, as June did when she used Maria’s “‘talking’ as a barometer for [her] ‘thinking’” (310). It seems all too easy for us to make that huge leap from describing the things a student (or a friend, or stranger) might struggle with to generalizations about their cognitive ability (314). For Maria, these generalizations about her cognitive abilities came about from what June termed her “thinking continuity problems.” Maria’s diversion from the IRE discussion sequence was seen as some kind of cognitive delay on her part. I don’t think this problem just affects students like Maria who may be viewed as overly-talkative, or always going off on tangents. Because I am quiet person (as an undergraduate I experienced much anxiety sharing my ideas with a large class), I have often been mistaken for being uninterested, not having anything to contribute, or just not getting it. I once was asked by a professor during class if the ideas were just “over my head!” We humans always seem to want to jump to conclusions based on behavior, rather than seeking to understand.

It seems like a monumental task to alter this approach to difference in our culture, where “difference… slides readily toward judgement of better-or-worse, dominance, otherness” (Hull et al. 325). How do we go about changing this judging tendency in teachers when we find ourselves in “a culture in the grips of deficit thinking?” (324). In many ways education is set up so that certain people fail. Capitalism doesn’t work if everyone succeeds! Access to resources is not distributed equally. The authors cite McDermott who argues that in our educational system, failure is virtually guaranteed (325). School in a sense acts as a sorting mechanism for the roles people will play in larger society. It puts people into either the winners, or the losers. Labels like LD (learning disabled) or practices like remediation are used to more easily sort and select students. Think about it, if you are a Butte College student and have to go through 4 semesters of remediation in order to get to the English class that counts for credit, how likely are you to suffer through that? Probably most people are more likely to say forget it. Society creates these designations and then finds students to fill them, and then waits for them to fail.

So…this all seems pretty bleak for someone who has spent the last 12 years working in education. There are major problems with the institution of education as a whole. But, as teachers how do we make sure that we don’t make the same mistakes as June? After all, she seemed like she had the best intentions. How can we most effectively develop the ability to “identify, understand, and learn to foster those moments in which teachers encourage rather than restrict their students’ potential” (Hull et al. 318) in a culture always looking for deficit? Maybe at least a start is for teachers to learn to suspend judgements about students’ cognitive abilities based on their behavior, cultural background, educational background, etc. To seek to understand, before jumping to judgements that could have lasting impacts on students. We must truly work to perceive all students’ “incipient excellence,” and not just the things they struggle with (317). As Hull et al. point out, “a great deal of research has shown that students whose teachers expect them to do well, tend to do well, while students whose teachers expect them to do poorly, do poorly” (317).

Muriel Harris’ article, “Collaboration is Not Collaboration: Writing Center Tutorials vs. Peer-Response Groups” brought up some interesting ideas for me about how tutors (or as I will discuss here, mentors) operate in a “contact zone” (37), and “inhabit a middle ground” (37) between teachers and students. I am really interested in the ways in which mentors can act as bridges between teachers and students. While I was reading, another article I read a few semesters back came to mind, “Reading Classrooms as Texts: Exploring Student Writers’ Interpretive Practices” by Jennie Nelson. Nelson discusses how in order to be successful students must learn to “read classrooms as text, invoking knowledge about how classrooms work to help them determine how to approach particular assignments. The writing assignments in a classroom are just one element of this larger ‘text’ that students must interpret and define for themselves” (412). Students have to learn to “read” every classroom and teacher they encounter. In a sense, they are always trying to figure out “what the teacher wants,” or “how to get an A on this paper.” Though students are perpetually involved in “reading” their classrooms and teachers; teachers rarely spend much time “reading” their classrooms or their students. As Nelson points out, “too often teachers are naive outsiders, unable or unwilling to read classrooms in the same way students do, thus unable to anticipate how students might interpret assignments in surprising and sometimes counterproductive ways” (Nelson 413). There is often a large disconnect between teachers and students. Teachers think they are completely clear, while students are left scratching their heads. Teachers may be unwilling to consider how students might interpret their assignments or the practices of their classrooms. They often stop short of really considering their classrooms through their students’ eyes. Often I wonder if it’s not always just that teachers are unwilling, but that they may be unable. They designed the class after all, of course it makes perfect sense to them! Also, it can be difficult to assess the clarity or effectiveness of your practices or assignments. Students’ silence is often taken as understanding. Mentors can help give valuable feedback to teachers about how their assignments, course practices, and teaching strategies are being received by students. This information can be vital to teachers who are open to receive it. For those students who may not know how to saw something is unclear, or to speak up at all, mentors can act as a bridge between “teacher talk” and “student talk”. As Harris points out, “Their position allows them the opportunity to act as “translator or interpreter, turning teacher language into student language” (Harris 37). They can also help students learn how, and in what ways, to speak up, and how to decipher the often cryptic language of their professors! Mentors can play a unique role because they are not students, yet they are not teachers either. They are no longer “novices” at navigating the academy, and for this reason they are well positioned to help students who “need particular help threading their way through the  multiple messages, different criteria, and differing standards they encounter in academia” (Harris 38).

I was particularly interested in Sommers and Saltz’s statement in their article that “what is missing from so many discussions about college writing is the experience of students” (125). When reading through academic research about first-year composition it isn’t often that we hear students’ voices. It is partly for this reason that I chose to focus on international students’ experiences with and responses to working with mentors in first-year composition for my thesis project. I would like to expand Sommers and Saltz’s question to not only how does writing help students transition to college, but how does writing while working with a mentor help students transition to college? As Sommers and Saltz’s point out “The enthusiasm so many freshman feel is less for writing per se than for the way it helps to locate them in the academic culture, giving them a sense of academic belonging” (131). How might working with mentors within a space centered around writing develop students’ sense of academic belonging? To start to feel they are legitimate members of the academic community? As the authors point out freshman students are operating in a liminal space, “what worked in high school doesn’t work anymore” (125). Not only are they operating in a liminal space between external environments, but within their internal identities as well. As the authors emphasize the changes that happened in the writers over the four years of the study were more a story of change within the writers than changes on paper (144).

To complicate things further, freshman are often asked to operate as experts in their writing assignments when they are still novices. They are asked to speak with authority before they have learned how to do so or may have any interest in doing so. Sommers and Saltz note that in order for students to move from novice to expert, they must begin with imitation. Imitation is an integral step. In this context the authors are referring to merely summarizing vs. thinking critically in writing. But I wonder what role more expert peers (mentors) can play in this process of imitation? How can they help model that process of moving from ingesting ideas to questioning ideas (134)?  Sommers and Saltz emphasized the importance of student purpose=sustained interest=development of a questioning mindset (144). Can mentors successfully model finding a purpose and a passion and being curious? As the authors assert, passion made all the difference between growth and no-growth in students’ writing over four years of college. What role can mentors play in helping students allow passion to be their guide? To see that finding a way to connect writing assignments in particular, and college in general, to their own interests is integral to their success?