Teaching and Tutoring – Trav Chew

I spent a good part of this afternoon trying to think of what to do for our weekly gallery walk.  After struggling with the fact that I’m not very creative, and should probably just stick to a weekly blog, I truly realized its value.

For this week, and potentially the rest of the semester, I’m going to use this blog space to become a more interactive reader.  As I try to make sense of the numerous texts, I’ll use my weekly blog to: summarize the content, draw focus to the main points, define important vocabulary, discuss difficult concepts, identify important people, tie in the text to my own experiences, and pose further questions.

I’ll be able to this as a resource while we are in class because I always have the course site running anyways.  Also, if any other students in the class are having trouble understanding the text, they could use my blogs to get the gist of it.

For tomorrow’s class session we are required to read two different texts.

For this blog I’ll focus on Muriel Harris’s chapter of College English.

Basically this paper is about the many benefits of tutoring, compared with teaching in the college setting.  Most of the arguments made in favor of tutoring are concepts that would apply to any writing for school.  Muriel describes tutors in a writing workshop as “middle-men” somewhere in between teachers and students.  Because students are able to meet face to face with tutors, and do not have the same pressures that come with the classroom setting, and the often strained teacher-student relationship, they are more comfortable in the workshops, and communication is fostered.

Two key phrases that stuck out to me were: exploratory language, and presentational language.

Probably all of us had the experience in our first year of college, and perhaps still today in new classroom settings, of being tongue tied in class while trying to communicate an idea to a teacher.  I know in my freshman year at Humboldt State I tried to participate in class discussions, but more than once I completely forgot what I was going to say when the teacher finally called on me to speak.  The pressure of trying to sound educated in front of the teacher, and the other students was too much for me even though I had never had a problem speaking in public.  Muriel argues that this is because of the presentational language that is used in the classroom.

The exploratory language that is more applicable in the writing workshops is much more conducive to learning, especially in terms of writing which can be very abstract.  The thought processes behind any given writing assignment can require hours of just thinking about the topic before any real work can be done.  Having a conversation with a tutor, rather than listening to a lesson from a teacher, offers a student a perfect opportunity to really hash out their ideas on their own terms.  With the help of some guiding questions from the tutor the student has the right tools to  make decisions for themselves on what direction to go with the assignment.  This concept really struck me because I’ve seen it so many times, and experienced it myself.  A particular student will struggle to formulate an idea when speaking to the teacher, but given a smaller group of just students, they have no problem discussing the content.

Tutors in writing workshops serve a variety of purposes, but probably the most valuable is their ability to serve the individual needs of each student.  Because they have the opportunity to see exactly what is causing problems for the student, and try to help them with that specifically, tutors usually offer more than teachers in that capacity.  Whether its the tools and tips for becoming a more confident writer, or just understanding the material better, a writing workshop is undoubtedly a more proficient learning environment than the classroom.  Students not only learn how to understand and complete their assignments, they also learn about their own abilities as a student, and how they can potentially use the tools acquired in the workshop to move forward in their academics.

One thing I’d like to learn more about are the actual techniques used by tutors to get the most out of the students without doing the work for them.  This is a question I’ve often wondered because most of the time when I try to help someone with writing, I find myself taking over their assignment.  I’d like to learn more about the right questions to ask, in order to make the students find the answers on their own, and be proud of that process.  As an aspiring teacher this was a fascinating read because it can be applied to every aspect of teaching.  Although I will find myself at one end of the spectrum, the benefits of tutoring can ideally bridge the gap between teachers and students.  Hopefully someday I’ll be able to break down that barrier which exists in the classroom, and provide the personal attention to individual needs that is so valuable to students.