A Few Reasons to Love Mentors – Chelsea

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).