In Elizabeth Boquet's, "Snapshots of Life in the Center," she touches on an important issue that I feel is being overlooked. When presenting the example of a tutor who refuses to fill out documentation on her tutoring sessions, "I never fill those sheets out. They take too much time. If the student wants a note sent to her professor, I'll send that, but other than that, I just don't worry about it," it led me to wonder about what affect filling out the forms has on the client as well as the consultant.
Imagine that you are new to the room and the school and you walk in to get help and someone hops up from a table, picks up a sheet of paper, and starts filling things out. This form of documentation takes away from the interpersonal dialogue that is so valuable to the tutoring session. The form reminds the student that they are still in school. They are still being watched and anything they do could be up for question and they haven't even said more than, "Hi, my name is __"
Boquet goes on to defend the use of written forms of documentation for tutoring sessions with claims that it helps protect the tutor, inform the professor, and serves as a document in case a particular session is up for question. While her defense is valid I still feel that the formality of the paper hurts the clients initial interpretation of the Writer's Room. If my goal is to receive credit for helping someone tutor than I should be an adamant supporter of the forms. But, we've been taught thus far to do more than just clock hours and take names. Is there a happy medium?
I'm not sure. We could only fill out a form if a student wants us to, or only fill them out if we literally feel something from the session, but feelings are subjective and where one person may feel moved the other may feel stationary. We could throw the forms out all-together and pretend we're just some social hang-out with an emphasis in helping people with papers. But that could seem to much like a click and could hurt the over all goal of the room. Kids tend to get side-tracked, you know? We could fill forms out for every session, but like I said before, the formality of the documentation could hurt the ability to develop a good interpersonal connection.
Perhaps the best option is to leave it alone and pretend like it won't hurt anyone's overall opinion of the room. But we want to do more than just be a room where people go to get help in writing. Maybe implementing a teacher to watch over the room, one proficient with English, could be enough to secure the validity of each session. Maybe just an observer who sits behind the desk at the entrance of the room and signs people in and out and records sessions for us is the best option. It's all speculation, but I'm not a big fan of saying "Hello," and then looking down at a formal document.
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I can see problems with having a teacher "supervise" the writing center, though, because it's supposed to be a space for peers. Would students really feel like they were being helped by other students if a teacher was hovering in the background, or would they feel (probably aptly so) that the tutors were following a script for the teacher?
ReplyDeleteI think what you're really getting at here is the balance we have to maintain between being "peers," a student-amongst-students, and "tutors," a position that is more-than-student. Boquet also highlights this, and she doesn't hesitate to tell us what a difficult situation we're likely to find ourselves in when we realize there is actually a hierarchy in the center. But that hierarchy shouldn't have to be, as you point out, also embedded in institutionalism.
I see conference summaries as something that can either be extraneous paperwork, a reminder that we do serve The Man, or another learning tool for clients. That's why I like the consultant form I had designed (which we aren't using in the writing center...yet). It prompts the client to think about her/his goals for the session; it prompts the consultant to summarize the session for the client and point to work s/he can do on her/his own. I think that keeps the form from being just paperwork. It serves a purpose for guiding the tutorial as well.
I do think the forms you made are more geared towards learning and understanding tutoring sessions. I guess my only real complaint about the current forms is that they feel like a record keeping instrument.
ReplyDeleteThe sooner we upgrade, the better.
Someone may have told us how a regular sessions goes, and s/he may have just pointed out that filling out the paper is done at the beginning, but I don't belive we're required to do it first. If you want to focus on interpsonal communication at the beginning, leaving the paperwork until the end, I don't think you'd get in trouble. It may be a suggestion that if you provide enought support, may be taken into consideration.
ReplyDeleteBut, remember, this is a job. If we're going to be getting $500 something for this, we better be working. These forms, at the very least, are proof that we actually did something. Yeah, we can't have a teacher supervising for reasons Dr. Hawkins stated, but as workers we're required to be honest. So, in a sense, when we fill out that paper, we're doing the same thing that teacher/supervisor would do. These forms can also provide a record of what most students ask help for. So, these forms can make our jobs even easier in that we'll be able to strengthen ourselves in what most students struggle in.