AWESOME CONFERENCE

So i'm pretty sure i had the best conference i've ever had last night. i've done somewhere around 50 conferences thus far and i've only once had a reaction as favorable as yesterday's. i began the conference with the intention of observing it, but when i heard her read the paper and learned about the topic, ideas started flowing and as we began the conference, the tutor gave me a nod and kept quiet for the most part. it was a wra student writing a paper about digital identity, which i think i was more familiar with than the original tutor. her paper seemed amateur and i had to resist a strong urge to tell her to start over. she had some basic ideas, but her organization and her ungodly wordiness distracted the reader from recognizing those ideas without looking extremely carefully. she asked for help with the conclusion and the flow of the paper- problems that were quite evident. we began making suggestions and her attitude was that she didn't really want to change her paper at all besides basic wording. at one point, she exclaimed "i'm not going to go home and rewrite my paper!" 

i was thinking about Ryan ch 3 during the conference and made use as much as i possibly could of i-statements (i am so confused here...i have no idea what you're talking about here...i would love an explanation of this...). i guess i sensed that she wanted to hear that she was right and that her paper was good whether or not we helped. i managed to gain her trust by suggesting ideas and then saying oh look- they're already in your paper, you just have to explain them! i definitely gained her trust because by the end of the conference, she had transformed from being overwhelmed and annoyed by a stupid assignment for english class to a writer who was excited to get home and set the ideas we had formulated during the conference into motion. she seemed pretty surprised herself- she told me that she was so happy because her paper was going to be amazing now when she was leaving. she changed her thesis pretty drastically, her flow was very much improved, she took notes and she took home mine and the tutor's notes as well just in case she missed something, and she had a great conclusion. i really didn't realize how effective the session was until she was leaving, and it definitely made me smile. i really think that she is going to come back to the center for later assignments if not again for this one. 

i had a conversation with the tutor afterward to see how she thought i handled the conference. i used a directive approach. she was asking for help with small things and i directed her into applying techniques to the whole paper to address bigger problems. it worked very well. using a minimalist approach with this particular student would not have worked at all. the tutor gave me pretty good compliments too, which also made me smile. she said she was surprised how well the conference went and she her immediate reaction was, "Wow, she's ready to start tutoring on her own today!" i love conferences like this because it reinforces my belief in the ideology of the center. making students better writers if of course the ultimate goal, but often it seems like an unattainable goal. you can help students better their process and approach to writing, but i don't think in the end that's what makes great writers. the difference between good writers and great writers comes more from the ideas they can generate when given a prompt, the ability to expand those ideas fully, and the ability to express those ideas in a way that captures and intrigues the reader. when i suggested certain additions to her thesis, her eyes seemed to brighten with the understanding that her writing could be great if she just added some extra element that wasn't part of her original thought process. i really believe that she's going to be a better writer from here on out.