Collaborative Learning

I absolutely loved the article in the Comp Theory book about collaborative learning. He brings up excellent points, reminding me why I love english and humanities, especially compared to the science classes I fooled myself into thinking I wanted to spend my college career taking. What I loved most though, was that Bruffee addresses my biggest concern in taking this class and working in the center- and he definitely made me feel much better.

I worked in my high school writing center the second semester of my senior year. At that point, I had completed advanced placement, or college level, courses in all 4 core subjects- Biology, history, english, calculus, gov't, etc- and I felt I had an advantage over the students who came into the writing center and asked for my help. With every honors and AP english course under my belt and aced, there wasn't really any question that scared me. We worked closely with teachers and understood the assignments (usually better than the students) and we worked with each other quite often to critique and improve each other's writing as the year progressed. So where's the problem? Well, Bruffee mentions that in college, students are trying to enter into a community of knowledgeable peers and collaborative learning, including peer tutoring, is the best way to approach that journey. Then he points out that this raises an important question, the same question that's been going through my mind for several weeks- What if the tutor is not familiar with normal discourse and the knowledge community into which the tutee is trying to enter? Or in my terms, what if I don't know how to help the student who comes in to see me? What if I am incompetent? I certainly know the techniques of social interaction, relating to people in any context (I'm an excellent waitress, which requires the most amount of personability of any job I've ever encountered), and of tutoring writing. What I don't know are the subjects the students are writing about and the expectations of college professors here at Michigan State. Bruffee explains that the whole point of collaboration, however, is that we are learning from each other and we are bringing everything we know together into one conversation and from there, we should be able to figure out what we need to know as tutors. He also assures the tutor that no person is "wholly ignorant and inexperienced." We all know something, and from that we just need to learn and grow.

I guess he's right that when students collaborate on writing they are conversing- not proof-reading, not writing, not editing. Conversing. Learning. Exploring the social context of the topic. Conversation is definitely something I feel comfortable with, and I'll work from there. I also find his discussion of abnormal discourse fascinating- I love to challenge authority! =] Coming up with new ideas that are different and out-of-the-box is something that I have always valued- especially in writing. According to Bruffee, that is the only way to grow is to "develop awareness and skill that may seem foreign and irrelevant to our profession at the present time." We must "resist the conservative tendency" to "maintain established knowledge" for the interest of the largest community of all- society in whole. 

And I also wanted to say that I LOVE THE WORD ACQUIESCENCE! I have no idea why...=]