Thursday, January 24, 2008
Observation...
So I was pretty excited because my first observation conference was with an international student, which is one thing that I haven't had much experience with yet. i made several observations right off the bat. first, his description of the conference in the box on the appointment scheduler said that he wanted help"rivising" his essay. second, when he got there he looked extremely confused and had trouble pronouncing simple words like 'appointment" and the tutor's name (a short, easily pronounceable one) as well as forming complete sentences while he spoke. third, he had no clue what a paper was. by the end, i was very disappointed in how the whole session went. i will elaborate in class and later tonight on here i promise =]
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
So here we go. I know i elaborated greatly in class but i was fairly certain i still had more to say...
the thing that struck me the most was actually something very sad- for me at least. we always talk about how as tutors, our goal should be to make the student a better writer as opposed to fixing their paper. this student was in fact pretty darn brilliant. i would love to be able to read a paper that he'd written in his native language because when he could find the words to express what he was trying to say, he was very profound and brought up points that the typical American student wouldn't bring up. the paper was a response to a novel called Hunger of Memory which was written by a Mexican -American student about his struggles when he came to the united states in the context of education. the client's thesis was that the book portrayed education as a very lonely process that was necessary in order to assimilate yourself into american middle class society. he said there were 3 steps to this process, the first one being silence. He explained that when you first come here all there is is silence around you because you are an outsider and you don't understand the language. the second step is the difficult transition into social interactions when you're struggling to learn the new language. the third step is a disconnection from your native culture and your family because once you transition into american social groups, you speak a different language than your family and you are a part of something that they are not a part of, which creates separation. the author describes terrible sorrow because he still belonged to a loving family, just not a close one anymore. that to him was the greatest loss and the greatest price to pay to be accepted in america's educational system.
All of that seems great, right? it was all good insight- he even picked quotes out of the book that related perfectly to his points. the sad part was that i could tell he was trying to relate the author's story to himself. he was an international student who is struggling greatly trying to learn the language and fit in at a big university far away from home and his culture. to me it was obvious that an absolutely perfect example of his personal struggle is this paper. he's having trouble figuring out what english is much less how to use it to analyze another text. i thought that his struggle to write a good paper would've been a perfect topic or at least a perfect example to go along with his topic for the assignment. the problem was that it took over an hour for us to figure out what the thesis and 3 steps were that i described above. he could barely get them out and when he did, we had to guess at a lot of details that he wasn't able to describe for us. the thought of suggesting to him the idea that this paper would be a good example was laughable. i just couldn't picture him even beginning to understand what i was talking about. so i felt like, besides the fact that i was only observing and was not the main tutor in charge of the conference, i couldn't help him improve his writing to the point that it really encompassed his potential no matter how hard i tried.
it's like those students who are extremely intelligent and have excellent potential who blow off school because of boredom, ADD, drugs, or other equally detrimental reasons. how sad it must be to work as a school principal and have to watch students do this time and time again. this student couldn't help his writing handicap- it's something that he can only learn with time and practice and he at least seemed genuinely interested in improving his overall writing skill.
so yeah, i wouldn't say i had a great first observer conference but it was definitely one that taught me a lot about what it means to be a tutor and where i fit into the scheme of things.
Hey Deanna,
After listening to ure experience in class... and reading it here. I'm just glad that you are being positive and have decided to gain the best of the observation. I hope the student was thinking of things the same way.
As far as the person who you observed; I'm sure something was wrong that day. Tutors' too are human beings :) and the person could just be having a bad day!!!
As a tutor, I make it a rule to tell the tutee to pick another tutor if I already know I won’t be able to help him/her. I did this last Sunday… I asked a PhD student to go to another tutor. Later, I notified Trixie... and she said I had made the right choice for that day.
I'm guessing the center does not mind tutors doing this ...as long as tutors don’t randomly start refusing tutees
Do you think we should be allowed to refuse certain tutees...? As tutors, we are supposed to have a general knowledge to help everyone?? :)
Post a Comment