Leading a Session 4+5

Yesterday I had a session that was equal parts frustrating and discouraging. I was frustrated by what felt like a lack of accomplishment by the end of the session. I feel like after all the time I spent working with the student, I didn’t do anything to help the student improve as a writer. It certainly wasn’t for lack of trying. It seemed like every time I tried engaging the student, she shrugged off whatever I had to say. When I tried addressing sections of the text where I was having difficulty understanding her meaning, she would explain herself verbally. When I suggested that she incorporate those explanations into her text, she didn’t see the point. In her mind, what she had written was the same as what she had said aloud. It didn’t matter if I said a reader might not understand her message, given the way it was presented. There were serious issues with her argumentation and I just couldn’t get her to see that. The only things she changed were mechanical mistakes, which I tried not to dwell on.

Overall she didn’t seem invested in the session or in making any sort of improvements. I’m afraid to say that after a while, I responded to her lack of enthusiasm with a pretty unenthusiastic approach myself. It’s difficult to be motivated when you’re working with someone who doesn’t seem to want to cooperate. When your every effort is met with a shrug or a grunt, or at best, a “Well what am I supposed to write?” you get worn down quickly. I walked away from the session feeling doubtful about my abilities as a consultant. I want to be able to reach through that apathy and get the student excited about their writing, or at least get them to care.

After yesterday’s experience, my session today was exactly what I needed to restore my confidence. My client today was the same one that I had such a positive experience with last week. At the start of the session, she informed me that she had received a 100% on the previous assignment, which made me feel like I made a difference. This time she brought in another paper that she had submitted and had received corrections on. Since we had worked together before, we dove right into this assignment. The client had clearly been thinking about the teacher’s corrections and had plenty of conceptual questions to ask me. It was refreshing to have a student actually want to discuss the reasoning behind their writing, rather than expecting me to simply grammar-check their text.

Having previously established rapport, it was easy to work with this student. Instead of following a set pattern like I sometimes do, we moved back and forth in the paper, addressing the issues she thought were the most pressing. Her concerns directed the flow of the session, and I think that worked well. She left with plenty of ideas for her paper, and I felt better about my skills as a consultant. These last two sessions stand out in such stark contrast to one another, I’m forced to conclude that sometimes, despite your best intentions, sessions won’t go as smoothly as you’d like. Other times you luck out, and get a student who makes consulting truly rewarding.