Leading sessions

This past Wednesday I led my first sessions at Bessey. My first client was a girl whose teacher had already seen and written comments on her paper. The teacher had had a number of issues with the piece and wrote on the last page that the student should "[s]ee Writing Center for help." The student was supposed to write a paper comparing characteristics of a famous person (in a book that her class had read) to her own characteristics. The girl had chosen two dominant traits of a scientist in the book (his tendency to lie to make things easier for himself and the tough treatment he gave those who worked under him) and wrote about the scientist first, then compared herself second. The teacher had written that she did not like the way the paper was organized and suggested the student write an outline in the beginning to clarify the way the paper would be set up. The teacher also repeatedly wrote that the student needed to use simpler language. The student read sections of the paper aloud for me, and we went through each section, identifying some smaller content issues as we worked. After reading the entire paper (it was four pages long), we read the teacher's closing comments before going back to the beginning of the paper to work on the organization. We first discussed the teacher's suggestion of an outline and the fact that in this case, what the teacher really seemed to want (and what was lacking in the opening paragraph) was a clear statement of the purpose and design of the paper. Following that, we talked about ways to make the organization stronger, which mostly involved moving some ideas to different sections of the paper and moving or removing some confusing quotations. The student and I connected well about the difficulties of the paper and she was quick to understand anything I tried to explain. One thing we both struggled with was the teacher's request to simplify the wording of the paper. The student complained that she had already simplified as much as she understood how to do and that it now sounded like fifth grade writing. I could see why she thought that. The wording of the piece was indeed very simple and clear, and the few suggestions from her teacher as to how to simplify further did not seem logical or consistent. Based on what I read, I gave a few suggestions for ways to possibly make her sentences simpler (though it seemed mostly like unnecessary re-wording), and then we moved on to some issues that both of us thought were more practical things to focus on (though I did not say that). I felt myself being "the ally" at times during the session--we were both confused about how to resolve some of the teacher's problems with the paper but did the best we could make it stronger overall. I was also "the coach," encouraging her through the reorganization of her paper. In the end, the student thanked me several times and left the session looking much less frustrated than she had coming in. It was overall a very good first tutoring experience.