Leading a Session - #5

Ironically, today I worked with a creative writing student. She had a piece for her nonfiction class about working at a homeless shelter on an alternative spring break trip. While the consultant who would be shadowing me made copies, I asked her about the assignment and the class (I had actually worked with her before on a piece for the same nonfiction class). I asked how her last piece went, and she said it didn't do as well because the teacher found it cliche and sentimental, so she asked me to watch for anything I felt was cliche or sentimental in this piece.

The client read the paper aloud, and as she read I made small grammatical corrections on my copy, and underlined other things I wanted to go back to. I think my notes here were helpful even though they were short. For example, she initially considered herself a humanitarian and that she would be doing the homeless a great service, but her explanation of herself wasn't very clear, so I wrote "define" and underlined "humanitarian." I was also able to point out one or two metaphors and phrases that I felt were cliched.

Instead of focusing on these smaller things (she obviously understood the grammar the cliche-ness in some areas) I brought up a larger point that I wasn't sure exactly what she learned from her experiences, and this was supposed to be the main point of her paper. I told her that I wasn't sure how she fit into her paper and that she needed to be somewhat more explicit rather than just providing exposition of her experience.

Afterwards, the consultant who shadowed me told me that I did a good job focusing on the broader issues in the paper. I then asked if she thought I explained myself well enough, because part of the time I wasn't sure that I was making enough sense to the client and that she might not see my points as very valid. The consultant did say that at first I seemed uncertain, but that my interactions improved as the session went on. She also said that my explanations were good for this particular student, and that obviously more detail or clarification would be needed with an ESL student, for example.