Pam sits at the kitchen table, surrounded by the crumpled up pages of mess-ups and trial and errors. Pam begins to talk to herself and pace back and forth.

PAM: Why can’t I concentrate anymore? I have the worst ideas on this paper. I don’t know why I have the worst writers block over a stupid and small assignment.

[Pause]

 Pam looks over the sheet and shakes her head in disgust and throws the book on the table.

  PAM: I thought I had something good, but when I read over it after I thought I was done, it didn’t make any sense.

She sits there looking over with her pen in hand. She glances at the clock on the wall and shrieks.

PAM: I have to run to work, I’m going to be late. But I can’t because my paper is due tomorrow and I can’t afford to mess up this class. I have so much on my mind and some much to do but not enough time.

While talking she gathers her bag with all her school supplies and heads to work. After a few hours she walks back in throws her things on the floor. Sitting at the table gets a few sheets out and sits silently.

{pause}

PAM: I GIVE UP! I CANT DO SCHOOL, CANT DO WORK, I'M NOT GOING TO DO ANYTHING ELSE!

(flickering the lights for a few seconds)

EVAN: Don’t ever give up Pam. It’s hard for a writer to start working. Many of the great writers go months, even years of facing writers block.

Pam gasps. Stutters back a few paces and widens her eyes.

PAM: SUPER TUTOR.. You’re really real.

EVAN: Yes. And don’t get so frustrated. Tell me. What’s your assignment and what do  you have already?

PAM: Why was Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech so vital to American society?

EVAN: Well that’s not so bad. What’s the problem?

PAM: Well I don’t know where to begin, either giving information or telling you my own opinion. Regardless I can’t figure out what I should talk about in the paper.

EVAN: First off, take out your paper and your assignment and lets talk about your own opinions about him and what he did, then we can throw in some key points and facts to get you started. Go back and re-read what you have so far. Doing that helps you keep all the ideas fresh for you to move to the next sentence. Don’t be afraid to break your old habits such as getting frustrated or wanting to give up. Approach the problem by understanding the problem.

[Pause.. Both nodding and smiling].

PAM: Wow. That’s awesome. You helped me get focused on what I should do on my paper. I really needed someone to help get pushed in the right direction. You really helped me with questions that “prompted” me to really understand what my assignment was asking for. You helped me to develop thoughts and themes that I will be able to use to tie my paper together. You helped me with identifying points, organization and structure.

EVAN: Now would you say that you would give up and throw all your potential away?

PAM: No. Not anymore, because of you and your help, having you here and just being able to talk about my paper helped me move forth and understand how a paper should be written. You made me not dread those words, “Your paper is due”.

EVAN: From our collaborative work, we helped you reach your goals to get started on your paper, and we both learned some very interesting facts. But I’m not going to always be here. I hope you can take what I showed you today and use it in the future and don’t forget. Whenever you’re stuck you have WONDER-TUTORS at your service in the writing center of your school.

CAUSE THERE IS ONLY ONE, SUPER TUTOR!

Today on May 9th, we went to work with the tutees again. What we did was read over what they wrote which was about the fast food addiction in the society today. They both spoke about the tradition of how Americans used to be apart of healthy food, and now are addicted to "junk food". The CAT W exam their reviewing and tried helping them formulate a concise and strong summery to the article they read. The two students I had were very good at formulating ideas, but having a little trouble putting everything into readable sentences. Both were exchange students from other countries and were fighting some language barriers but over all everything they had was very interesting. I understood they both read the article and understood it. They thought to put some supporting facts from their personal life such as their life at home with their children and family members into the response we were reading, but they needed a little help putting key facts from the article, which were names, corporations and statistics from the reading into their work. They both repeated the same words "junk food" and "tradition" which was getting a bit repetitive, but when I mentioned that they should change some of the words, and they already had words of their own to replace them. I just helped them with changing sentence structure, and formulating the ideas they had into ideas that were put together. What they needed help with a little and I mentioned at the end of the session was that they should take key ideas/ facts to support their ideas from the text and incorporate them into their work. Justifying that their own opinion with the information they attain in the article could benefit their claims in their response.

April 25th,

Today we just went to tutor for the first time, and it was more than interesting. Being consumed with nervousness I felt a little hesitant. Struggling a little bit with a language barrier with on student i felt that i could have done a lot better then what I've done, but she know i was little nervous..

We as a group, read and understood the main idea of what they were supposed to talk about in their papers. I pick one student because of the amount and the curiousness she had when we walked in. We spoke for a minute about how she felt, and I begin reading what she had. Mainly her ideas were interesting and quite good, yet she was struggling from not understanding English perfectly, her sentence structure was a bit choppy. Understanding what she was trying to say, i felt that her paper would be a lot better if she added more information about how she felt, being a mother, and first hand witnessing the propagandist views from TV. We spoke about how things could be "beefed" up a little in certain parts, and in others, how she could incorporate more information to give not only one, but a few ideas to back up her thesis.

For the other student, she had a lot of great ideas, and not a lot of problems with her writing. Yet, she needed help structuring her ideas into complete paragraphs and giving supporting facts. While reading over her work I saw miner small LOC's throughout the paper, but nothing out of the ordinary. Working with her, on graphs and diagrams to help her correct later, I had her write down supporting ideas/ facts to motivate her to write a little more supportive information to back up her claims. With her personal life and personal experience she stated key points but just moved away from them without any supporting facts. I insisted to have make a diagram and jot down more information to help lay into her paper to give more facts about her claim.


 Personally i felt a bit overwhelmed through out the session because I was thinking (and i still do) feel I didn't do as much as I could have done, or maybe I didn't help them at all. I'm worried that might just have confused them a bit more then what they've already felt and being I wanted to just write down more ideas, I made myself just help them with major ideas that they stated already.
The most positive part of the session was that they both said I helped them out, if not a lot, a little. Making me feel like I did a good job, and that alone was very gratifying. Helping students when stuck, and giving them more information to look up, search and experience on their own is very intriguing.


I found myself focused on each student for more then 10 minutes because of getting caught up in the conversations we were having. Allowing more ideas and facts in conversation, I let them have a few minutes to gather their thoughts and write down the answers to the questions I left them.
After a few minutes I asked how everything was going, and they both said fine and when I came back to them they had several ideas jotted on the page. Making me feel like I am doing my job well.

 Next time I'll be more prepared mentally so I'll be able to just walk in, read the assignment and start taking notes bast on their words and conversations.


 Next time, I'll be ready for anything and not be nervous.. 

Observing Tutors and Writing. March 27th, 2012.

Yesterday I went to the Writing Center again to witness students being tutored. The two students I worked with were on their second draft of the papers they were working on. Sarah, my tutor, was very informative with the way she tutored and spoke to me on what and why she was doing the things she was doing. The first student was Mohammad, and he was mainly focusing on the overall piece, trying to get what he wrote to a more "readable" and understanding paper. It was well written with strong ideas and personal information, but Sarah was focusing on how the grammar would be improving what he wrote. Overall, Mohammad was confident in what he was writing but to get to the bottom of handing in a well-written paper he'd have to focus on the grammar and punctuation.
For the second student Rezwana, Sarah didn't let her mark the paper she was working on before they both spoke about how to make the paper better. Rezwana was focusing on her problems with the thesis and maintaining her idea's through out the paper, but Sarah was making sure she'd talk to her before changing anything. While they were talking about ideas Rezwana wrote, she was able to catch her mistakes while reading aloud. Sarah was on top of the conversational aspect of tutoring, getting exactly what the student wanted to say into her work. After briefly talking about it, she was able to put an unclear sentence that she wrote into a more understanding and fulfilled sentence.
I felt that Sarah was a good tutor, and knew what she was trying to do by helping the writers with higher order and lower order concerns, evening out both to get an overall good paper. Also leaving the student with a lot of work to be done by themselves when they got home.

Observing the Tutor March 20th.

Yesterday on March 20th, 2012 I went to the writing center to observe how tutors in the center acted and worked along-side writers to improve there writing. I saw a lot of things that were interesting and yet, things we've talked about in our previous classes. For instance, I viewed that the tutor read aloud with the writer the questions at hand, along with the answers that they were taking down. The tutor asked many questions [mostly about the thesis] and have the writer find supporting information in the actual text to help their work. They also made the writer jot down important points to improve their writing at home so they wont forget what was talked about in the center.
The tutor made the writer talk about all their opinions and ideas which allowed them to get an idea of what they were working on. Then putting those spoken words in their work.
Through out the entire time between the two students the tutor was working with, she never stopped asking questions to get the student to write and talk as much as they can. She spoke slow, and comfortably to let the writers know/ feel comfortable about writing and talking with her. Showing a sort of equality between them, instead of having a tutor speak and/ or treat them like "underlings".
What I found interesting was that the tutor asked both writers when the paper was due, which I found interesting because the two students I was observing had completely different answers. And lastly what i found interesting was that the tutor made it clear to switch lines and words around but not telling them where to place them, but letting them know, that it was a particular sentence or phrase and moving it to a more understandable place in the text.

LaGuardia Tutoring Writing 2012: Blog: Tutoring Observation Expectations

LaGuardia Tutoring Writing 2012: Blog: Tutoring Observation Expectations: What are your expectations for your observations? What are your feelings? What are you going to look for? What do you expect to happen? What...

When seeing the tutoring take place in a classroom first hand, I think it'll help me with my future dream to become an English teacher. For instance how a teacher/ tutor act's and carries themselves in a classroom, along working with someone.
Viewing techniques and certain ways to care of a classroom and see how the tutee takes care of certain scholastic situations. I feel a little nervous because I've never done something like this, being a peer to someone I never met before. This makes me a little nervous, sitting and analyzing someones paper, yet at the same time I'm looking forward to meeting new students, and helping [if I can] with their work, being a part of the tutoring system.