How to Handle Older Writers

We like to think that writing is done in a vacuum, that we can examine and critique a student's essay regardless of the student's race, class, or age. This is fundamentally incorrect, but it is an aspect of tutoring that is not front-of-mind in sessions, since we rightly focus on issues on the page. Many students that come into the writing center are tense, especially students who have never been here. They are not confident in their writing, and hesitant to have a stranger, even if it is a peer, critique their work.

HOW we talk to students about their work is just as, if not more, important than WHAT we tell them.

Last Friday, I had an online session with an older student. He was a grandfather, a deputy sheriff, and a last-semester senior at Roosevelt. He was combative at least a week before the session began. He sent an email correcting a typo that we had in our original confirmation email to him, he railed against Roosevelt for using something as preposterous as Google Hangouts, and wanted to know why everything at Roosevelt was "backwards." He wanted to know why we didn't use systems with "track records" and refused to use anything other than blackboard. I was not excited to have a session with him.

I was even less excited when he called the writing center 10 minutes before his session to say that he downloaded Hangouts and wondered where I was (I was in the Blackboard chat space). I was straight-up mad when he never received my Hangouts invites, and I didn't receive his. The session started almost twenty minutes late by the time we both managed to connect to Blackboard. I had a few key points that I wanted to bring up in the session, but he was unresponsive and did not want to have a conversation (which is difficult on Blackboard anyway). He made changes (corrections, as he called them) immediately after I pointed something out, which led to long delays in between my suggestions. It turns out that he primarily wanted help with APA citation, and wanted me to correct each one of his references (which were all incorrectly cited). He glossed over my suggestions to use Purdue OWL for the future. He treated us like an editing service.

It's hard to correct an older person, to chide them or tell them that they are doing something wrong. Things like respect, culture, and experience present barriers. It is far too easy for an older student to take control of a session and demand certain things that we do not do as a tutoring center. I was able to avoid most of these by not acknowledging any of his complaints about Roosevelt, and steering the conversation always toward the page. However, I assented to his desire to have his citations "corrected" without discussion. I tried to, after a correction, explain the general rules, but it was clear that he didn't care. We are not always going to win in our mission, but it is of the utmost importance that we try, and that we tailor our comments to the type of student we are working with. This does not mean profiling at all, but having an open mind and always being aware that students want different things. We can still impart valuable knowledge that will make them better writers, but we have to know when to assent, when to cut-in, when to change the topic, when to say "no." There is no formula for this. It requires an active sense and an open mind. We always have the opportunity to accomplish our goals, if we are aware that how we talk to students is just as important as what we say.

One of the changes that has affected the writing center this semester is that more professors are requiring their students come to the WC for specific assignments. This is great in many ways, as we get more sessions and get to hone our abilities. One negative aspect, however, is that some students come out of sheer requirement, with no desire to improve their writing or really participate in a conversation with us. I found this to be the case with at least three sessions. The students said "My paper is fine, I just need to be here" or "I just need the confirmation that I came." This made discussions quite difficult.

The hard part was that they were right. Their papers were nuanced and structurally sound, grammatically correct, and everything the teacher could want. What I am challenged to do in these situations, and maybe this is a good topic to discuss in staff meetings, is "What do you do when the paper is awesome?" Carrie wrote this on the board early last semester, and no one had an answer. It's hard to have one. Every session is different, and different sessions require different things. We need the mantra, though, that EVERY PAPER CAN BE BETTER. But how do we make it better?

One of the ways is to talk about opportunities. What opportunities does the writer have? Even if he or she has hit the page limit, maybe certain ideas need to be prioritized more, others re-shaped, some maybe removed. This is hard to do in 45 minutes, because they require tutors to REALLY think. But it can be done, and it does require some willingness from the tutee.

Another is to ask questions. Ask questions about everything. Get them to think differently about things in the paper, assumptions they have made, things they may have left out. Ask questions about structure, context, theme, etc. Asking questions is NEVER a bad thing.

This is a topic that I will have to explore more throughout the semester, because it doesn't have an easy answer, and the answer might very well be an always shifting thing. I will aim to pin it down somehow.