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On challenging the canonical ideas of what it means to be a fellow

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On challenging the canonical ideas of what it means to be a fellow

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I have to say that I found a great deal of fulfilment from the fact that I was actually able to reecognise some of the sources cited in this paper—it felt like being a part of a really large reading group (membership including our entire cohort, the writers of this paper and hundreds of other writers and writing fellows from around the world). And I think that it was that very form of a group consciousness that this paper attempted to challenge. The paper seemed to contend with the notion that fellowing practices have to be non-directive in order to fulfil their intended purpose of clarifying and amplifying the writer's own voice and ideas. One of the models of tutoring that trode the lines between directive and non-directive teaching that I found interesting was that of modelling i.e creating a space for the writer to be able to grow as a writer by some form of imitation of the tutor's writing style. Given that this inevitably places the fellow and their writing style in a position of hierarchial superiority—as something imitable, something strictly "correct"—I'm curious about how we might enact this form of tutoring without granting this hierarchial superiority to the fellow.

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I think that Shamoon's piece reminded me a lot of the pieces we have talked about with grammar - how standard English grammar is upheld in academia as a source of power, and while we have acknowledged many times in class that standard English grammar is inherently arbitrary, withholding knowledge about it is still unfair to students. I thought of this as I read most of Shamoon's piece because they discuss direct intervention and that the writers felt like "they learned a lot."
I used to feel the same - that direct intervention gave me a platform from which to base future writing - to better my writing because the intervention was inherently correct. I feel now that the only thing a writer learns from direct intervention is how the other person writes, how they would deal with the situation. I think that there is this tension between withholding information standard English grammar and intervention that writing fellows have to be particularly aware of so that the writer benefits from the comments instead of convincing themselves that they learned something of their own writing from reading someone else's direct imposition on it.

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Shamoon and Newman on hierarchical learning and correctness

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Shamoon and Newman on hierarchical learning and correctness

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Shamoon (and other proponents of directive tutoring) operate within the supposition that there is such a thing as a correct way to write with techniques and formats that all writers must adopt in order to create worthwhile work. Underlying this is the central belief that rather than a creative and fluid outlet of expression - writing is a structured process. I find the proposal of imitation as a learning technique irresponsible for a writing center and its fellows. Shamoon asserts that an understanding of the rhetorical processes of a discipline informs students of the well-kept secrets of their field while fortifying their identity as a scholar. Do you know what the number one hindrance to autonomous self-development is? Hierarchy. I don't see how insubordination and the negligence of self-curated style can empower one to embrace their title as a writer (despite Shamoon's conviction that imitation may lead to individual expression once a student has successfully inherited the stylistic traits of another over time) . Every one who writes is a writer, the same goes for music and visual art (please don't get me started on the studio session and master class examples). We need to deconstruct this prevailing idea that mastery comes from filling the shoes of professionals before you. This stratification of students (from beginner to expert) further asserts that traditional professionalism is the only mode of success. You can be appreciative of the work of bestsellers and work towards honing your work to emulate the same satisfaction that reading your work gives but reading line by line and copying sentence structure feels not only unoriginal but painful. Why not embolden students to learn from and collect an arsenal of useful tips then apply their own experiences? The same goes for Newman. English is colonial and disgusting as we've discussed and the promotion of standard English as the universal linguistic model is horrid. A combination of phrases and excerpts from different languages in one piece of writing is a beautiful thing. Why change the way people process, speak and share when we could transform century old pitiful Eurocentric systems to be more accepting of difference?

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I really enjoyed both readings for this padlet, but more so the Newman piece. However, let's begin with Shamoon. I also agree that there are definitely, "Our personal and WAC experiences suggest that, at the very least, for intermediate and advanced students, and perhaps on occasion for beginners too, one tutoring approach does not fit all." I feel like there are different approaches that we saw with this piece. For example, that one professor would directly make changes to the student's thesis papers and impose his own language. It was so interesting because as Shooman said it goes against what we normally think is okay to do when tutoring. Yet, it seemed to be such an effective approach. That is like the music class example and how their process was, this time around it was like an expert handing down their knowledge to the younglings. I found this all so interesting and it just made me think how do we as the writing center come into play with this. This is where the connection to the Newman piece comes into play. First of all, I just really enjoyed this piece because I felt very connected and understood. As a bilingual Spanish student, who although growing up English was my stronger language, I too feel like sometimes I can't fully express my thoughts that are in Spanish to English. I feel like sometimes the beauty of it is lost in translation. My biggest takeaway from this piece as someone who is going to be working in the writing center is the importance of just a collaborative environment. A space that is comfortable and open-minded to the idea of just hearing out the writer. To try and take away the writer from the piece itself and just have them talk to you about what they want to say through this piece. Since, because of the language and translating a lot of it can be confusing and seem wrong. However, to have that open-minded and understanding of the writer's background. Another takeaway is to try and remember those different examples that Newman talks about when it comes to spotting those translingual writers. Especially since we won't always be able to learn or know about the writer's background. So to be more attentive when reading the actual piece and don't instantly mark it down as WRONG, but instead maybe ask why it is wrong in the first place.

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^me at the idea that Deborah's director telling her what to do is the same thing as being helpful. let writers be the authorities on their own work!

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Both of these readings deal with drawing the line between being directive and being collaborative. I was particularly interested by Deborah Burns's account, in which she says that her director directed (okay, I guess it's in his job description) her writing and that his tutoring was the most helpful she had received. She says things like he added transitions "when needed" and "formalized" her vocabulary, placing value on his corrections and upholding the idea that there are right ways to write academically — formally — and that his literal rewriting of parts of her work was helpful to her. She mentioned that he wrote sentences for her to show her how she should be writing, and it seems to me that the security she felt in having learned how to write based on his expectations was what she conflated with having received helpful/good advice. She lauded his "specific suggestions," so immediately, I am hesitant to use this director as a model for my fellowing despite how much Burns felt helped. Clearly, a hierarchy is established, and he is seen as having more knowledge and authority on the subject than she does. She says at one point, "the most important thing he did for me was to write sentences that helped locate my work in the field of Dickens studies. For example, Dickens critics had thoroughly examined family relationships in the novels, but few worked on alcoholism and its effects on children, the central idea of my thesis." I think this is a really interesting moment, because as a fellow, I'd want to be able to help her get there too — to think about what she really wants to explore and why. But, I would do that not by instructing but rather by asking questions that helps her get there — helps her know what she wants to write rather than telling her what to write. This relates back to Newman because of the idea that sometimes we need to look past what appears to be erroneous and focus on what the writer is trying to say. What I'm really taking away from this is how disempowering it can be to a writer — even if it offers a sense of confidence and security — to devalue an author's voice when it comes to their own work.

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I notice a connection between Newman and Shamoon's idea of how identity plays a role in writing and how academic writing may or may not recognize various identities by championing "standard" academic writing. Newman writes "At the core
of writing center work with translingual writers is the question of how we can help writers find voice and agency in
environments that ostensibly privilege standardization in language use" (1). Similarly, Shamoon writes "“According to Geisler, academic literacy and achievement of professionalism are tied not only to domain content in personal identity, but also to mastery of rhetorical processes” (12). Here, Newman's "environments that privilege standardization" and Shamoon's "mastery of rhetorical processes" both acknowledge that the academy recognizes "good" writers as ones who can effectively command a certain style of language. Although Newman and Shamoon argue for different approaches on how to teach standard academic English" Newman by "push the boundaries of institutional support for writers [...] [with] innovative, non-traditional discourse" (1) and Shamoon by "directive tutoring" (12), they both recognize that not all dialects or styles of writing are accepted by the academy.

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I think what Shamoon is saying is that tutors and teachers need to find a balance between letting students figure things out for themselves and forcing students to reinvent the wheel in order to have access to particular writing strategies and techniques. This balance is so hard to find in teaching writing because there is so much room for a tutor to enforce or inflict their ideas upon a student's paper, and that kind of margin of error doesn't exist for, say, musicians, because you simply can't play an instrument for someone else. It's also difficult because there is no one way, or correct way to write a paper. Yet, students are required to write "good" papers all the time. I feel like a more directive teaching approach is most valuable when learning strategies and techniques as opposed to more product-focused goals like "making this sentence less clunky." Modeling different strategies for thinking and writing for students and then asking them to give it a try themselves isn't forcing their writing into a particular box, it's giving them a new tool that they can put in their kit and pull out when they need. In the example Shamoon used of the art teacher painting on the student's canvas, the art teacher wasn't telling the student that this is how they should paint their flowers (or whatever it was), they were demonstrating a technique using something the student was already intimately familiar with: their own brushstrokes. Showing a writer a tool you (a tutor) think would be useful to them for an assignment is, in my opinion, a good kind of directive teaching. A nonconstructive kind of directive teaching would look like the tutor using the tool to do the writer's work. Anyways that's what I think.

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The piece by Shamoon makes me feel conflicted now. In using the example of the master musician, I  understand why this concept of learning from the "expert" is in fact beneficial. As someone who is a visual learned and finds examples very helpful, in addition to being someone who has taken a number of music classes in the past, I was taken back to piano lessons where my teacher would play the piece for me. In watching my teacher play, I would be able to notice little techniques and movements that would make a world of a difference in how the music sounded. And so, I would try to imitate these techniques I had seen, feeling as though I was learning more effectively after having seen how it should have been done. I also found it very interesting that all of the graduate students who mentioned receiving very direct changes and revisions in their papers all found it to be a great and profound learning experience. I would imagine that many people would find some issue in someone rewriting their own words. So, I do feel as though Shamoon makes some interesting and valid points, but then I think back to the Newman piece about tutoring translingual writers, and I feel this sense of danger in the practice of directive tutoring of making writers feel invalidated and discouraged in their writing abilities. While those students in the Shamoon piece felt that they learned so much, I can't help but think about how discouraging it can feel to have someone else rewrite your entire paper. I think this is where the importance of experience and self-confidence comes in. Those students probably had a lot of experience writing papers and already have this feeling of expertise, whereas more novice writers might have reacted to this same practice of directive tutoring as extremely discouraging. So, I am conflicted by these two methods.

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I am not sure how to feel about this one. I was surprised to see that the Shamoon reading did not have any conflict with the professors who rewrote their students’ work. This felt extremely invasive, and I would definitely not be appreciative if a professor did that to me. While I believe it’s valuable to write down what a student says during a conference and reiterate it to them, completely rewriting their essay in your own words is a whole different thing. Perhaps in circumstances like those described in the Newman reading, where the student is multilingual, it would be beneficial to rephrase some sentences. However, this would only be done with the consent of the student and with the joint intention (of student and writing tutor) of helping the student communicate effectively in a specific language. I see a small bit of a need for this “rewriting” in these situations because certain words or feelings simply do not translate directly. In these cases, the tutor would actually be helping the writer say what they want to say. Outside of this though, I do not know that the Shamoon reading quite convinced me that this direct of a tutoring style could actually be useful.

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I'm sorry this is so long~ feel free to make your way up here to view this scenery when your eyes start burning. 

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Shamoon, Newman, and Me ~ Batya Koenigsberg

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Shamoon, Newman, and Me ~ Batya Koenigsberg

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I feel like sometimes, I oscillate between moments of confidence and non-confidence. I also oscillate between moments of self-reliance and moments of extreme dependence. The constant ups and downs of making decisions, choosing a course of action, and sacrificing one thing for another often feels overwhelming, and it often feels as if I'm not doing it right. Shamoon, however, offers a very interesting perspective on the relationship between guiding and being guided in the context of a writing center: There is no right answer, and often, any option can be appropriate. As we've spoken about at length, a prominent method of "tutoring" is "intuitive". According to the intuitive approach, tutoring sessions are not guided by any particular formula, or method, but by a discursive method. Rather than being "spoon-fed" to students, students are made to find that the answer is within them all along. I understand this, and appreciate it, because I often want to feel like the power is in my hands, either as the tutor or the tutee. I feel good about having agency, having the fulfilling feeling that I am  truly and wholly part of what I produce. This is where a lot of my own self-confidence comes from. For some reason, while I often almost hope that I will be told the answer in a tutoring session, in my heart of hearts, I hope that somehow, I will be able to find my own way to the answer, and thus able to take triumph in it. However, on the flip side, as Shamoon writes, aspects of the process of improving understanding might be necessarily intrusive. Sometimes knowledge is new. Sometimes knowledge is disruptive, and it can shake our very core, because it's completely different than what we already know. And sometimes, our own constructions that we feel that we have ownership over must be disassembled and rebuilt. To do the rebuilding, according to Shamoon, it sometimes takes an expert, someone who has disassembled and rebuilt many times, to identify the break points, tell you where they are, and have you watch while they reveal some hard-earned secrets of the field. This process can be jarring, and sometimes a little hurtful. Once while at a session with a science writing fellow, I felt genuinely shocked that I had so many critiques and suggestions about my report. But that sense of indignation was soon followed by a sense of appreciation, because I had been given the keys to a new set of skills that I didn't have access to previously. For me, the humility of being approached by the gaps in my understanding is sometimes hard to overcome, but is something I cherish, because I have been given an opportunity to try something different, to see past my own isolation chamber of internal dialogue, and learn from something new. In the writing center, I can't assume that I have any specific set of skills that I can pinpoint and say "I will teach X how to do Y and Z today". I can only hope that I can maybe, at least once, show a writer something new, something they hadn't considered before, to act on in their future writing.

With respect to Newman, the subject toes a tricky line between the hierarchical and the non-directive approaches that Shamoon describes. In the sense of hierarchy, the writing center employee recognizes the gap that lies between them and the translingual student with respect to their familiarity with the conventions with the modern English language. Newman, I think, does a pretty good job recognizing that hierarchy, and attempts to bridge that gap by acknowledging that other languages bring experiences and sensations different to the ones found in English. I wonder how in the writing center, we can be sensitive to perceived knowledge gaps in either direction, and how we can utilize the unique relationship between giving the writers the opportunity to guide their own writing process, and teaching them something new.

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Shamoon provided a lot of evidence that in some cases, direct tutoring might be beneficial to the tutees. They broke down the notion that a student cannot learn from a master that they respect which is an assumed pedagogy that has been practiced not only in writing center but also in other areas of writing. I really like the piece on music studio. The master is able to create an atmosphere where students are encouraged to make mistakes so that they could get more tutoring out of the session. Not only is the student performing can be engaged in the tutoring session, the observers conscious mind and attention are also directed at the tutoring process. In this way, directive, observation, and imitation are actually proven to be useful in the process of tutoring. As Shamoon mentions tutors giving out template and sample that do not cover the topic in the tutored writing could also be beneficial, it reminds me in the process of writing a lab report or journal review. For any of my science classes, the instructors would always provide a template for us to have an idea on what a lab report would look like. I think this practice is very useful for novice students that have just begun to learn how to complete a  writing. I do believe having a more specific example in mind could provide students with a starting point and would encourage students to be confident of finishing something new. The process of imitation has always been the center of any process and areas of study. In arts, in music, in humanity essays, and scientific essays, we all started with an example of a drawing or a template of writing format. This is the fastest way for substantialize ideas into a paper.
However, I do feel that as students move up in their level of expertise in a particular area of study, the format that they have been following become less important and they would tend to seek more freedom to exercise their ideas and creativity.
In Newman's writing on errors in translingual writers, pointing out errors in a student's writing is definitely a directive action. However, what should be emphasized instead of directly pointing out grammar or spelling mistakes is to understand the underlying reason of mistakes and summarize errors of the same category into a systemic process of revision and improvement, so that the students could learn that the errors is not just a wrong spelling of a word, but it actually originates from certain differences in language use.
Understanding how directive tutoring could also be helpful in the process of writing conference, I wonder how in practice we could make judgement on which problem would be better addressed with direct correction and which would be best with indirect questioning.

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Shamoon pushes back on the idea that fellowing must be “process-based, Socratic, private, a-disciplinary, and nonhierarchical or democratic,” and I think they make a good point (Shamoon, 137). For whatever reason, I feel ashamed to admit that, and to admit that I definitely have learned a lot about my own writing from modeling. Perhaps this is because I want to cling to the theories of pedagogy that we explore in WP, and avoid the more traditional methods of teaching and learning that we know so well. My modeling-based learning experiences are not so much in having edits modeled for my own writing, but mostly in seeing the way my mom edits her briefs.

In the spring of 2020, she and I would sit in the same room together as I completed my senior year academics and she worked from home. She does employment discrimination law, mostly pertaining to discrimination on the basis of race and ability, and almost all of the legal jargon goes over my head. But I really do believe that sitting across from her, hearing her mumble her sentences under her breath as she wrote, has pushed me to be more direct in my own writing.

So now what? I am not so sure. I was drawn to the Writing Fellow program precisely because it adopts such an opposite approach to directive tutoring, but upon reflecting on Shamoon’s argument and my own experiences, I am struggling with whether directive practices have a place in our work at all.

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Shamoon's comparison of teaching music to teaching writing was fun to navigate through! It was a different way to see tutoring, and, as someone who's taken many music classes before, it was a new, creative way to visualize our jobs in the writing center. This reading also brought back an idea we have discussed in class before, touching on what authority a fellow should have when helping students work on a paper. Particularly, I was drawn by the story of Burns. She mentioned that when her professor intervened on her thesis, she was able to learn the thematic, stylistic, and rhetorical issues that surrounded her writing piece. In my writing conferences, there were moments where I had to be more hands-on with students, directly showing them how to formulate topic sentences and suggesting direct ways to analyze quotes. Even though I felt bad for "taking over," the student still told me that I provided helpful examples that alternatively portrayed their ideas. It was nice to hear from another source and, honestly, made me think of my own experiences from professor/ writing fellow conferences that, sometimes, "directive" tutoring can be beneficial.

Moreover, I also found that Shamoon connected with Newman. In their piece, Shamoon references Kenneth Bruffee, comparing writing to a "displaced conversation, implying that writing occurs not in isolation but the response to ideas found in other texts and other forms of communal conversation." Interestingly, I was reminded of a quote from Newman's piece. They mention, "When we are puzzled by a text to be indecipherable, we should discipline ourselves to look beyond the aberrance to try to discover communicative intent." Both authors draw on writing as a medium for communication. They've made me think to perceive student papers as something more than an assignment for a class.

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me leaving comments on student papers :)

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"During the tutoring sessions, tutors are always careful not to appropriate the students' writing and not to substitute their ideas for those of the students."

I took a different approach to writing this padlet post today. Instead of reading the entire article and then summarizing my thoughts, I only got to about the first few sentences and then realized how much this sentence made me reflect on my own practices as a writing fellow so far. I think the reason this sentence resonated with me so much is because I struggle to find the fine line between suggesting the student do something through a question such as asking them if they believe it would be beneficial to look into this specific thing that I suggested.  This came up in my Meta Essay transcript where I, as the writing fellow, asked myself as the student if an organization strategy I mentioned in response to their question would be "something of value to link into." After reading this quote from Shamoon it stunned me a little and made me reflect on whether or not my question was indeed substituting my idea for that of the students. I guess I just wanted to say that this idea mentioned by Shamoon is an incredibly important and fragile one that can easily be overlooked since it's briefly mentioned at the start of the article. Valuing the writer and their voice is one of the most important aspects of the Writing Center so I often find myself nervous when it comes to suggesting an idea in the form of a question (idk if I even should be doing this). Also, I guess something that's good to emphasize in your WF meetings is that fact that all of these questions are simply suggestions and at the end of the day the writer picks and chooses what parts from the meeting they want to incorporate into their writing.