Reminder: No meeting next Monday, March 1.
Our numbers may have been down today, but homemade mint brownies and some beguiling performances made the afternoon enjoyable anyway.
For opening moment, all of those present participated in a group reading of “Let America Be America Again” by Langston Hughes. All those present took turns reading. We read only to the punctuation points, and then switched speakers. The blended voices brought the message of the poem alive. As one writing center staff said, “That was cool.” The best, though, was yet to come.
Next, tutors were given several handouts to help as we begin the process of running mock (and soon, real) sessions. Ms. Ruark spent some time going over the wc_session_log and the running_sessions sheet. Those in attendance will surely agree that the next thirty minutes of this training session were … interesting (and hopefully helpful). Ms. Davis and Mr. Pittis role-played a bad and a good example of a tutoring session.
Role Play 1: Ms. Davis, channeling some rather repugnant qualities, grabbed Mr. Pittis’s essay and began attacking it with a large red marker. Leaving the client unengaged in the process of revision, Ms. Davis corrected all of the mistakes, jeered at the structure, and generally ridiculed poor Mr. Pittis. When he tried to ask questions about his work, the tutor laughed at, ignored, or dimissed poor Mr. Pittis.
Role Play 2: Mr. Pittis began by greeting the client coridally, asking her name. Addressing Natalie (aka Ms. Davis) directly, he made inquiries about the assignment (what was it for? what goals needed to be met? etc). Ms. Davis was prepared enough to have a copy of the assignment, which Mr. Pittis found extremely helpful. After pinpointing areas of concern for the paper’s author, Mr. Pittis asked her to read the assignment aloud. The 10 second reading astonished onlookers, but the help from tutor to client was even more staggering. Mr. Pittis used a compliment sandwich (praise, polish, praise) to discuss possible improvements to Ms. Davis’s work. Feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, Ms. Davis left the tutoring session with an amiable “Thank you” from Mr. Pittis.
With both role-play scenarios over, giggling ensued (or continued for some). Ms. Ruark led the group in a discussion of why Mr. Pittis made a better tutor than Ms. Davis (hopefully it’s obvious). While Mr. Pittis’s skills as a tutor during this meeting were indubitably better than those of Ms. Davis, some would say that her acting skills transcended his. Good thing there’s an Academy Award for Best Male and Best Female performance – everyone wins.
Ms. Ruark brought this tantalizing training session to end with a reading of “Valentine for Ernest Mann” by Naomi Shihab Nye. It’s safe to say, we think, that fun was had by all.