By Mary Stamato & Bonnie Devet
Recently, as I was interviewing new tutors to work in my college writing center, I discovered that several interviewees already had experience as tutors from working in high school centers. I asked one former high school tutor, Mary, about the key issues she had discovered at both a secondary school and a college center. My hope is that our conversation will provide valuable insight for tutors and directors in both venues.
In “The Idea of a High School Writing Center” (2011), Kerri Mulqeen states,“It is clear that both tutors and students frequently have transformative experiences in the high school writing center” (38). So, how was your work in a secondary school center “transformative”?
I became much more attuned to my own writing, particularly the way my essays tended to be long-winded and overly descriptive. Only after seeing the same problems come up in other students’ work did I begin to notice these faults about my writing. When I helped clients whose papers had the same problems as mine, I became more aware of different approaches that I could take to improve my own essays. As a result, my writing gained more variety in its sentence structure and detail, becoming clearer and more concise.
Besides helping your writing, did being a tutor in a secondary school center affect your relationship with your high school teachers? Is this relationship different from being a tutor in college?
I was already close to my own high school teachers, but becoming a tutor definitely brought me closer to other teachers I had not met before. They appreciated me because I came to have the same care and level of investment in the students as they did. They would talk to me about their assignment prompts, share resources, and they even began to see me as a mini-teacher or an extension of themselves. Was this relationship good? It did put pressure on me since it elevated me beyond being just a student, and, of course, teachers expected a higher caliber of writing because I was a tutor in the center. But being a secondary school tutor was rewarding. I could see how much teachers cared about their students. As a result, here, in college, I am not afraid to approach faculty. I have seen their human element.
As a tutor, what differences in writing have you seen between those assigned in secondary school vs. those in college?
I noticed that in my secondary school, students frequently brought to the center assignments that asked students to analyze a text and called for three-to-four pages. The prompts were highly directive, requiring students to look in a novel, like Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, and find details about specific themes (i.e. race or family). Or the prompt asked students to compare and contrast two books. These were very structured assignments, with students frequently using the five-paragraph essay format.
In college, students find that this formula of a five-paragraph essay goes out the window. Take me, for example. Although I had taken two AP English classes and scored well on the tests, I still had to take freshman English in college. We were told not to write a five-paragraph essay or use a three-part thesis. This advice threw me off balance. My scaffolding was gone. Because college offers a great deal of independence all at once, students are not sure how to approach papers with such freedom.
I think college students have another fear. They feel vulnerable since they are expressing their own ideas and including more of themselves in the writing. Then, there is also a wider audience. Instead of just writing for their teachers like in high school, students have to manage peer blogs where students write for their peers, and they have to go through more peer editing sessions. There is just more fear.
Realizing these differences, how did your writing change as you moved on to college?
My high school stressed making writing sound better or being sure it had good grammar. I just tried to sound educated in my secondary school writing. But, here in college, I realize how much value there is in the voice of my paper. I want to take more ownership in my writing, making sure it reflects me and what I want to say. My writing has truly become my own. I have worked on putting more of my own voice in an essay because I realize how valuable it is to have your paper sound unique. After having worked with the same prompt over and over in high school, I now appreciate the way the author’s voice can make a work fresh.
Since secondary school and college writers differ, how do you tutor here in college as opposed to your work in your high school writing center?
In my high school, tutors were the best English students, and we told clients what to do.
These students mostly wanted from me either a “yes” or a “no” about their work, wondering all the time, “What does my teacher want?” Students saw me as an answer key because they knew that I probably had the same high school teacher as they did. In college, however, clients want to talk out their ideas with tutors, seeking help with flow and clarity. They do not necessarily see us as rubber stamps but as live readers. Besides, with all the different disciplines in college, I probably have not had the same professors or courses for which they are writing. So, I find that college clients value what I say because of my knowledge about writing in general and because I am just there to help them.
Agree or disagree: Tutors with secondary school tutoring experience make the transition to college tutoring more readily than those tutors with no high school experience, especially in dealing with hoc’s and loc’s (Conard-Salvo & Carey 2014).
I agree. As a secondary school tutor, I think I made the transition to college tutoring better and faster than someone who had not tutored before. If I hadn’t tutored in high school, it would have been all too easy to be distracted by grammatical concerns (the famous lower-ordered concerns or loc’s) in a student’s paper when the thesis and flow probably needed help, too (higher-ordered concerns or hoc’s). So, the pull between the loc’s and hoc’s was less shocking for me as a college tutor who had already been through this tension of loc’s and hoc’s in high school. As a peer tutor, I could focus more readily on hoc’s.
Since you had tutored in a secondary school center, do you believe that you could have gone right to work in a college center during your freshman year (Severe et al. 2014)?
I don’t think so. It’s better if secondary school tutors have completed one year of college before working in a college-level center. As a freshman in college, I struggled with my writing assignments, so I was not an advertisement for immediate success. Now, having been in college for two years, I have a better perspective. I can see how college freshmen are fearful about their writing and how they (as I was) are still adjusting to college-level methods of composition. Besides, a college writing center tutor who is a sophomore or older will be able to identify with the freshman’s stress at being away from home and being immersed in the adult world. As a college tutor, I am more like a mentor, acting as a spirit guide, navigating a student through the many facets of college academic life.
Does being paid here in college affect your perception of your tutoring? (Brandt 2014)?
In college, as a paid professional, I find that that I keep trying and trying with our clients. I often clock out when my shift is supposed to end and sometimes return to the center to work a bit more with students just to be sure they know what they are doing and that they are clear on what will be their next step in the composing process. I feel an obligation to make sure students leave with a concrete idea of where they are going with their papers. In high school, when I was a volunteer, I probably would have just referred them back to their teachers.
Works Cited
Brandt, Tom. [Berkeley Academy HS, Tampa, FL]. Personal interview. 31 Oct. 2014.
Conard-Salvo, T., and B. Carey. 2014. “Reimagining Relationships between High School and
College in the Wonderful World of Writing Centers.” The International Writing Center
Association Conference/National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing Association,
Orlando, FL. 30 Oct. 2014. Conference panel.
Mulqueen, K. 2011. “The Idea of a High School Writing Center.” In The Successful High School Writing Center. Building the Best Program with Your Students. Ed. Dawn Fels and
Jeanne. Wells, 28-38. New York: Teachers College Press.
Severe, Richard, David Beltran, Caleigh Ostrom, and Quilvia Ventura. The International Writing
Center Association Conference/National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing
Association. Orlando FL. 30 Octo. 2014. Conference panel.