Here Be Dragons: A Discussion of Expectations Placed Upon Tutors Working Outside the Center

by Madison O’Connor ||

After years of tutoring, each appointment begins to feel like a quest — a finished, A+ worthy paper the treasure at the end of the session. I have found throughout the years that most quests have a very similar map. If I follow the map that tells me exactly how to conduct a session and the tutee does the same then we will have an easy quest, hopefully claiming our treasure at the end. This map becomes a tutors most prized possession. For what would we be without knowing the lay of the land, without our knowledge of all the paths we can follow to achieve our goals?

I spend several of my tutoring hours each week working at a residence hall on campus where we offer evening tutoring. One of the most challenging aspects of working outside of the writing center office is the sudden necessity to be a singular shining representative of all that your writing center has to offer. When working outside of the center you become The Tutor, not just a tutor. Regardless of your major, your field of study, or your area of expertise, you are expected to be able to tutor anyone who enters and says “I need help”. As stated by Ianetta and Fitzgerald in The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and Research “Thinking of a tutoring program as a site can also help us consider the qualities that define it as a community” (14). Being separated from the “site” that you have begun to associate with a tutoring program can be a strange set of circumstances. This situation creates a strange dynamic between tutor and tutee in which expectations about what a tutoring session should be become shifted when you finally find yourself on a quest with a map you no longer recognize and none of your usual paths to follow. During these times when I work outside of the center I am the only writing center tutor available and have therefore run into some very interesting and challenging situations which have changed my view of tutoring.

One such instance involved working with clients both outside of the main Writing Center and outside of my subject area. As the only representative of the Writing Center available in our off-site location, I was asked to assist with work in the field of philosophy. I had, incorrectly, assumed that this was a writing appointment, as many of my previous appointments had been, and prepared to consult my well-worn map. However, my expectations as well as the expectations of these clients turned out to be misguided. I had expected to have an easy-breezy one-off appointment where we sat down and wrote a paper for their philosophy class. And they expected to be tutored by someone who had a much better understanding of philosophy than the likes of me.

The appointment was based entirely on reading comprehension. These two philosophy students were having difficulty reading through their texts book and subsequently having difficulty answering homework questions about the reading. As we sat down to begin working, I realized just how in over my head I really was. Not only did I have to read the philosophy text and claw my way through the information to form an understanding of the topic, but I also had to be able to translate what I thought the text was saying to these students who were struggling to unravel the tangled metaphors and heavy allusions their book provided. In short, my old questing map that I had grown so fond of had to be thrown completely out of the window. According to Rodney Simard, as featured in Writing Centers: Theory and Administration,  “adaptability to each student’s needs is a tutor’s most important function” (Simard 198). This much became very clear to me as I found myself completely at a loss when I was unable to tutor in the manner in which I was accustomed.

Working with these philosophy students was enlightening to say the least. This situation allowed me to better understand the expectations that are held both by tutors and their clients, and how those expectations can shape an entire writing experience. I think it is important to remember that, as stated by Muriel Harris in “Theory and Reality: The Ideal Writing Center(s)”,

No two ideal writing labs function in exactly the same way. But a few common threads of commitment run through their guiding philosophies. An idea writing center, for example, is predicated on the idea that writing is process, an act in which the writer moves along exploring, discovering, changing (Harris 8).

As tutoring outside of the main writing center space has become more and more common, tutors must be prepared to understand that not all sessions can, or should, have the same map. This decentralization may leave us feeling lost, but the important thing tutors must remember is what we are there for- no matter where we choose to tutor, we are all committed to change, to improvement, to the writing process, and to our clients.

Being unsure of anything when you are expected to have all the answers can be terrifying. Quite frankly, you need to be brave. We as tutors must strive to push past our fear of being wrong. These two philosophy majors taught me that working without usual support systems often feels like moving into uncharted territory, rapidly approaching the edges of the map we have grown accustom to navigating. When working alone and cut off from most major resources we must recognize that our new maps may just read “here be dragons” and yet we must continue to sail on.  A quest does not end simply because we seem to have found the edge of the world on our maps, or terrifying obstacles lurking in the corners. Sometimes new maps must be made, even if we are venturing into unexplored territory. This is the job of all tutors and tutees, all quest-takers.

 

 

 

Works Cited

Harris, Muriel “Theory and Reality: The Ideal Writing Center(s)” Writing Center Journal 5.2 1985   pp.4-10

Ianetta, Melissa and Fitzgerald, Lauren. The Oxford Guide for Writing Tutors: Practice and         Research. New   York: Oxford UP, 2016. Print.

Simard, Rodney. “Assessing a New Professional Role: The Writing Center Tutor.” Writing Centers:   Theory and Administration. Ed. Gary A. Olson. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of       English, 1984. 197-205. Print.

 

 

 

 

Madison O’Connor is English Literature major at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. She has worked in the university’s Writing and Reading Center for three years. After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in English this Spring she will be working to obtain a Master’s in the Art of Teaching in English.

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