Research seems to take me down the weirdest paths....

So it's day three of my individual research... Yesterday I touched on this idea of how much collaboration is too much collaboration. So I went on a search this afternoon for another article about collaboration... I found one ( there seems to be a ton) and while I was reading one particular idea stuck out to me.... naturally, since my brain seems to go everywhere, it has nothing to do with collaboration! However, it was really interesting so I wanted to share with you guys! I think its the most interesting because it's talking about our generation and how the student today is very different from the student before. I guess the question is, are we really different students from our previous generations, or is it that we are starting to find more information about the way people learn in modern day universities? I wanted to share with you guys an expert from the article... i cant copy and past it, but here is the link and its about half way down page three...

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&lr=&id=rcYHZMxJvdAC&oi=fnd&pg=PP7&dq=writing+centers+as+collaborative+space+north&ots=aHEz0L0BRQ&sig=m7_yLmK5Ty9yah5yNWUSsgd6k64#v=onepage&q&f=false

It is talking about how so many more perceptions of intelligence are arising... its not just about linguistic or mathematical intelligence these days... students can have so many other forms of intelligence that cannot be easily molded to fit the two pre-existing standards for intelligence.

To be honest, and feel free to judge, this part of the article really stuck out to me because a little part of me always seems to wonder why some people who struggle with writing don't try that hard to fix it... i mean, after all, writing seems to be the most important skill out there right?? wrong. this article is showing me that not everyone learns in terms of words like I do- not everyone can put their thoughts down on paper in a clear, organized, cohesive manner... but maybe they can write symphonies or do insane math problems in their heads.... I guess everyone just has their thing and who is to say that my thing is the best thing? I really need to keep in mind, as a student, person, and consultant, that everyone has different strengths, and I have to respect that not everyone is as invested in writing as I am!

I mean if the world takes a turn towards technology, I'm done for, so I think that maybe I need to work on expanding my own mind and considering some other forms of expression!

Have a great great great Thanksgiving break everyone! EAT TONS OF PUMPKIN DESSERTS- I suggest going to Starbucks, getting a pumpkin spice latte, and then blogging about it using their free wi-fi! ( not that thats what I'm doing right now... maybe.... ahhhh its just so tasty!)

How much to too much??

So in trying to find the Grimm article that was mentioned in the first article I took a look at, I found a different article that interested me! It is called " Are Writing Centers Ethical" by Irene Clark and Dave Healy. I'm not sure how to get the link because it just came up as a PDF when i clicked on it, but if you go to Google scholars and type in the name of the article it should come up!

Again, this article was really long so i focused on a few pages of it that seemed to stick out to me. These pages talked about the different kinds of help that could be given to students in the writing centers. Some people are of the belief that writing centers should focus only on grammatical help because otherwise, the students who visit the centers could be accused of plagiarism. This group warms against replacing students words with your own and focusing only on the very superficial elements of the text. The group of the extreme opposites cites of examples of professors re-writing sections of their papers right in front of them and saying it was one of the most helpful things they had experienced in their writing process.

This posed a really interesting dilemma for me- how much help is too much? At what point does writing center collaboration cross the boundary of appropriate help? When have you taken your clients original piece and made it your own? I can see how this would be an issue because I sometimes have to fight the urge of re-writing sentences here and there in papers that I proofread because it just seems like an easy, time effective way to help someone better their papers. I guess that the best scenario would be to get your clients to the point where they can re-write their own sentences, but how can you do that in an hour? How can we strike the balance between directive and observative? ( thats not actually a word but I couldn't think of what the opposite would be!!)

I also thought it was interesting that this article cited the North article that we read for class. It seems to me that a lot of the literature on writing centers seems to be very linked and interconnected. It almost seems like its more of a conversation between writers where they are building and expanding upon each others ideas!

Have a greaaaaaaaaaaat monday! ( if thats possible!)

L is for the way I look at you..

So, if anyone has read Allie's blog about our final project, I hope that you will consider perhaps having us proofread your love letters one day! we are obsessed with love if we haven't made that clear yet!

We are so so so excited about doing this! I think it is a great idea and if ever implemented, it could really help get the writing center's name out on campus. Not everyone is necessarily interested in writing academic papers, but who isn't interested in LOVE!?

Sure, it might not seem like a huge community innitiative, and it might seem a but silly....but this is something very doable that could impact our writing center. Realisticly, we cant create our own digital sorty inaitiave in the Richmond community, but this, a love letter project, is something that we can actually do and enjoy. We have some great ideas and are excited to share them with you guys!

Also, Rachel has a boyfriend, but since Allie and I don't, we are hoping that this project might also help us find significant others.... I mean, if our potential men can't write us grammatically correct love letters, what's the point???

An article the mentions Jimi Hendrix and Writing Centers??? YES PLEASE

Since Professor Dolson encouraged us in class Wednesday so start thinking of a question or concern that we are particularly interested in and then doing some research about it, I found myself exploring Google Scholars this morning trying to find 1. a question and 2. some articles about it. I thought about researching community literacy and some of the school implimented programs, but then I realized that I might want to focus on something a little bit smaller, something that applies to the Richmond writing center.

So I did some research on writing centers and found that many writing centers seem to be

" stuck" in their ways. I think that this is true of Richmond's writing center as well- it is in this weirdly located place on the top of Weinstein, in what seems to be a soundproof room that is neither comforting or inviting. The tutors only have an hour to try to fix someone's writing, and these are students that oftentimes seem to be angry or embarrassed that they have to be in the writing center in the first place. There is definitely a stigmatized view of the writing center, and there is absolutely no reason that this should be an issue. Everyone, even professional writers have someone look over their writing and offer feedback. It's not a bad thing, and embarrassing thing, or a sign of weakness at all- in fact, its a requirement!

So I started thinking about ways that writing centers could change, could make themselves more visible over campus and more inviting to the students. I was drawn to and article ( or book, I'm not sure, its really long!) titled "Noise from the Writing Center" by Elizabeth Boquet. To be honest it was really long so I read the introduction and then focused on one chapter. I didn't understand a lot of it, but I was able to pull out some ideas and get the general sense that writing centers everywhere seem to be stuck and are looking for ways to reinvigorate their images on many college campuses!

Here is the link if anyone is interested - http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/30/

This also mentioned another article that I am looking into finding and will blog about later!

I am enjoying doing some individual research and finding articles that I'm interested in reading. I am also excited to see what issues everyone else chooses to explore!!

Have a great Friday afternoon!

well thats just how its done in a Amerrrica

Like Allie, I also find myself totally brain farting on our speakers name from class on Wednesday.... maybe its because she introduced herself in Turkish??? Regardless, I thought that her talk was interesting and her video was certainly helpful on giving us an insight when it comes to the social and academic lives of foreign students. The thing I thought was most interesting though, was the fact that she told us that we could just tell foreign students who questioned some of the writing processes, that that's just the way it's done in American schools. While that is really the only excuse for the way we write, it just seems a little insensitive to put it so bluntly. There is no explanation, no evidence to support the claim, just simply " because you're at an American university now." It's like when you're a little kid and you really want to get 14 candy bars and when you ask your parents why you cant and they say, " because I said so".... how unsatisfying!!! I guess that sometimes you just have to be blunt to get a point across, but I think that I'm going to try to come up with a less sharp( and probably significantly more rambly way) to let foreign students know that they are in a new place with new academic customs and if they want to find success here, they might have to adapt to a different way of writing!

Finally, it's an appropriate time to rant about ESL conflicts, and all I want to do is cut my losses and settle...

I'm sure its not shocking at all to anyone that I'm really excited that we are discussing ESL this week in class... for some reason it seems to be something that always leaves me re-thinking how I feel about the iceberg of a topic. I think the point that Professor Dolson made in class about these articles often talking about "failures" as a writing consultants really apply to this discussion. Although I find myself fired up about the ESL issue, what can I really do about it? As college juniors who have classes, homework, gym time, a social life, and the various other things that college juniors do, we are not going to be able to interpret the cultural norms of a foreign student and with this knowledge, revolutionize his or her entire writing process. As Meghan pointed out in her article review, writing consultants are not linguists- we are just fellow students with a love for writing and a desire to help our peers with their own writing. While I'm sure that each and every one of us would like to be a part of the solution to this very wide-reaching problem, we just have to do the best we can do with every paper and accept that we may not be able to singlehandedly solve the plight of every ESL student that comes to the center looking for ways to improve. Just like with any other student, wether it be the average Richmond student, an adult from the School of Continuing Studies, or an ESL student, the best we can do is take a look at each individual paper and assess the realistic goals for these papers and hope to accomplish those.

Roses are red, Violets are blue, B is the bomb, Allie thinks so too!

On Tuesday we had a great drive over to the Boys and Girls club- good tunes, good friends, good road snacks- best trip ever. Once we got to the Boy and Girls Club we were given our student. We'll call her B for now. She was in the 10 grade and seemed a little bit shy when we first met her. She wasn't really too sure about her story yet, she was going to do her interview later this week, and she was going armed with a digital camera and a sheet of questions that she had been given to ask. She didn't seem particularly nervous about it, and the only concern she expressed was with the technological aspect of the assignment. She wasn't sure how to use all the computer programs, and we assured her, with our own stories of surprising technological success, that it really wasn't as hard as it seemed, and she would be just fine! Naturally when we finished answering all of her questions and had shown her a few examples of digital stories, we started talking about boys... I mean, you can only talk about digital story telling for so long right!?

I thought it was really helpful to assist people who were not our peers and were not part of the university setting. I think its easy to assume a certain level of understanding when we are on campus because we are naturally inclined to think that our fellow Richmond students are intelligent, but when we go off campus, we have to learn to talk to people in a new way. We were not dealing with college students, rather we were talking to kids still in their early teens- there is a definite incongruity between the levels of "literacy" in high school and college students. We had to use terms and phrases that would be a bit easier to understand. It is a really good way to practice becoming a good teacher- I think that a really important element of successful teaching is to be able explain things in a variety of ways. Not everyone understands or absorbs information in the same way, and as writing consultants we will have to be aware of that.

I had a great time at the Boys and Girls Club- though its a time commitment, I think it'll be really rewarding in the end. Me and Allie are rooting for B all the way!

SoOoO proud of my dear roomate, Allie Miller!

So, last night I was sitting on the couch, doing some reading for class, and sipping on some sleepytime tea. I was totally wrapped up in my reading, but then, out of nowhere, I was pulled out of my trancelike reading state by none other than WRITING CONSULTANT LINGO! I walked into the kitchen to find none other than Allie sitting on her computer, having a Skype consultation with her brother about his paper. She didn't know that i was listening, but she sounded like such a good writing consultant! She was doing all the things that we talk about in class! She was giving him positive reinforcement, she was asking him questions about what he meant, and she was respectfully offering him constructive criticism. The fact that she was acting really professional with her younger brother made me so proud of her! She was considering his paper outside of their family context, and I think that it sort of connects to our discussion about power roles in writing consultations. Allie could've treated her brother like a dumb younger sibling, gotten frustrated, and just fixed it for him, but instead, she took the time to really consider his paper and treat him just like any other person who would ask for a consultation. She didn't talk about the family or anything else but the paper while they were working on it. It made me really think that perhaps the person who are working with isn't that big of an issue- maybe you can simultaneously take into consideration the person you are working with, their paper, and their reactions to create a personalized yet not too personalized writing session without even thinking about it too much. Maybe its just natural to consider the circumstances and act accordingly without having to stress! Allie did a great job- she sounded just like a " real life writing consultant" and I was so proud of her! I'm gonna book her as soon as shes on the schedule!!

Hey Hey Hey going on a class trip today!

Today is the day! It's Boys and Girls Club day! I'm really excited to meet the students with which we are going to be working! I'm not 100 percent sure what my plan is yet- I think its going to depend on what stage in thier process they are, and I'm sure that I'll have to cater to what they feel like talking about. But here are a few things that I would like to get accomplished during the session

1. I want to know about the person I'm working with- what thier interests are, who they are considering interviewing, how exited or unexcited they are to do this project, ect. Just establish some kind of relationship

2. Talk about the digital stories for class- some of the doubts I had about making them, how much time it takes, what to do to prepare, which websites we can use, ect

3. I also plan at some point showing them a story or two from class and talking to them about what makes a good story

So thats my rough outline for the day, but mostly I'm just excited to get to meet my student today!

Cya guys at 3:15! Anyone who is riding with me- i have tootsie rolls and starbursts in my glove compartment... nothing like good road snacks...