Re: Political turf problems

[Wendy Wagner <wendy@panix.com>]

On Wed, 31 Jan 1996, Neal Lerner wrote:

> On Wed, 31 Jan 1996, Wendy Wagner wrote, in part:
> > In other words, I may not like the way the faculty member is teaching
> > writing, but it's my responsibility as a writing tutor to help the student
> > understand the philosophy and perform up to the professor's expectations.
> > I'm not sure how, institutionally, it could be otherwise.  [snip]
> 
> The only problem I have with this primary responsbility, Wendy, is what a
> struggle it often is for the writing tutor to play this inexact proxy
> role.  In the best of all worlds, the professor's expectations can be
> figured out from an assignment sheet, but too often that ideal doesn't
> occur.  I mean, in terms of efficiency, wouldn't it make more sense for
> the student to go to the professor to clarify expecations and
> philosophy?  In the writing center we seem to be working with conflicting
> representations, fragmented evidence, and, sometimes, lousy assignments.
> Can you tell us more about how you go about fulfilling the responsibility
> you describe?

Hm, I think I was unclear. We believe that, as you said, the student 
should go to the prof and clarify expectations and philosophy. But 
_knowing_ what expectations and philosophy are is not the same thing as 
knowing how to do what needs to be done. A student might come to us and 
say that her prof says she has serious sentence structure problems 
that need to be addressed. Well, then, we work on sentence structure with 
the student. We always ask the student what _she_ wants to work on. We 
push the student to make these choices, to take responsibility for her 
own learning. When I give presentations to classes, I always stress that 
the students should come to the lab prepared with an awareness of the 
specific things they want to work on. And the tutors are trained to wait 
until the student expresses an interest one way or another. If the 
student doesn't express an interest, we strongly suggest that the student 
go to the professor and figure out what she needs to do. We will still 
give feedback, but we do so with the understanding that the student will 
go to the professor for guidance.

Maybe this goes back to the dependence/independence point I brought up in 
the short conferences thread. We have a philosophy of promoting active 
and independent learning. For us to tell the student what she needs to 
know is, to me, somehow not promoting active and independent learning. 
Throughout their lives, our students will have to make their own choices 
about what to learn and how to learn. As teachers and tutors, we are the 
catalysts, the enablers. 

Hm, now I'm seeing myself move toward answering Michael's post. Michael 
wondered why writing centers aren't afforded the same kind of power as 
writing instructors. But it seems to me that many of us are skeptical 
about the kinds of power that instructors have in the first place (i.e., 
the grading/evaluation thread). If we have a problem with a system that 
assigns to faculty certain powers to judge students' writing/performance, 
then why do we want writing centers to have that same kind of power? Is 
it simply the lack of grades that distinguishes writing centers from (most)
writing classrooms?

I'm reminded of something Kevin Davis wrote (was it here or in WLN?) 
about writing centers being on the margins. Maybe being on the margins 
allows us to escape being sucked into institutional power structures.

Or maybe not. I'm too woozy to tell. Does anyone else have a problem with
coming down with colds on the 4th day of classes? I think this is the
third semester in a row that some student has infected me on the first 
day. 

Wendy
Pace University
wendy@panix.com