Re: Political turf problems

[Neal Lerner <nlerner@acs.bu.edu>]

On Thu, 1 Feb 1996, Wendy Wagner wrote:
> 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.

I agree that in this example it's pretty cut and dried as to how the WC 
is helping the student work on priorities *as determined by* her 
classroom prof.  However, we all have experienced those sessions where 
this wasn't as cut and dried.  In the last week, I've listened to 
students *struggle* with figuring out their instructor's expectations, 
and they seem to seek out a WC tutor instead of (and in addition to) 
their instructors primarily because WC tutors are more "peer-like," more 
approachable, more available, and more sensitive to students' needs (from 
the students' perspectives).  Nevertheless, these sessions are still a 
*struggle," still inexact representations at best.

> 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. 

I agree with the philosophy.  But, in practice, how about those students 
who don't represent their needs well or accurately?  It's like those FAQs 
that Mickey is collecting; when students ask, "Is my thesis clear?" or 
"Can you tell me if this flows?" these questions can embody lots of 
intertwined needs.

> 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.

How do you know that the professor will accurately represent what the 
students' needs are?  Can this method create "independent" students with 
a mighty strong "dependence" on their classroom instructors?

Hope your cold is better, Wendy!

	Neal Lerner
	nlerner@acs.bu.edu