Re: CCCC Sessions

[cph@wiley.csusb.edu (Carol Haviland)]

Thanks, Lady, for introducing this issue.  In addition to your comments, I
was concerned that she used conflict theory to explore the
tutor/teacher/student triangle but suggested that both the tutor and the
student needed to change while implying no change on the instructor's
part--except to change the other two--an incomplete appropriation of
conflict theory, I think.  Also, she said that Yale's WC uses "professional
tutors," implying that they would be less like to give substandard advice
(read:  contradict the instructor).

When I spoke with her afterward, she was gracious and seemed somewhat
surprised at my concerns.  At first she suggested that I had misheard or
misinterpreted, but when I added that my seatmate (the unidentified but
clearly reacting Lady) had commented, "She's mad at her tutor and wants the
tutor to be her clone," she did listen seriously.  

I was also taken back by her comment that it's hard to find WC
literature--that it's not in our "main journals."  I noted that most
specialty areas are best represented in specialty journals, and WC lit is
readily available, and indeed some does appear in the "main" journals.

So, while I wish with Lady that some counterarguments could have been aired
before the listeners, I also hope that the private conversation, which
surely was less threatening that a public attack, will encourage Linda to
rethink some of her views of WC/class/writer interactions.  She did say that
she did not plan to publish her paper.

Carol Haviland

>I would like to report on a session that I thought not so great. 
>It was I.3 Intimate Practices: Personal Dimensions of Writing
>Instruction.  Anne Ruggles Gere was the chair and the presenters
>were Carol Petersen, UCLA; Linda Peterson, Yale; and Nancy
>Sommers, Harvard.  I was most concerned by Linda Peterson's paper
>"The Eternal Triangle: Teacher, Tutor, and Student in Cooperation
>and Conflict."  The paper resulted from a problem she encountered
>when she commented on a writing assignment only to be told by the
>student that the writing center tutor had said it was o.k.  In a
>beautifully modulated voice, Petersen presented her analysis of
>the situation in light of desire theory (Girard, or somebody). 
>She suggested that the teacher and the tutor were competing for
>the student.  She cited Irene Clark and Dave Healy's article in
>the WPA Journal and Nancy Grimm's work in CCC, suggesting that
>she had "read the literature", as evidence that writing center
>folk compete with the teacher for the student's affection (?!). 
>She placed herself in this situation as the "older woman" and the
>professional tutor as the "younger woman", and both were
>competing for the student--a male.  Interesting, I thought.
>
>Without having the text before me and relying upon memory, I
>believe that her conclusion was that the tutor should not work
>independently of the teacher; that the appropriate place for the
>tutor was as a part of the classroom, not independent of the
>classroom, so that the tutor would know the teacher's emphases 
>and could then support those emphases.  Of interest, Barbara
>Wenner reaches a similar conclusion in "The Tutor-Student-Teacher
>Triangle (0r) The Three-Way Writing Conference" (WLN 20.6 January
>1996, pp. 5-8).
>
>I was most concerned on the presentation of writing center folk
>as in competition with faculty members.  I know that we discuss
>the differences between classroom instruction and writing center
>instruction, but I don't think that I personally have ever
>"desired" one of the clients.  Nor do I think that I have ever
>competed for a teacher's student.  I usually begin conferences by
>asking for the assignment so that we might "see" what the teacher
>was asking for.
>
>But even more, I was concerned that Anne Ruggles Gere allowed no
>time for response.  I appreciate Peterson's right to her own
>opinion, but I believe time should have been allocated so that
>members of the audience could ask questions or respond in some
>way.
>
>Carol Haviland, fortunately, did address the issue with Peterson 
>after the session.  I did see a couple of other writing center
>folk at the session.  I would be interested to know their
>response, if they would be comfortable sharing it.  I am going to
>contact Gere about the failure to provide time for response.
>
>Lady Falls Brown
>ykflb@ttacs.ttu.edu   
>
>