Re: Tassoni article

[Beth Boquet <eboquet@FAIR1.FAIRFIELD.EDU>]

Jill--

You point to a lot of the things that I really liked about John's 
approach.  He and I went to grad school together and have spent a lot 
of time talking about the relationship of writing center work and 
classroom teaching.  When he first told me that he was spending time 
in his comp classes talking to his students about their 
*responsibilities* in a writing center session, I was blown away.  
And I still am.

But. . . I'm going to play devil's advocate here.  (heh, heh)  Mainly 
because I've been spending a lot of time again/still with North's 
"Idea of a Writing Center" and I'm interested now in reading the two 
articles against each other.  (I am aware, of course, of the limits 
of North's essay but it seems to always be the point from which I 
start.)  North very clearly sets out the problem of faculty 
interference in writing center business--and he specifically mentions 
well-intentioned, "writing center friendly" faculty in the process.  
I wonder if we could place Tassoni in that category.  What happens to 
the writing center session if students come in, armed with 
instructions from their teacher, on how to be tutored?  We could 
argue that the student will probably get more out of the session, 
that the session would proceed with more direction, etc.  And we 
might be right.  But we might not.

And we get some sense of that conflict in the article.  It just so 
happens that we are sympathetic with Tassoni and we agree with his 
pedagogy.  But I wonder, for example, how I would feel if a faculty 
member were directing his/her students to have conversations with 
tutors only about grammar, for example.  It would be difficult to 
mount a pedagogical case for that, but it still happens, right?

At the very least, the session would become much more 
teacher-directed than I might be comfortable with, with little 
interest in the kinds of off-task talk that often lead to 
discoveries, with much more careful monitoring of session activity, 
now not only by tutors but by students and, ultimately, by their 
teacher.

Again, all this is not said to undercut the fantastic work that John 
is doing or the ways in which he encourages us all, through that 
article, to do better work.  I suppose I'm just wondering aloud to 
what extent I trust John because I know John and am sympathetic to 
his pedagogy, goals, etc.  And what might happen in less capable 
hands.

Thoughts?

--Beth

> Date:          Thu, 05 Mar 1998 19:29:33 -0600 (CST)
> From:          Jill S Johnson <johns693@pilot.msu.edu>
> Subject:       Tassoni article
> To:            Multiple recipients of list <wcenter@ttacs6.ttu.edu>
> Reply-to:      wcenter@ttacs6.ttu.edu

> Beth,  Thank you for pointing us to the Tassoni piece.  Wow!  I predict this
> will be a landmark essay in the writing center circle.  I particularly like how
> Tassoni engages his *students* in taking ownership of their own writing center
> conferences (on the client end) and thereby changing the culture of writing
> that exists **in the writing center**!  I love how he inspires his students as
> co-researchers of sorts who not only "use" the writing center but study *how*
> their work in the writing center could better support their writing.  Wow...
> Thanks.  Perhaps since Tassoni is at Miamo of Ohio he will show up at the ECWCA
> conference in Youngstown this May.  I hope...
> 
> 
> 
> --
> Jill Pennington
> Instructor
> Department of Language Skills
> Department of Communication
> Lansing Community College
> johns693@pilot.msu.edu
> 
Elizabeth Boquet
Director, The Writing Center
DM 130
Fairfield University
Fairfield, CT  06430
Tel: 203/254-4000, ext. 2529
E-Mail:  eboquet@fair1.fairfield.edu