Re: Tutee confidentiality

[snewmann@sfasu.edu]

Jo, the W.C. at Stephen F. Austin works in much the same way as yours
regarding session "reports".  I've re-instituted the use of a form that
was used here several years ago by a former w.c. director at SFA.  It is a
3 part non-carbon form, too.  The faculty have responded favorably to our
using the form once again.  I have our tutors ask each client if they
would prefer not to have that form sent to their prof and honor their
wishes on that.  
But, Jo, I really like that addition you made to your form.  I like that
it opens up the "conversation" between writer and prof and between writer
and tutor regarding what further work that piece of writing might need or
get.  I plan to share your idea with my tutors at our training meeting
next week and see what they think about it.  I suspect they will be as
favorably impressed with it as I am and that we will use that on our form,
too this semester.  I don't think we'd even need to modify the form we are
using.  I think all that would be necessary is for the tutor to work with
the client in framing that last sentence and adding it to the comments
that will already be part of the form.
	Thank you, Jo, for sharing this successful strategy with us.  
				--stephen

	
	      *====================================================*	
	      |	stephen newmann		phone (409)468-1542        |
	      |	ass't dir. AARC		e-mail snewmann@sfasu.edu  |
	      |		stephen f. austin state university         |
	      |		     nacogdoches, tx  75962                |
	      *====================================================*
	


On Sat, 5 Sep 1998, Josephine K. Tarvers wrote:

> Saturday mornings inspire long answers. This thread has come up before and I'm 
> sure the same arguments will be raised on both sides, mostly revolving around 
> the question of whether the Center is an advocate for students or an advocate 
> for faculty. I generally think that's a false binary distinction since I believe 
> that Centers are advocates for good *writing*, and that one of our jobs is to 
> foster exchanges between students and faculty about writing. I believe our form 
> helps us do that. 
> 
> At Winthrop we have a three-part carbonless form for session reports. The client 
> always gets a copy and we always file one copy; we ask the client if he/she 
> wants to send the third copy [what we call the "brownie point copy"] to the 
> instructor and in probably 95% of cases he/she does. Otherwise, we file two 
> copies of the form, both marked "Don't send"--and the client sees us do this so 
> knows the session is confidential.
> 
> We don't ever tell a professor who calls whether a particular student has 
> visited us or not. We believe it is up to the client to decide who should know 
> s/he has visited us.
> 
> But one thing that we have had great success with in the last year or so is 
> adding a section to this form. After the description of the session "We worked 
> on....", we added a section called "objectives." Here the tutor and client craft 
> a sentence that describes the work the client still has to (or wants to) do on 
> that piece of writing; e.g., "Chris will add examples to each claim that support 
> the thesis". We added this not only so that clients could refresh their memories 
> of the session when revising the paper but also so that the professors receiving 
> the brownie point copies would know that the writer didn't leave the Center with 
> a guaranteed perfect paper but with a work in progress. 
> 
> We have gotten a great deal of positive feedback from both clients and faculty 
> on adding this section, and we have seen the number of "don't send" requests 
> decline because students know that their professors will be told that their 
> paper is still not perfect but that they *are* making an effort. To us this is a 
> step in encouraging that conversation about writing that we see as central to 
> our efforts. In the assessment that we've begun to undertake we have also seen 
> positive responses to this policy. Also, in our institutional senior 
> satisfaction exit survey thi year, the Writing Center received one of the 
> highest increases in positive ratings among the seniors surveyed--and that 
> objectives section on the form is one of the few major changes we've made. So we 
> believe that there's a correlation.
> 
> So that's why we have the form but leave the option of sending it in the 
> client's hands. We feel it protects their autonomy but gives them the chance to 
> initiate dialogue with their instructors in ways they might not be able to 
> otherwise.
> 
> FWIW.
> 
> Jo
> 
> Jo Koster Tarvers, Assistant Professor
> Department of English
> Winthrop University
> Rock Hill, SC 29733 USA
> (803-323-4557 voice) (803-323-4837 fax)
> tarversj@winthrop.edu; for attachments, use inscribe@cetlink.net
> http://www.birdnest.org/tarversj
> "Libraries have been the death of many great men, particularly 
> the Bodleian."--Humfrey Wanley, c. 1731
> 
>