RE: An LD Student Who Needs a "Scribe"

[Shannin Schroeder <smschroeder@saumag.edu>]

This sounds like a case of convenience--i.e., it is more convenient for the
learning center coordinator not to have to provide assistance to this
student.  It is also more convenient (obviously) for the student to have a
"scribe" who in fact seems to be polishing the paper as she/he types!  The
underlying assumptions here are very similar to those of students who
attempt to use writing centers as grammar drive-thru service (how many of us
have even had students attempt to leave a paper for an hour, so that we can
"fix it" before they pick it up again?).  

You are absolutely correct in questioning what this student will do later,
say in the working world or at a university without a writing center!  And
the learning center coordinator is not merely delegating the responsibility
of this student; she is relegating him to a life of dependence and, most
likely, planting seeds of doubt about his own ability to "handle"
technology.  Furthermore, by neglecting to spend some of her hefty grant
allotment on his particular needs, she is debasing her own program and
neglecting the duties of her position!  [Incidentally, what is her
opposition to this software?  I know it proved invaluable to a visually
impaired student of mine.]

Now, is there a polite way to communicate this information to her? to the
student? to the administration over-seeing her activities?  Probably.  Would
it be detrimental to the writing center's purpose and goals if even one
student were to use a tutor as a scribe?  Perhaps not.  Hey, maybe we should
even provide other LD students and, oh, yes, ESL students with "scribes" who
gently translate the students' words onto paper and who can get at "what the
students really mean to say"--

Sorry.  Smell that?  Sarcasm.
  
I am afraid that this did more to vent some of my own frustrations than it
did to provide valuable suggestions for your situation.  I hope other
comments prove more fruitful!

Shannin Schroeder
Southern Arkansas University

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Suzanne Diamond [SMTP:diamonds@marietta.edu]
> Sent:	Monday, October 04, 1999 3:50 PM
> To:	wcenter@ttacs6.ttu.edu
> Subject:	An LD Student Who Needs a "Scribe"
> 
> Dear All: 
> 
> I've got a new (to me) issue to run by you all.  How would you handle 
> a student with a learning disability who came to your writing center 
> asking for a "scribe"? 
> 
> I'll give you the background.  A few weeks 
> ago, our new learning center coordinator--an expert delegator, I have 
> witnessed--sent me an e-mail recounting a meeting she had with a 
> student whose learning disability entailed an inability to write. This 
> student, she claimed, had used a "scribe" in the writing center in 
> the past (he is a junior), someone to whom he dictated his papers. 
> She "asked": Could he come over to the writing center and get this
> assistance?  I responded that no student had, to my knowledge, 
> used the writing center in this fashion since I took over in the fall 
> of 98, but that I believed that there was software out there that 
> converted the spoken word into text in this manner.  (Her position 
> and budget have been funded by a $150K Teagle grant for two 
> years.)  I suggested that she invest in this software, especially if, 
> in her judgment, there would be other LD students who might 
> require it. 
> 
> Two weeks later, the student was in my office.  He said that the 
> learning center director had referred him to the writing center. 
> We had a long talk about his past use of "scribes."  I wondered 
> aloud what he would do eventually when he needed to prepare 
> a report, say, on the job, or write a letter, say, to his local 
> councilperson.  "As a teacher," I told him, "I feel I would be 
> doing you a disservice to just offer you a scribe, and that is NOT 
> because I don't want to help you; I very much DO."  We talked 
> for a while longer, and I proposed that he put whatever prose he 
> could produce on the page for us to look at.  Though he seemed 
> intrigued by this option, his objection was odd and telling: "My 
> grammar and spelling," he warned, "are awful!"  I told him I was 
> not going to be focused on these at first, that many writers come 
> to us with these concerns, and that I just wanted to see how he 
> shaped meanings in his writing. 
> 
> Because I have a policy of updating instructors about students 
> who register for sustained help at the center, I left voice mails 
> (without all the detail of my note above but basically) laying out 
> the plan the student and I had agreed to for his upcoming tutoring 
> session.  Wierdly, I had a voice reply on my own machine today 
> from one of those instructors, stipulating along the lines of "no, no: 
> that's not what the student gets at the center.  He needs to tell 
> someone else what he's going to write and they need to write it 
> for him."  I left a gentle reply back, saying that we should at least 
> at first be guided by the student's own enthusiasm to try this on his 
> own, and suggesting that we could regroup after his first two sessions 
> or so to weigh results and strategies. 
> 
> But I need some expert advice!  Am I right to find this a very 
> troubling way to use the center, or am I just being blind to the 
> necessity that we accommodate a disabled student?  I do not trust 
> my own responses here, but these responses sure are strong! Any 
> light any of you might shed on this would be most welcome. 
> 
> Yours, 
> Suzanne Diamond 
> Assistant Professor of English and Director, 
> THE WRITE PLACE 
> Marietta College 
> diamonds@marietta.edu <mailto:diamonds@marietta.edu>