Observation #2

This past week I did my second observation for my Eng220 class. I was put with a new tutor who was very welcoming, she worked with two students; one being a student that is taking a course given by my professor. The tutor automatically made a personal connection to the first students work. She did some cheer-leading making reference to the tutees work. Soon after making her connection the tutor and tutee double checked the requirements that the tutees professor was requesting. The tutor advised the tutee to be more detailed to bring her readers more into her work. When it came to the second tutee she spent a lot of time on him. It was clear from their conversation they had worked together before on his paper. the tutor worked on paragraph structure with the tutee and corrected some of his typing errors. The tutor was very patient with the tutee because he began to become lazy working with her.

Observation

On Friday March 23rd I sat in on my first tutoring observation at the writing center. I was a little nervous yet anxious. Nervous because I was not sure what type of students I was going to be observing; and anxious because it was to be 1 of many times of me observing and preparing me to see how it would be to tutor students at LAGCC. I sat in on a session with two tutees who was very familiar with their tutor. The tutor was very welcoming to me, he introduced me to the tutees so they would know why I was sitting on their session taking notes. After about ten minutes into the actually tutoring session it became clear to me that both students had requested to be with that tutor. They both had been with him before and they came back with work that they had reviewed with him during their first session. With both tutees there was collaborative work being done across the table, both students  had the same assignment and were i the same class, even though they were working on the same assignment they were writing two different papers. This made the collaborative process easy not for the students but for the tutor as well. The tutor used the one hour effectively and had time to do grammatical corrections to both papers and give his input on both. Even though he had two tutees the tutor made a connection to both of their work. He made a bond with them as he tutored them both. I must say my first observation was positive and i can not wait for the next one. I hope that I can witness a session with only one tutee or one with a language barrier. The reason for this is so I can see how to deal with these situations if the occur during one of my sessions if I one day do tutor.

Tutoring Obeservation Expectations

For the next four weeks, I am expected to observe in the writing lab at my school for one hour a week; yet I think I will try to do more so that I can gain enough knowledge of what is expected of me when I tutor there. that all depends on my performance on my Moffett research paper. I am hoping to see some talking and writing sessions, cheer-leading, a lot of listening and some feedback from the tutors. I am hoping to see the tutors get involved with each students writing. In each session I am also looking to see how the collaborative work goes with the tutor and student.

Dialogue of Ideas

As I sit in my Teaching Writing class thinking of some ideas to begin my draft on my dialogue writing, I start to think if I should write about something personal, educational, or something aimed towards society. The approach that I am going with would be more educational towards society, but mainly for today's youth and adolescents. I think I would write a dialogue on if sex education should be taught in elementary schools. I would focus on the importance of sex education, the role that it plays in society (media, school, and family settings).