Reflections 2018

Vol. IV 2018

In crafting the content for this fourth volume of Reflections, we were provided an opportunity to incorporate the voices of others. We entered the conversation and thought about how our own ideas and experiences fit within the discussion. We created new knowledge.

It is in these moments that we can share new perspectives with others, moments that can help shape the world around us. Complicate it. Make it better. Reveal the fissures within it.

This year’s Reflections is our collective voice, resounding our here and now. It is our hope that as we continue to learn, our voices grow stronger, louder. Yet, we will continue to listen. We will continue to write.

*Reflections*

Volume 4

Stark State College Writing Center

*staff*

Andrew Rihn Angie Saunders Ben Rafferty Cami Barber Corrie Tate Derek Mitchell Devon Anderson Emilia Kandl Hannah Cairns Jamie Thompson Jess Beck Jordan Roach Katelynne Shepard Kellie Thompson Nathan Floom Robin Clark Shannon McKeehen Steven Fregeau

*table of contents* Andrew Rihn

The Questionable Goal of Clarity: Accomplices in Abnormal Discourse

1

Angie Saunders

They Didn’t Cover This in Grad School

12

Ben Rafferty

Seeking Balance

17

Cami Barber

Evaluation Narrative 2018

20

Derek Mitchell

A Tremble We Ought Build Upon

27

Devon Anderson

Untitled

33

Emilia Kandl

I Know What You Mean, and I Don’t: Self-Disclosure in the Writing Center

40

Hannah Cairns

Untitled

49

Jamie Thompson

Two Types of Resources

53

Jess Beck

Lack of Empathy in Higher Education

56

*table of contents* Jordan Roach

Power Distribution in Tutoring

61

Katelynne Shepard

Tutoring Theory and Academic Writing: Preparing Students for the Real World

67

Nathan Floom

Self-Revision and Communication Tactics in the Online Writing Center

74

Robin Clark

The Forest for the Trees

80

Shannon McKeehen

Understanding Healthy 83 Emotional Boundaries in the Writing Center

Steven Fregeau

Reality and Compromise: Job Insecurity and Theory contra Product in Writing Centers

88

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The Questionable Goal of Clarity: Accomplices in Abnormal Discourse Andrew Rihn “Official composition has persisted as a bland, sanitized pedagogy, teaching clear, correct, citation-based essay form to students, using a literarily thin corpus of nonfiction readings as prompts. This is so limited, it’s unbearable.”

- Geoffrey Sirc To begin sensibly, a foundation: Kenneth Bruffee.

Along with others, Bruffee, helped popularize the growth of writing centers in the 1970s and 80s as part of his larger argument that 1) defines knowledge as socially constructed and therefore 2) promotes collaborative learning as a means to best enter into that social construction. Bruffee’s efforts would have significant and lasting impact on the field of writing centers, and laid the groundwork for the broader “social turn” in composition during the 80s.

In his “landmark” essay “Peer Tutoring and the 'Conversation of Mankind,'" Bruffee argues for helping students acquire the “skill and partnership” of conversation by using collaborative learning techniques (Bruffee, 1984). “To engage students in collaborative work,” writes Bruffee, is to do more than “just reinforce the values and skills they begin with,” (p. 652).

Rather, collaborative work is about the risk and reward 1

of creating new knowledge and entering new conversations, even if that knowledge may feel “foreign and irrelevant” at first (p. 652).

However, he warns that conversation (as well as thought, and writing) can be constrained “by ethnocentrism, inexperience, personal anxiety, economic interests, and paradigmatic inflexibility” (p. 639). These conversational constraints are what interests me: what possible constraints are imposed upon the “conversation of mankind” by the goals of our English department, Stark State College, and “official composition” more broadly.

Specifically, I want to question the generally favorable conversational attributes of clarity – being articulate and being fluent – and look at how these expectations can disturb and even overtake the “skill and partnership” of conversation. ~~~~~ While trying to begin this self-reflection, I looked back on a previous reflective essay from 2015. I was working at the Downtown Canton satellite, and I wrote about the articulation of student trauma, referencing a 1993 article “When Writing Is Not the Issue.”

In that article, Aimee Barrios describes students “who have slipped through the cracks of the educational system” (1993, p. 9). This description fit many of the Downtown Canton students, I thought, and is undeniably true of many students at SSC generally.

At the Downtown Canton campus, many students were returning to school after years away, often having dropped out, been incarcerated, or losing time due is2

sues with addiction. Many were gifted storytellers, and had incredible and moving stories to tell.

However, many had “formal” literacy issues (i.e. lack of computer skills, inexperience with essay formats).

When it came to expressing themselves in academic language and formats, using unfamiliar computer programs, the clarity and power of their words would be muffled, disguised, suppressed.

At the same time, many students with “formal” literacy issues also spoke and wrote in the “nonstandard” dialect of African-American Vernacular (AAVE). For many instructors, these two facts were indistinguishable, leading some of the faculty marked students linguistically as Other, as deficient, as inarticulate. This conflation set up a profound roadblock for such students, denigrating the very skills of language and expression they had spent years acquiring and honing, skills that, if recognized, could have been further enriched by the composition classroom.

Instead, such students were marked as inarticulate, albeit in a coded sort of way. Instructor comments avoided discussing the virtues of AAVE versus “edited English,” thereby blocking students from entering into that wider conversation and context. Instead, they addressed lower order concerns such “verb tense agreement” or “missing” words without placing those concerns in the wider context of multiple Englishes.

Inarticulate: a word also already loaded with racist freight. James Baldwin provides a counter to the solely pejorative label of inarticulate. He describes the heavyweight boxing champion Sonny Liston as being a certain kind of inarticulate: 3

And when I say inarticulate, I really do not mean to suggest that he does not know how to talk. He is inarticulate in the way we all are when more has happened to us than we know how to express; and inarticulate in a particularly Negro way—he has a long tale to tell which no one wants to hear (Baldwin, 2014, para. 15).

Baldwin raises interesting notes about what it means to be human, and about how to be human, as both expressible and inexpressible, as raced, at once seen and not heard. In his description of what it is to be “inarticulate,” Baldwin draws perhaps a distinction between talking and expressing. Liston knows “how to talk;” he knows the social action that is talking. Yet he reaches the limit of what he can express, differentiated from mere talking, as an experiential, affective, personal, or something else altogether different.

Likewise, the Downtown Canton students knew “how to talk,” yet in their classrooms they reached the limits of what they could express – they were inarticulate insomuch as they told tales “no one wants to hear.”

Bruffee himself, before developing fully his vision for collaborative education, was inarticulate in a very similar way to Baldwin’s portrait of Sonny Liston Bruffee could not articulate pedagogically what he knew intellectually and emotionally.

To be inarticulate, then, is not so much a limit of the individual as it is an institutional limitation placed upon the individual. Released from the pejorative, being inarticulate is a recognizable facet of what it means to be a fully complex human being, trying desperately – however incompletely – to express oneself. To write off the stories “no one wants to hear” is to dismiss the struggle and skill it takes to even attempt expression, 4

, and perhaps more damagingly, in refusing “to hear,” it dismisses the “partnership” of conversation that Bruffee describes. ~~~~~ Flash forward to 2018. I am working at the Akron/ White Pond satellite. Here, I see a much higher percentage of ELL students, many from North Hill’s refugee populations. Similar to the downtown Canton satellite, these students can talk. Many of these students are polyglots, able to speak three, four, five languages (and sometimes more). When they tell their stories, they tell stories that are complex and global, full of tragedy and hope. Yet when they write in English, they are made painfully and immediately aware that they lack fluency.

Culturally, patterns of storytelling vary in tone, content, and narrative structures, and many ELL students bring a fluency in their native storytelling to their writing. However, when their writing focuses on familial relationships, mixes past and present, or takes a less direct/more elliptical direction, their essays are read as lacking fluency in Western, formal academic conventions, rather than identifying or acknowledging the ways in which they are fluent.

Similarly, as ELL students tell their stories, they are doubly reminded of their lack of fluency with English: first during the drafting, and then during later during the review/revision stages. ELL students try their best to tell complex, nuanced stories in a language they are still learning, but are often constrained by vocabulary; in their essays, seemingly “simple” words or sentences do not necessarily signify “simple” thoughts or ideas.

Rather, they signify the (temporary) limits of the student’s vocabulary, the student’s current place in the 5

the process of learning a new language. Students are later reminded of their lack of fluency with English during peer reviews, when classmates have difficulty offering feedback, or sometimes, difficulty understanding their accented drafts. They also receive drafts marked with instructor comments focused on punctuation, word choice, and other visible signs of deviation from Standard or Edited English, concrete reminders that composition is often synonymous with composing in a certain form of English, rather than exploring multiple Englishes and dialects.

Working in downtown Canton, I came to better understand the limits and limitations of synonymizing writing with articulation. In Akron, I become suspicious of coursework that focuses too heavily on writing as fluency.

This suspicion is shared by – and expressed more artfully – by novelist Phillip Roth. When asked about how he begins a novel, he responds by stating that early in his process, he prefers difficulty over ease.

Sometimes in the beginning uncertainty arises not because the writing is difficult, but because it isn’t difficult enough. Fluency can be a sign that nothing is happening; fluency can actually be my signal to stop, while being in the dark from sentence to sentence is what convinces me to go on (Lee, 1984, para. 5).

For Roth, fluency signals the lack of meaningful challenge. Fluency is a sign of ease, of mastery and comfort.

He prefers what is difficult to tell. Why keep writing, he asks, if you already know what you’re going to say?

Roth’s questioning of fluency circles me back to Bruffee’s “conversation of mankind” as it pertains to 6

writers who are “in the dark from sentence to sentence.” Persevering despite a lack of fluency, such writers demonstrate a commitment to getting things spoken, tenaciously working to express what they cannot express.

By narrowing the gate of what constitutes fluency, we again risk the “skill and partnership” of conversation by advocating for constraints authorized by an institutionalized composition. By contrast, Roth reminds me to stay responsive to work that is struggling, enduring, and unrelenting in the face of “official composition.” ~~~~~ Being sufficiently suspicious of the labels/goals of being articulate and fluent raises certain questions in regards to Bruffee’s collaborative education and the “conversation of mankind.”

How does a student enter that conversation without being articulate? Without being fluent? Aren’t articulation and fluency exactly the kind of “skill and partnership” Bruffee suggested students need? Furthermore, aren’t articulation and fluency necessary “to achieve clarity,” the stated goal of SSC’s College Composition course (Eng 124, n.d.)?

Bruffee actually addresses this line of questioning, albeit at a rather clipped pace. He identifies two sets of values necessary for academic communities: 1) maintaining existing knowledge and 2) creating new knowledge (even if it challenges or even changes the existing knowledge) (1984, p. 650). To describe how these two seemingly different values are effected through conversation, he relies on Richard Rorty’s definitions of “normal discourse” and “abnormal dis7

course” (647).

Normal discourse, as one can imagine, refers to an agreed upon set of conventions regarding “what counts” in conversation (Bruffee, 1984, p. 643). Abnormal discourse, then, is what takes place when that consensus no longer exists, when rules are broken. Rorty says: “Abnormal discourse sniffs out stale, unproductive knowledge and challenges its authority, that is, the authority of the community which that knowledge constitutes” (p. 648).

Following Rorty, Bruffee notes that abnormal discourse comes from two kinds of speakers: those who are ignorant of the conventions, and those who choose to reject those conventions (648). Bruffee continues his essay by throwing in with those students who contribute abnormal discourse by choosing to do so. Such alignment is vital and can result in vibrant writing, but sadly, his essay fails to also follow along with student’s whose discourse is abnormal not by choice, but by “ignorance.”

This is unfortunate, as it reproduces the privilege inherent in “choosing” abnormal discourse: a writer can only truly choose it if the writer is already articulate and fluent in the conventions of normal discourse. The “stylistic choice” of abnormality is more likely to be rewarded than abnormal discourse stemming from “ignorance.” Ignorant (always already the pejorative) of those conventions (unable to pass as articulate or fluent) the label of “abnormal” unlikely to be considered a distinction, and more likely to be punitive, disciplining, and painful.

When instructors conflate dialects with deficiencies, or overlook the fluencies of ELL students, they fail to take 8

seriously the “abnormal discourse” of students, preferring the maintenance of existing knowledge over the creation of new knowledge. They also reject, or at the very least jeopardize, the “skill and partnership” of conversation by significantly limiting the range of “skills” permissible while also ignoring what it means to be in “partnership” with a writer.

What, then, do tutors make of the abnormal discourse of students who are not articulate or fluent? How does the writing center support such students? What does a student-centered pedagogy ask of us in regard to their writing? And, regardless of our own answers to such questions, how do tutors work with faculty who take a different view on such matters? ~~~~~ Ultimately, I return to the Aimee Barrios’ article “When Writing Is Not the Issue,” the essay I referred to in my 2015 reflection. There, she argues for tutors to work as “accomplices,” (1993, p. 9) a metaphor that seems apt for describing the work we can do alongside students who are neither articulate nor fluent in the conventions of “normal” academic discourse.

The nomenclature of “accomplice” is useful in that it is suggestive of criminality; it conveys an outlaw status.

An accomplice is not only an associate in crime, but a person who helps another in that crime, one adept at the “skill and partnership” of crime. This analogy is useful, of course, only so far as the prevailing ideology of official composition defines abnormal discourse as something of a criminal act.

“Accomplice” places tutors along the edge of “normal” academic discourse; tutors are often among those who 9

might have mastered its conventions, but in the name of abnormal discourse, chosen to reject them. Pedagogically, we might align ourselves with those students who do not choose abnormality but instead have that mantle thrust upon them (by a composition that creates exclusionary discourse conventions while simultaneously punishing them for their resulting exclusion).

However, the tutor-as-accomplice is well-placed in regards to the “skill and partnership” of conversation.

Tutors are able to identify and commend the diversity of skills writers possess, even for writers whose discourse is abnormal. Taking seriously those skills writers bring to their writing allows tutors to enter into a meaningful partnership with writers.

By genuinely engaging the “skills and partnership” of conversation with writers, and by recognizing the value of abnormal discourse, tutors might be positioned to combat the banality and limitations of clarity in “official composition.” The tutor-as-accomplice therefore might be about the work of navigating, negotiating, and contesting the linguistic margins of the academy, the tenuous spaces that exist in and around and between perceptions of what it means to be articulate and fluent.

10

References Baldwin, J. (2014). The fight: Patterson vs. Liston. Retrieved from https://thestacks.deadspin.com/ the-fight-patterson-vs-liston-1649083220 Barrios, Aimee. (1993). When writing is not the issue.”

Writing Lab Newsletter, 17(6), 9-10.

Bruffee, K. (1984). Collaborative learning and the ‘conversation of mankind.’ College English, 46 (7), 635-652.

Eng 124 – College Composition. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://ssb.starkstate.edu/PROD/ bwckctlg.p_disp_course_detail? cat_term_in=201910&subj_code_in=ENG&crse _numb_in=124

Lee, H. (1984). Phillip Roth, the art of fiction no. 84. Retrieved from https:// www.theparisreview.org/interviews/2957/ philip-roth-the-art-of-fiction-no-84-philip-roth Sirc, G. (2012). Resisting entropy. College Composition and Communication, 63(3), 507-519.

It is worth mentioning that the terms “conversation of mankind” and “skill and partnership of conversation” are not originally Bruffee’s. Both are from “The Voice of Poetry in the Conversation of Mankind" by Michael Oakeshott, which Bruffee cites.

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They Didn’t Cover This in Grad School Angie Saunders Look, let’s be honest. As individuals working in a college setting, we’ve all had distressed, angry, and sometimes troubled students. Writing by nature, is an act of emotional exposure. Students will often use assigned personal narratives to unload their baggage or express complicated feelings. According to John MacDevitt, “Events that cause psychological trauma seem to linger in students’ psyches as unfinished or unresolved business, waiting for expression.” This places writing assistants into a unique position. Students often disclose problems that they are still working through. In fact, the writing assistant might be the first person to learn about the student’s traumatic experience or troubled thoughts.

The trauma expressed in student writing goes well beyond superficial gripe sessions or minor disappointments. According to Marilyn J. Valentino, contemporary educators are seeing more students with highgrade issues including, “schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, manic depression, and suicidal tendencies…drug addiction, depression, or post-traumatic stress from war, abuse, or rape. Some mental illnesses, like eating disorders, schizophrenia, and depression, are also more likely to develop during college years.” While Valentino’s statement was written way back in 1996, her observation is more valid than ever. Students are dealing with a lot of trauma, and they are bringing that trauma into the classroom on a regular basis.

Several years ago, not long after I first started teaching, I had a student approach me to tell me she had been raped. Not long after, I was approached by another 12

student who revealed to me that he had considered taking his own life the previous evening. By the time both students spoke to me, they had already contacted the appropriate authorities. The students were able to tell me how I could help them as an instructor and how I could offer them additional support. But what if I had been the first person these individuals reached out to? What if that responsibility had been laid on my shoulders? This has happened to colleagues of mine, and they had little clue how to handle the situation. I’ll be honest—I’m an educator. I don’t feel that I have been adequately trained to function as a counselor or psychiatrist, and saying the wrong thing in a crisis situation could have disastrous effects.

The possibility of encountering such a situation is even greater in a one-on-one environment like a writing center. As a writing assistant, the wall of authority I have as a teacher is stripped away, and this creates a new dynamic between students and me. This is usually a welcome change, because I am able to engage with them in a way I can’t when I am in front of a class. At the same time, though, it can open the door for an uncomfortable dynamic. As writing assistants, we work one-on-one with students, quite often on intensely personal narratives, and writers sometimes divulge traumatic experiences in the course of preparing an assignment. Given the personal, even vulnerable nature of writing and the personal dynamic in a writing center, it is no surprise that students sometimes develop such a deep level or trust in writing assistants that they often treat us like therapists. The reality, though, is we are not therapists. Not by a long shot.

Another area of concern not often addressed is the impact of such interaction on the writing assistant. MacDevitt refers to “vicarious traumatization,” which sug13

gests that educators and others can be adversely impacted through “empathic engagement with traumatized individuals.” In trying to help a student craft a solid essay, writing assistants are often exposed to the dark heart of humanity. At times, these sessions can leave a writing assistant mentally threadbare and even change the way we look at the world. In some cases, a paper could even trigger a psychological response because of our own past traumas. We, as writing assistants, should be aware of these hazards and guard ourselves and our co-workers against them.

On a more ominous note, we should also be aware that with student trauma and psychological issues comes the reality of physical danger ourselves and our fellow assistants. When I was a tutor at another college, one of my co-workers encountered student who wrote a paper discussing how to best commit a hypothetical crime against women. She went to the proper authorities but continued to fear for her own safety. Other writing assistants have experienced boundary issues of, thankfully, a less threatening level. Still, we exist in a world where violence does take place on campuses, and it’s scary.

One thing we should do is ensure that all writing assistants are aware of the services offered by Stark State College and the university’s procedures for dealing with students who are distressed or present a concern.

We regularly do Title IX training. This is a great first step, but it should not be the totality of our training in this area. Every writing assistant (and possibly every receptionist) should know how to find the Person of Concern Referral Form, and we should all know when to fill one out. To what extent are we bound by confidentiality? What is our ethical and legal responsibility if we encounter a distressed, traumatized, or potential14

ly dangerous student? We should also know what to do if we have concerns about the welfare of a student or the safety of ourselves or our co-workers and other students.

One of the things that surprised me when I started to research this issue is how little scholarship there seems to be on writing assistants and troubled students. In my travels across the internet, I discovered a guide prepared by Salve Regina University in Rhode Island to aid their faculty members in dealing with students of concern. Some of the guidelines could be useful for our own academic environment. They suggest that educators should be aware of their body language, as people who are growing agitated might pay more attention to nonverbal cues than words. They also caution against trying to solve the student’s problem, appearing too friendly or nurturing, or challenging the student’s problematic belief system. While much of this seems to be common sense, it can be easy to forget these ideas when faced with a crisis situation or a student who is clearly in distress. One additional thing we can do is make sure we are communicating with each other. If we encounter a student who makes us uncomfortable, a paper with triggering content, or a situation that gives us pause, we should let someone know. There is no need to suffer silence. Similarly, if we know a coworker is facing such a situation, we should be alert and make every effort to support them. Communication in an environment where trauma is a regular topic of discourse is key. Through knowledge of proper procedure, regular communication, and an awareness of the vulnerabilities we face, writing assistants can roll with the new realities we face.

15

Bibliography MacDevitt, John. “Responding to Student Traumatic Writing: A Psychologist’s View.” Teaching English in the Two Year College 41, no. 2 (2013): 135148.

Salve Regina University. How to Help a Student of Concern: A Guide for Faculty and Staff, http://www.salve.edu/sites/default/files/filesfield/ documents/ Students_of_Concern_Resource_Guide.pdf Valentino, Marilyn. “Responding When a Life Depends on It: What to Write in the Margins When Students Self-Disclose.” Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication. Washington, DC, March 23-25, 1996.

1. John MacDevitt, “Responding to Student Traumatic Writing: A Psychologist’s View,” Teaching English in the Two Year College 41, no. 2 (2013): 135 2. Marilyn J. Valentino, “Responding When a Life Depends on It: What to Write in the Margins When Students Self-Disclose,” Presentation at the Annual Meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Washington, DC, March 23-25, 1996.

3. MacDevitt, 142.

4. Salve Regina University, How to Help a Student of Concern: A Guide for Faculty and Staff, http:// www.salve.edu/sites/default/files/filesfield/ documents/Students_of_Concern_Resource_Guide.pdf

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Seeking Balance Ben Rafferty At some point, almost everyone working in academia or education experiences burnout. Many feel like victims of a flawed system. Others feel underappreciated.

Even more feel like their efforts are in vain. Sometimes, it simply comes down to money – is it worth so much stress for so little pay? Is it worth pursuing a profession that treats instability as an inevitability? In discussing the existential aspects of burnout, Pines writes, “Our need to believe that the things we do are meaningful is our way of dealing with the angst caused by facing up to our mortality” (34). We need to feel “that we matter in the larger, ‘cosmic’ scheme of things” (Pines 34).

Nearly a year ago, I made the decision to accept a fulltime job away from education. Many of my colleagues treated this like I’d decided to live in a new oasis, one with the luster of a regular paycheck and medical benefits. I was told time and time again, and even somewhat believed it myself, that I’d finally gotten “a real job.”

There were a number of factors that went into this decision, but it was mostly financially-motivated. I could no longer deal with the uncertainty that came with not knowing if I’d have enough money to pay my rent from one semester to the next. I honestly figured this was the beginning of the end for my academic career.

Maybe it is. But this transition has surprised me in a couple of ways. Mainly, I was expecting that, since I was getting burned out on instability, this would destroy any passion for education left in my soul. My primary income would be coming from somewhere else 17

and I was “giving up,” so it wouldn’t be long before I didn’t really care at all. Right?

Not quite. Despite the shift toward business, I kept some hours at the Writing Center. I need the extra income, sure, but I also love my coworkers there and the culture we’ve created. And instead of losing my passion, I’ve found it renewed. After working a full day elsewhere, I love going to the Writing Center and helping students. Since I don’t worry (as much) about the financials, I get to focus on what matters: helping others.

Stripped from the bureaucracy, pressure, and fear associated with education, all that’s left is the students. And when that’s all there is, it’s wonderful. Pines notes that, “Excessive workloads, lack of administrative support, and bureaucratic constraints are stressful...[because these] give workers a feeling that what they do is insignificant” (36). The profession has become so mired in nonsense that it’s easy to forget what we’re supposed to be doing in the first place. I don’t have much professional passion in my primary gig (I want to do a good job, it’s great to gain experience, and I want the company to succeed, but I’m not personally invested in it), so I’m able to garner significance from the Writing Center once again.

Still, finding the right balance will always be a tightrope walk. I could get burnt out from overworking. If I put too much energy into one area over another, my performance could suffer. But as it stands, I think I’ve found a system that works – make money elsewhere so I can stay enthused about what I love. I’m lucky to have this opportunity, as not everyone can luck into a full-time job. It’s sad that this is what the system has become; education is no longer a viable career for most 18

people. It’s simply a part-time job.

As we look toward an uncertain future, it will be hard to find our place. What will education even look like in ten years? What about the private business landscape?

How long will it be until our jobs are obsolete? Society is in a great time of transition, and it may be hard to maintain an identity, especially as an educator. Finding your passion will be key to retaining a sense of self. It took giving up my calling to discover a love for it again. With the changing tides of an unreliable future, perhaps we must all look inward to find our sense of balance.

Work Cited Pines, Ayala M. “Burnout: An Existential Perspective.”

Professional Burnout: Recent Developments in Theory and Research, edited by Wilmar B. Schaufeli, Christina Maslach, and Tadeusz Marek, Routledge, 2017, pp. 3352, books.google.com/books? hl=en&lr=&id=izYlDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq =academic+burnout+professional&ots=AKq74oR_N&sig=vdGiHbilRWsfmvJlhNGqSZQJYCU#v=one page&q&f=false.

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Evaluation Narrative 2018 Cami Barber This will be my eighth year at the Writing Center, exclusively online. I first took this job to stay active in my career field with minimal intensity, while prioritizing my family. Now, eight years later‌ I still see it that way. It is exceptionally rare to find employment like this. Most work-from-home opportunities for parents of young children involve telecommuting with a business during business hours, taking freelance opportunities that only pay upon completion, or pyramidbased sales. Being paid consistently, working flexible hours, and not paying for childcare is unheard of, and I will be forever grateful for this opportunity. The nature of this position, however, raises questions about how to effectively balance professionalism, professional development, and home life. Parents who stay home with children work approximately 98 hours per week- defined by child and home care, 14 hours a day, from breakfast to bedtime. Add 20 more to be considered a part-time employee outside the home. What can reasonably be expected of these employees? Are their contributions commensurate with their in-person colleagues who may consider teaching/tutoring their top priority? How do we, as distance workers, maintain active scholarship in our positions while also staying true to the essence of our chosen roles- people keeping their distance?

Let’s start with the nature of being of a teacher or tutor.

One of the things that has most effectively informed and defined my teaching is my parenting. Excellent teachers need to be selfless- putting the needs of students first, identifying student needs versus student wants, and effectively guiding students to their own 20

growth and skill development outside of what we can provide. Parenting is the same; I couldn’t be a truly effective teacher until I stepped outside of myself and saw those in my care as more significant than myself.

But this leads to more questions. Where is the balance between the personal well-being of teachers/tutors and the needs of the people under their guidance?

More conclusively, how do we maintain a work/life balance in online teachers and tutors, who have chosen this work as a means to the end goal of making their families a priority?

It would seem that simply having a flexible online job would provide that. Being able to choose your own hours, work from home, and avoid a commute should, by definition, increase your work/life satisfaction. A January 2018 article from the IZA Institute of Labor Economics concluded just that. The researchers declare “teleworkers work less, and do more non-market work time and have more leisure than commuters during their working days, and specifically during the central hours of the day” (Giménez-Nadal, Molina, & Velilla, 2018, p.27). Doing less work during the work day, and being more productive during their chosen work hours, indeed leads to a qualitative conclusion that “male teleworkers are happier than male commuters” (p.6). Neat! Wait. Male teleworkers are happier?

Ok, and the females? “The fact that we do not find differences in instantaneous well-being of female workers may indicate that teleworking women still have difficulties in balancing their work and household responsibilities” (p.6). Wtf you guys. So, we’re just gonna chalk that up to the mysterious workings of people with lady-parts and leave it at that?

No, no we absolutely are not. An article from Gender, Work, and Organization had quite a bit to say on the 21

matter. A quick summary: women take on telecommuting as a way to control the balance of work and home responsibilities, but it ends up exacerbating the intensity of the workload. They personally expect more interaction in their children’s lives, the family expects them to do a majority of the home duties, and they are socially expected to devote fully to the work world. The authors cover topics such as “intensive mothering” (the modern, hands-on, highly scheduled approach to raising children), division and perception of time (business -sphere time being linear and home-sphere time being cyclical and task-based, and the juxtaposition of the two for telecommuters), and how women tend to view their work/life arrangement as positive while also never taking leisure time for themselves (Hilbrecht, Shaw, Johnson, & Andrey, 2008). It’s a good read, you guys.

Their conclusions are quite different than the first researchers. While some women do find satisfaction in the control that comes from telecommuting, they are not finding work/life balance satisfaction. They are finding a far more demanding work load, and a schedule that is almost unbearable. Yet they also express relief and gratitude (hey, I just did that above, didn’t I?) that they get to experience all that stress at home instead of in the workplace. So that’s… neat?

I should stop for a second for a caveat- this research and my conclusions are divided very sharply along gender lines, which is not fair. The primary hometending adult is the one who is not doing well in this equation. If you are the male or gender nonconforming child-care person, please know I am not ignoring you. But this research is, so let’s go on, knowing we both see the issue; what we mean when we say “women” is the people who do a majority of the tasks to raise kids. Which is still statistically women. Ok, anyway22

The conclusion of the article considers what standards and limitations women are imposing on themselves, and how society as a whole assumes these limitations without question.

They believed that the flexibility of telework which allowed them to optimally schedule their day meant that they were in control. They did not appear to acknowledge the external control imposed by the employer, their family or social norms of intensive mothering, or a combination of all three. Rather, for the most part, the exploitation or subjugation remained hidden, unrecognized and unchallenged. It is worth questioning, therefore, whether telework represents a blind spot for policymakers who assume that women’s work–life balance and quality of life will be improved when paid and unpaid labour are combined in the home, particularly for mothers with caregiving responsibilities. (p.474) The very end of the article posits a few questions. Since their focus group was mothers with elementary children, they ask “what is the experience of mothers with preschool children who telework?” (p.474). I would add: what about those of us who telework shortly after giving birth and through toddlerhood, when the immediacy of parenting is most intense? “Mothers who have non-standard work schedules, compressed work weeks or are self-employed face different challenges and may also have a different experience of leisure than those with traditional work arrangements. In what ways might their quality of life be affected when schedules are not synchronized with other family members?” (p.474). Point is, they know that working remotely seems like a great idea, but doesn’t actually 23

translate into great advancement in the lives of women.

And since telecommuting is a relatively new phenomenon, there isn’t a ton of solid, research-backed evidence. We’re still in the questioning phase of this social experiment.

So then, allow me to add my own conclusion to this preliminary research. It is in no way a detriment to have workers’ attention to their profession be secondary to their attention to their home lives, because in the grand scheme, they are contributing to society in two realms- through the successful integration of their children into society and also through their expertise in their discipline. As these people achieve personal growth in their own lives, they will translate that success into more nuanced and cultivated skills in their work life (as I did with the connection between parenting and teaching methodology). We also need to change the mentality that working from home is a better way to “have it all.” As Michelle Wolf flippantly states, “Women can have it all. Yeah, stop saying that.

You act like all is good. All does not mean good.

You’ve never left an all you can eat buffet and thought I feel really good about myself. …All is not good. And even if we do try to have it all, even if a woman out there definitely wants it all, we put up too many obstacles in your way to make it possible” (Wolf, 2018). We place so much pressure on ourselves to be everything we think is expected of us. It is an exploitative system, creating tension for working parents of young children.

I think we need to come to terms with the fact that we contribute differently when we have kids, but that difference is not a negative.

As tutors, we should have confidence in our abilities to give our best to our students, but not always the best to professional development. And I do think that The 24

Online Writing Center is a place that allows that. Most of us are working in the same family-focused sphere, and all know what our priorities are. We form a community of workers who support each other and discuss our profession in slightly different terms. The next time I start stressing about making sure I keep this ideal job, or proving that I am a valuable employee, I need to remember this: professional development isn’t just about participating in the field. It is about creating a personal/professional balance, where I can be the best version of myself in my own way. That is how I find excellence in my field. Though I may not be regularly contributing to scholarly discussions, or speaking at conferences, my contribution to the field of higher education is still worth-while. Telecommuters who make their families a priority are still extremely valuable members of the discipline, when the overall qualitative contributions are considered. Also, I think this is a good time to side-mention that by these standards, it’s totally ok that I submitted this essay over a month late.

In my own time, my own way, I learned a lot about the balance of work/life. Embracing the difference in how I contribute ultimately leads to those contributions being more confident and substantial. As we all participate in this ongoing telecommuting experiment, I think true gains come from seeing the big picture: employees are whole-humans, not just people who maximally or minimally contribute to the immediate workplace. Also, thank you for not firing me.

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References Hilbrecht, M., Shaw, S. M., Johnson, L. C., and Andrey, J. (2008). ’I’m Home for the Kids’: Contradictory Implications for Work-Life Balance in Teleworking Mothers.

Gender, Work and Organization, 15(5), 454-476.

Giménez-Nadal, J.I., Molina, J.A., Velilla, J. (2018). Telework, the Timing of Work, and Instantaneous WellBeing: Evidence from Time Use Data. IZA Institute of Labor Economics Discussion Paper Series, 1-38. https:// www.researchgate.net/publication/323835191 Wolf, M. (2018, January 15). Michelle Wolf on Having a Baby [Video file]. Retrieved from https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYBmHEFJLAs

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A Tremble We Ought Build Upon Derek Mitchell Some years back, during the spring of 2013, I and a fellow tutor were set to deliver a speech at ECWCA, hosted in Clarion, Pennsylvania. Our presentation revolved around the writing of Betsy Lerner, with a focus on her findings in her book The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers. In the book, Lerner categorizes writers into a series of categories based on personality type, most of which sound derisive. She sorts writers into "ambivalents", "naturals", "wicked children", "selfpromoters", and "neurotics." Though Lerner ostensibly aims her conclusions toward published authors we saw a great overlap in the students we aided. For instance, we could easily question whether a procrastinating undergraduate differs substantially from an "ambivalent writer" when Lerner asks if the latter "[stalls as] a form of self-protection." Even if we cannot see ourselves in that statement, I do not consider it a great leap that we might see our tutees reflected back at us.

Due to unfortuitous circumstances involving being lost in rural Pennsylvania we were unable to deliver our presentation, but the content stuck with me. Whether or not one agrees with Lerner's assertions as to the five kinds of writers, and there are flaws to be dissected, it is obvious to any newly trained tutor that a variety of writing "types" enter writing centers in any given day and all require a specialized but unique lingo, honed over time from spoken directions to body language and beyond, to assuage their anxieties. In the past I have worked under Dr. Jay Sloan at Kent State University at Stark, as an instructor at Bowling Green State University's undergraduate writing program, and as a freelance 27

tutor. In every instance I have had to mold my diction, behavior, and mindset toward a Platonic student based on the majority of my clientele and specific individuals. That "ideal" student usually has had a level of preparation and education commensurate with entry into a four-year liberal arts program. Coming from a similar background, I have not had to stretch very much to build rapport in the past, but my entry to Stark State challenged that.

Early into my brief tenure, I encountered students who lacked any proficiency in standard word processing, whether that included Microsoft's suite of programs or Google Docs. Likewise, the level of grammatical errors presented to me often exceeded the bounds of local concerns, transforming into global concerns due to their far-reaching impacts on whether a student could convey meaning from sentence to sentence, to say nothing of paragraph organization, thesis statements, or integrating salient research. For example, Emilia rescued me multiple times at our downtown Canton location, intervening before I could stick my foot into my mouth by treating a student as if they had been guided in the basics of rudimentary rhetoric. She had a leg up. She knew her students in a way that I did not.

As such, I had to reconfigure my preconceptions of who my tutees were, what their lives were like, and what they were seeking from us. I had to ask myself how to engage with a student base that drastically differed from my previous experiences.

Writing for WLN's Tutor's Column, Qian Wang penned a brief article entitled "Will You Trust Me." In it, she details her misgivings about her students' trust in her as a Chinese student for whom English is a secondary language. She analyzes her interactions with two students, themselves non-native speakers, and simultane28

ously laments their false starts and celebrates their shared understandings of writing in English as a continuous learning process between tutor and tutee. Of course, I certainly do not identify as Chinese or as a non-native speaker, but her central question about the trust imbued or withheld by a client depending on demographic circumstances alights upon many of my own concerns. Where Wang's concerns overlap with my own lie in those major questions of trust and rapport. How do we establish a connection in a session that might only last thirty minutes? There are few other avenues in life where a personal connection is so necessary in so short a timeframe.

To those ends, I think another entry from WLN's Tutor's Column partially answers those questions. For instance, consider Alyssa Quinn's article, "Students' Writing as Sacred Texts: Personal Narratives in the Writing Center." In a passage that struck me as particularly prescient, she writes, "Our role should be to help students figure out what they are trying to say—not what we think they should say—and to offer suggestions in a spirit of conversation." It's a given that many of us were trained in nondirective methods, thus making Quinn's assertions about helping the student find their own words obvious, but I have found it heartening how often I've observed my fellow tutors follow her second dictum. They routinely operate in a "spirit of conversation." To those who know me it should go unspoken that I'm a conversational tutor. My sessions often begin with asking any tutee how they're day is going, what traffic was like, and how their classes are progressing. I seek to establish a personal connection before we begin with the nuts and bolts of writing.

And, if you'll forgive this and upcoming instances of breaking traditional sentence structure, I have been rewarded in doing so.

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Consider, with the caveat that I am a deeply privileged middle-class straight white man, the rapport I could build with a middle-aged African-American woman over her cultural diversity course due to our connection to innercity Akron. Or the camaraderie I've enjoyed with two African immigrants of differing ages to the extent that one teaches me Swahili at the end of every session. Or a recent session with an Indian man in which we discussed the long and tumultuous history of Hindu and Islam in his native nation. Or the student who lives in a cabin outside of Alliance, Ohio and backpacks to support the Wounded Warrior Project, makes a hobby of firing guns, and enjoys working on cars. Or the first-year student who graduated from the same impoverished, Southern Ohio high school that my younger brother still attends. Or a woman from Shenzhen, China looking to burnish a speech about her homeland to students who cannot spell the city of her origin. In every instance I have been forced to pull from my own experiences to establish a connection quickly, efficiently, and enduringly.

In the journal Praxis, Chris Leary took to Twitter to collate various musings regarding writing centers in the humorous "Eavesdropping Twitter: What Students Really Think About Writing Centers." The usual hagiography surrounds the first section, titled "They Like Us. They Really Like Us", but that conclusive statement is supported by statements such as "Every time I leave the writing center I feel so much more motivated with my papers." Still, there are notable detractors, including the comment "PROTIP for kids at poverty tier colleges (and colleges in general) The writing center is a load of shit. Don't bother they won't help you." Perusing the negative commentary reminded me of a particular note left in a teaching evaluation I received in May 2016 in which a student who ran into a rocky session praised my teaching methods, much to my delight, but did so by juxtaposing them with per30

ceived failures on the part of the BGSU writing center, much to my chagrin. Earlier that semester, following the noted session, I asked this student why the writing center seemed to fail them. In their view, the tutor they saw neglected to establish a personal connection based on a shared background or interest in their topic and it stunted the meeting from the outset.

That thought process my student had, justified as it might have been through their personal experience, is exactly what I and we should seek to avoid. We cannot become complacent, thinking that our impact is solely academic. We mean more to our students, these men and women of all ages and backgrounds who are nervous, downright petrified, to seek help. I often return to the first session I viewed as a 25-year-old, newly hired tutor. A woman appeared in our doorway, visibly nervous, seeking help for a personal narrative. She was writing about her family's history of raising show cows, a topic I had absolutely no background in. The tutor I observed, an otherwise amiable fellow, did not pick up on the student's anxiety. Our tutee’s hands visibly trembled, her voice quavered, her demeanor completely unmoored from any sense of confidence. I asked if I could step in and was affirmed. I gently asked her what show cows were like and relayed a harrowing story of feeding a cow as a toddler. Our tutee immediately settled, explaining what these cattle were like. From there the session proceeded normally, likely a remnant of our tutee's memory, but I'll always remember her anxiety, those shaking hands. They steadied as we progressed. That sessions proved formative for me, likely forgotten by her, but it is instructive. We should never forget our beginnings, those just-born legs, the trembling that becomes an uproar that envelops us into a profession.

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References Leary, Chris. "Eavesdropping Twitter: What students really think about writing centers." Praxis, 14(3), 63-67.

Lerner, Betsy. (2000). The forest for the trees: An editor’s advice to writers. London: Riverhead Books.

Quinn, Alyssa. (2016-2017). Tutor's Column: "Students' Writing as Sacred Texts: Personal Narratives in the Writing Center." WLN, 41(3-4), 26-29.

Wang, Qian. (2016-2017). Tutor's Column: "Will You Trust Me." WLN, 41(9-10), 26-29.

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Untitled Devon Anderson Once upon a time, before a certain spring semester, I was very quick to trust people, and in that, they felt able to trust me. I rarely hesitated to tell others about myself, which allowed them to feel safe to tell me about themselves as well. I prided myself on my skills of listening with compassion, caring, and just generally giving a shit about others. I saw openness as a sign of trust, letting students be vulnerable as a way to allow them to feel they could trust me. This has cemented my place as a preferred tutor and mentor for many students, both a blessing and a curse. But, I always figured if people trusted me, they would work better with me.

However, as I have learned through trial and error, trust can be a tricky pickle, and maintaining boundaries is my new favorite way to pass time.

That said, I am not heartless. I do care about students. I care about students in the way any educator or professional on campus cares about their students; I don’t want them to fail, and I want them all to find their own version of success along their journeys. Nothing more, nothing less. Caring about people is something I have always innately done, never giving it much thought. As it turns out, that led me to one of the most unsettling experiences I have had here in my seven years of work, and I will never do my job (or view my job) the same way.

On campus, many students understand our roles as 33

professional writing tutors. They come to us for help with some of their most vulnerable (or totally mundane, depending on the assignment) moments laid out on paper, and they get our highly-educated, professional advice. They see us as on a higher plane than they are, experts in a field where they have simply been benchwarmers. And, for all intents and purposes, we don’t do anything to make them see us as any different than that. The problem comes when we assume every student comes to us with the same tool kit, the same ideas, the same mentality. We don’t feel the need to continually repeat, out loud, our roles and boundaries as professionals because we assume everyone understands them.

However, many people will not have experienced appropriate boundaries in relationships earlier in their lives. This will also be the case for many of our students, regardless of whether they have any particular mental health difficulties. As a result, these students may have particular difficulties in maintaining appropriate boundaries with others. (University of Sheffield, 2018) It is this lack of understanding of professional boundaries on the part of the student that puts us as tutors at risk. And when we are at risk, or feeling at risk, we simply cannot do our jobs in the best way. We cannot do our jobs in the same way. And that kind of experience leads us to completely change the way we do everything from how we talk to students and allow them to talk to us. It all shifts. This year, I worked on a con34

ference proposal with colleagues in which we talked about writing centers as safe spaces, and how we pride ourselves in being a safe place for students and tutors alike.

While I put on a good show in front of the roundtable panel when we presented our ideas, hiding my own insecurities and vulnerabilities, upon reflection, I realized we can’t really guarantee anyone can feel safe inside our walls. We can allow students to come to us and rely on us for advice and know we will give them the best we can, but is that truly allowing for a sense of safety? We don’t judge them, or do we? We don’t treat them differently, or do we? I can honestly say that I, personally, now treat some people very differently. I can’t be to students what I once was. And that doesn’t make me feel safe to be the one they can trust, count on, confide in out of fear that they will take my predilection as someone who generally gives a shit about people and turn it against me, against my friends, against my colleagues. I can no longer feel safe to give them the kind of compassion and attention they had once gotten from me. I am now protective, jaded, closed off.

Was I disingenuous in not disclosing my own insecurities and vulnerabilities to those who questioned us as safe space? No, I don’t think I was. I worked on that proposal before my personal life was violated, before I felt unsafe. So, looking back upon when I wrote it, it was perfectly logical to respond the way I did. Now, after being basically stalked both in person and online by a student who took her already blurred idea of 35

boundaries and erased parts that she didn’t want to pay attention to, a violation that bled into my social circles and called for extraneous assistance from other support services here on campus, my answers would be completely different. I would say while we can do our best to remain safe and unaffected, nonjudgmental, and open to all who enter, we can’t guarantee a thing in terms of the preservation of a safe space for either ourselves as staff or our students.

It sucks that it takes something like that to happen to us for us to realize we need to change how we do things, harden ourselves, throw up walls around us to stave off any energy vampires we may come across.

But, in the end, as humans, we only learn when we fail.

And, for my part, for the first time in my professional career, I feel like I failed this student. I failed her by not explicitly pointing out boundaries, as “In most relationships boundaries are managed collaboratively by each person involved. This is also usually true for relationships between personal tutors and tutees” (University of Sheffield, 2018). I feel as if I failed her by allowing her to cry to me when she needed it, by allowing her to feel vulnerable with me, thus allowing her to trust me.

I failed her because I acted organically, as I would with any student who showed me they needed someone to listen, care; it was just what I did.

In that vulnerability, she formed an attachment I was neither a part of nor fully aware of. So, while her actions and emotions were completely out of line and I know that, I can’t help but feel as if I failed her by allowing her to form a connection to me that was all in 36

her head and completely unhealthy. Part of me feels I could have stopped in its tracks if only I had known how compassion would affect her. It is the “if I had known” that makes me never want to find myself in that situation again, no matter the cost to my own personal ethics or typically friendly, open manifestations of honest compassion toward a student. It isn’t worth it, at least not right now. Time will tell.

In that failing, however, I learned. I will no longer be able to be that person for students. I will no longer be open and available to those who may need it because being that person no longer serves me; it scares me. I will no longer let students be vulnerable with me, to me, and I will no longer be the one who they can count on to dry their tears. I’ve lost my ability to be that person, when at my core, I very much want to. I want to be caring, compassionate, open, trustworthy. However, now, the repercussions of being that person, the realities of what could transpire, are too great for me to bear.

Part of me knows it isn’t my fault. Scholarship on this topic also says that it isn’t my fault, and “There may be … times that you have let your boundaries be too loose. That shouldn't be an occasion for blame - the important thing is to recognize what is happening and take some steps to reinstate appropriate boundaries” (University of Sheffield, 2018). But, when I was not fully aware of the fact that the boundaries were originally being crossed, when gut instinct is all I had to go on when the early signs of attachment started to pop up, I couldn’t stop what I only thought was hap37

pening without looking like I think too highly of myself. “Oh, you know, you really shouldn’t write essays about me, and calling me your favorite person on campus really makes me uncomfortable” sounds pretty dick-ish when the student was honestly touched by my presence in her life because I really helped her. Knowing she was in a fragile state of mind, I didn’t want to hurt her, so I erred on the side of humility, brushing her off, not entertaining her words. That’s another “if I had known” moment, and I have to acknowledge my own responsibility in not explicitly dissuading her, not being totally honest so as not to hurt her feelings, that may have potentially helped cement the bond she felt she had with me.

For now, and for the foreseeable future, I have to protect myself. And, in that protection, I have to completely shift my mindset and the way I do my job. I cannot be that person I once was for students to fully trust, to be vulnerable to, to bond with. In the end, I’m better off, but it won’t win me any popularity contests among the students. Luckily, I’ve never cared much about that stuff anyway.

If there is a lesson to take away for my colleagues, current and future, I would say to not be afraid to care, just be clear and strong on your boundaries. I hope to not feel this way forever, as I really do love caring about people and really getting to know them. However, hindsight being what it is, I would advise everyone to speak up as soon as something seems off. Don’t wait for it to escalate to someone trolling your social media and following all of your personal friends in an attempt to get to know you better. Be aware of what’s going on, 38

and look out for each other. It’s an honor to be on this team, and we can do way more together to take care of each other than any one of us can do alone.

Reference University of Sheffield. (2018). “Setting Boundaries.”

Retrieved from: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/lets/ toolkit/support/tutor/boundaries

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I Know What You Mean, and I Don’t: Self-Disclosure in the Writing Center Emilia Kandl To anyone who’s ever worked in a writing center, it is no secret that overlap can exist between writing center work and counseling. Students regularly need emotional support and encouragement in order to move forward with their work, as well as reassurance that seeking our help is nothing to feel nervous or ashamed about. On top of all this, the personal nature of many of the essays students write adds to the vulnerability they (and we!) might feel during sessions. While it is critical (and often reassuring for us) to be able to draw the line – we are not counselors for the students – at the same time it can potentially benefit us to be aware of some counseling techniques, especially since we often find ourselves employing them anyway. Sirin (2008) provides a list summarizing “the primary skills related to counseling,” as defined by Ivey and Authier (1978): 1. Simple acceptance and encouraging, 2. Ensuring attention, 3. Body language, 4. Silence (listening), 5. Open- and close-ended questions, 6. Reflection of the content, 7. Disclosure of feelings, 8. Reflection of feelings, 9. Self-disclosure, 10. Confrontation (p. 288).

While several of these are familiar to us in obvious ways, one I’ve started thinking more about in the past year is self-disclosure. Especially keeping in mind the recent changes to the college’s writing program, I feel it might be worthwhile to examine – or re-examine – how well-placed disclosures about ourselves fit into our 40

work with students.

Self-Disclosure in Counseling and Tutoring Practice Self-disclosure is a commonly-used device in counseling/therapy; over 90% of therapists report to sharing information about themselves with clients at times in their practice (Henretty & Levitt, 2010, as cited in Gibson, 2012). However, they also generally report to using self-disclosure sparingly and less frequently than other techniques (Maroda, 2009; Fartber, 2006, as cited in Gibson, 2012), and it remains something of a controversial topic in social sciences literature (Gibson, 2012).

In the writing center, I think most of us would report to sharing info about ourselves with students at least occasionally and for a variety of reasons. We also might wonder exactly what constitutes appropriate or useful disclosure, or, in some cases, what the risks of disclosing might be – concerns counseling professionals must also navigate in their field.

Among other reasons, therapists may self-disclose “to make themselves more accessible to clients, to develop the working alliance, and to build greater trust in the therapeutic relationship,” and in hopes “to reduce negative perceptions that clients might have of themselves for seeking help” (Wade, Post, Cornish, Vogel, & Tucker, 2011, p. 171). Again, while we are not therapists, we clearly share some related goals. We generally want students to see us as accessible; we hope to build a rapport with them; we want them to trust that they can come to us for help and we will not make them feel worse about themselves. It makes sense that we’d employ some of the same tactics counselors use to achieve these aims – especially since, as Sirin (2008) notes, selfdisclosure belongs not only to the list of basic counseling skills but also the list of basic communication skills 41

that are “beneficial for everyone” in all types of interpersonal relations (288).

Still, assessing when and what to disclose can be tricky for therapists – and as non-therapists, we have fewer guidelines and less of a focused basis in research for how to approach talking about ourselves in our sessions. And while self-disclosure is widely researched in the fields of psychological counseling and social work, Gibson (2012) stresses that no specific model for using it could completely suit all people/environments/ situations; like most counseling (and, of course, tutoring) techniques, it is best for professionals to consider and apply it on a case-by-case basis. Generally speaking, recommendations in the counseling literature that professional self-disclosures should not take up too much time in the session, and that the client’s life and concerns and not the therapist’s should remain the focus (Sirin, 2008), would be good guidelines for our field as well. We know that the focus in our sessions needs to remain on the student. Assuming, though, that we are focusing on the students’ writing – and not on their personal lives and troubles – raises some independent questions about how much of “ourselves” we should be bringing into each session and for what purpose.

What Gets Disclosed in the Writing Center Therapist self-disclosures as discussed in counseling research typically fall into two main categories: “information about the private life, and thoughts and feelings related to that specific moment” (Sirin, 2008, p.

289). As tutors, we also might choose to make a range of different types of disclosures depending on what is happening in the session and what the student is disclosing. Student disclosures also fall into some different categories, of course. Writing personal essays in our 42

department’s developmental writing program and sharing them in Studio Session over the past several years, our students have been more or less mandated to self-disclose – to open up about their lives, problems, feelings, and inner workings. Within this program, selfdisclosure is linked to the writing process – we expect that as students learn to communicate more effectively about themselves, they will learn to be better writers, and our job is to help them along the way. This has led to more “information about the private life” getting shared in the writing center and classroom than might otherwise be normal in an academic, non-therapy setting.

Beyond being a means for developing writing skills, the subject matter of these essays can be tied to students’ academic success in other ways. Students also communicate their thoughts and feelings specifically related to writing and the class, both through talking (sometimes venting) to us and their classmates, and in reflective letters or similar written assignments. But often the strongest clues to what factors might affect their college experience come not through these writings, but through the actual essays. Conveying the circumstances of their lives through, for example, an “experience” essay about a period of homelessness or an “influence” paper about a family member who is incarcerated, our students give us insight into what they have been through. In addition, we learn (or receive hints regarding) how they feel about coming to school, how school fits in with the rest of their lives, and what challenges or – often – traumas they are facing while in college.

These are worth knowing about. If we did not suspect this already, research (Cox, Reason, Nix, & Gillman, 2016) indicates that “traumatic events occurring out43

side of students’ academic lives can have ramifications for educational outcomes” (pp. 823-824) and “delay or derail” their graduation (p. 839). Traumas and psychological disruptions affect our students’ likelihood of graduating/staying at the college, and the students facing the most problems of this sort may also be the least likely to ask for help. Numerous factors including time and financial constraints, general lack of resources, and societal and personal stigmas can prevent members of our student population from seeking actual therapy. We know we cannot and should not serve the same purpose; yet through reading personal essays and working one-on-one with students, we probably have as much access to what goes on in their lives and heads as a therapist would. For better or worse, what we provide in the WC may be the closest many of our students ever come to undergoing counseling.

Realizing this can certainly be unsettling for us. Despite all the wonderful and rewarding aspects of getting to know the students on a personal level, it is often difficult to figure out how to respond to their disclosures.

How do our realities fit in with theirs? As a staff of various ages and backgrounds working with students of various ages and backgrounds, we can all relate to some of what we hear, but a great deal of it is outside the realms of our experience and understanding. Frequently lacking common ground in our sessions as well as the training, license, and job description of therapists, we of course still need to discuss writing – and in light of many of the topics we encounter, much of the usual feedback we’d give can feel painfully absurd (“But what is your thesis statement about your years in an abusive relationship?”).

Steering the conversation toward writing-related matters, we risk widening the gap between our students 44

and ourselves; in using language that draws attention to our educational backgrounds, we can highlight the distances between our worlds and theirs and possibly even further alienate them. Gibson (2012) describes a kind of “accidental” self-disclosure that can happen in counseling conversations when “…the client may recognize in the (therapist’s) question an assumption about how the world works that does not apply to his/ her own reality” (p. 289). Applying this to our job, we can perhaps also generally say that when we write and talk about writing, we self-disclose – even when we are not doing so intentionally – and should consider the outcomes of this.

Self-Disclosure in Group Discussions, and Moving Forward When our self-disclosures seem to emphasize differences between us and the students, we may worry that this is counterproductive. The group setting of our Studio Sessions – or Writing Workshops, in our newly revamped program – has the potential to both heighten and reduce this stress, as this setting involves multiple students all sharing their writing and self-disclosing by extension. In the group, students discuss their lives, thoughts, and feelings through discussing their essays, and they get to know each other. In one of my past Studio Sessions, two students both wrote about their plans to leave their abusive boyfriends. Previously strangers, they bonded over their shared experience and came to support each other and make sure each other stayed in school. Considering the traumas that are so often present in our students’ lives, finding support within the college can be vital to keeping them here and on track, and many times I have seen how our Studio Sessions can be helpful in this. Studio Sessions are not group therapy. However, some of the potential benefits of 45

group counseling as discussed by Wade, et al. (2011) would seem to apply – particularly “the power of hearing another’s story” in reducing fears and stigmas that might prevent people from trying counseling in the first place (171). In my experience, students’ interest in telling their stories and hearing other people tell theirs reliably contributes to their investment in Studio Session and their writing classes.

Still, as can be expected, not everyone is immediately comfortable sharing with a group of strangers. Wade, et al. (2011) also note that for people beginning group therapy, it may be more important “to feel connected to the group leader rather than the group members because, in the initial stage of group counseling, people often look to the leader for direction, help, and reassurance” (p. 171). In our role, we try to provide all of this especially in relation to writing; for students unaccustomed to discussing writing, we can “model” what it sounds like to do so until they feel more comfortable jumping in. It can also help us to employ occasional self-disclosures at this point and throughout Studio Session, since students can be curious (and possibly a little suspicious) about this person coming to their class and involving them in group discussions that can delve into such personal territory. Along with contributing our thoughts and feelings as part of the group and sharing aspects of our personal lives now and then, we can make disclosures about our own experiences and foibles with writing to encourage students to share more.

With this might come some anxiety that if students learn more about us, it might only confirm suspicions they have about us being different from them and add to their wariness. However, Gibson (2012) points out that it is likely ill-founded to assume (as much of the 46

counseling literature does) that self-disclosures must be about similarities between people to be helpful; more important, as Wade, et al. (2011) stress in regards to group counseling, is simply reminding clients – in our case, students – that they are talking to a real person.

Over the years, Studio Sessions have given us the opportunity to show students we are real people who care and can be helpful to them, and this fosters the trust that then leads them to come, and keep coming, to the writing center.

Studio Session has also given students the chance to connect with and support each other, as in the case of the two women who wrote about leaving their abusive relationships. In the context of class, this might never have come up if they hadn’t written about it in their essays. This is worth considering especially in upcoming semesters, as we make the shift to a writing program that focuses less on personal essay-writing. Many students we see entering the college are unaccustomed to writing in an academic style. In helping them learn to do this, starting out from a personal standpoint – encouraging students to share their stories, then workshopping these as a bridge to writing more argumentative essays and research papers – has not been a perfect system, but we have also witnessed the good it can do.

It has helped cultivate students’ trust in us and in each other, which contributes to their success. Also, it is important for us to know why students might be resistant or having problems in class, and we may receive fewer clues to this as we read essays with less personal subject matter. Going forward, we may need to find other ways at times to encourage students to self-disclose, and our own self-disclosure might be a way to open the door.

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References Cox, B.E., Reason, R.D., Nix, S., & Gillman, M. (2016).

Life happens (outside of college): Non-college lifeevents and students’ likelihood of graduation. Research in Higher Education, 57, 823-844. doi: 10.1007/s11162016-9409-z Gibson, M.F. (2012). Opening up: Therapist selfdisclosure in theory, research, and practice. Clinical Social Work Journal, 40, 287-296. doi: 10.1007/s10615-0120391-4 Sirin, A. (2008). Self-disclosure through sharing with the public. Journal of Instructional Psychology, 35(3), 288293.

Wade, N. G., Post, B.C., Cornish, M.A., Vogel, D.L., & Tucker, J.R. (2011). Predictors of the change in selfstigma following a single session of group counseling.

Journal of Counseling Psychology, 58(2), 170-182. doi: 10.1037/a0022630

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Untitled Hannah Cairns I have been introduced to several different styles of teaching throughout my years of tutoring, and there is always a period of adjustment to go through when I start a new position. This being my first year working in the Writing Center at Stark State, I was immediately eager to get to know the students and find my rhythm.

Now, a year later, I can’t help but see the growth in myself that this experience has brought. Like every Writing Assistant, I want to walk away from a session feeling confident that I was as helpful as possible. I have, at times, felt the frustration of a seemingly fruitless session, and wondered afterward what I could have done differently. In retrospect, I see that this frustration came about because my paradigm of Writing Center tutoring was too one-sided.

As a tutor in my undergrad university’s Writing Center, it was repeatedly stressed to me to use “nondirective” methods and address “high order” concerns.

We were students of Stephen North and revered his essay, “The Idea of the Writing Center.” As I learned the why and the how, I was excited and totally on board with this style of tutoring. The academic journals we read about these concepts and the conversations we had such as “never touch the student’s paper,” etc, made sense to me. Of course the student should be the one to make changes and improvements to his or her paper! But once I started working in our campus Writing Center, I began encountering problems. What was I to do if a distressed student came in and only wanted help with grammar, or had never written an academic paper before? Sometimes, I saw so-called “low level” issues, but felt like I would be violating the 49

Writing Center’s core values if I pointed them out to the student. I found myself explaining general concepts and handing out pamphlets in these situations, but it really didn’t feel like I was helping, and those students rarely returned. I still believed, however, that nondirective methods were the only right and ethical way to help students with their writing.

A few years after graduation, I accepted a tutoring position at a private institution called Lainie’s Learning Lane. While there, I learned how to use creative, rightbrain teaching methods with elementary and high school students who struggled with learning disabilities and attention disorders. The mantra of the director was “teach students in the way that they can learn.”

We were constantly reinventing how to demonstrate basic mathematic and reading concepts to the students until the lightbulb came on for them. At times, the demand on my creative faculties made me feel in over my head, but I learned so much and grew as an effective educator. It taught me that education is not about enforcing an idealized, one-size-fits-all program. Really, we just need to keep explaining concepts until they make sense and the student is empowered.

This is also true in the Writing Center, especially in a college setting like Stark State. I came to realize that if I really wanted to be helpful, there were going to be times when I was going to be teaching the basics and giving direct advice. The articles I loved about nondirective tutoring made sense in theory, but if the student isn’t learning, it’s time to take a direct approach.

Truly, “the benefits of alternative tutoring practices are frequent enough to make us seriously question whether one tutoring approach fits all students and situations” (Shamoon & Burns 139). Community colleges have a unique goal and clientele. Some of the stu50

dents I’ve worked with this year have been out of school for so long that Microsoft Word is brand new to them. Others may have graduated high school more recently but never really learned how to write an academic paper. In these situations, the student needs to be shown how to proceed, and the tutor should not feel guilty or intrusive on the student’s ownership of the paper because the student is being empowered.

If students are exercising different cognitive skills at different stages of their learning, it makes sense that they may be responsive to different kids of information and tutoring styles at different stages, too. Our personal and WAC experiences suggest that, at the very least, for intermediate and advanced students, and perhaps on occasion for beginners, too, one tutoring approach does not fit all.

(Shamoon & Burns 139) I really appreciate the non-directive methods that I learned in undergrad. I think college students should have already mastered basic writing skills and the boring five sentence paragraph before they reach college. But, that’s not always the case, and tutors should be equipped to know when to focus on high order concerns and when to just lay out the basics in a direct way. Some aspects of essay writing are not intuitive, and asking a student “What do you think?” may cause frustration and discouragement.

The outstanding learning experience of my first year tutoring at Stark State College has been learning to comfortably alternate between directive and nondirective styles of tutoring, sometimes even within the 51

same session. I don’t view one as superior to the other, but more like tools in the same toolbox. Let us strive to be helpful and be open to sharing what we have learned in a way that empowers students.

Reference Shamoon, Linda K., and Deborah H. Burns. “A Critique of Pure Tutoring.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 15, no. 2, 1995, pp. 134–151. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43441975

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Two Types of Resources Jamie Thompson During this semester I had an interesting experience working with a deaf student. I am sure many people have talked about this student before, and the need for better resources for students with handicaps. Working with this student would certainly have been a lot easier with the help of a translator, rather than being forced to write out everything we wanted to say. It is easy to say that we need more resources for disabled students.

However, there are actually two different types of resources that we need, and the second one is usually overlooked.

We have come a long way for providing services to students with disabilities such as hearing impairments.

In public schools it is mandatory for students to have access to the resources they need such as translators.

Yet, at the higher education level, it is a different story.

The deaf student we worked with was put into an online class, probably because someone assumed an online class would automatically be easier for her, but this does not mean that she does not still need the resources deaf students are supposed to be afforded.

According to the Center for Online Education: Students with disabilities are legally entitled to services that ensure their ability to participate in coursework and extracurriculars available at school. Universities, however, are not required to proactively search for students with disabilities. It is [the deaf student’s] job to schedule meetings with the disability counselor on campus, and [their] responsibility to request any services [they] need. (Center for Online Education) 53

This distinction seems ridiculous to me. There is no point in having a resource if the college is not going to take the time to make sure that resource is used by the people who need it. Yet I see this problem many times in many aspects of college education. For example, Stark State spent a lot of money on new high-tech computers, but then did not take the time to make sure the right classes were scheduled in rooms with those computers. So, the resource often goes to waste. On paper, this story sounds like a funny anecdote, but when it comes to the welfare of disabled students the reality is not as funny. Last I heard, the deaf student previously mentioned was failing her class. Not surprising when she was not given access to the resources she needed or may not have been aware those resources existed.

This brings up a second type of resource that is often overlooked. Resources for tutors and teachers. I feel particularly bad that I could not help this student more since I used to be competent in ASL, not enough to truly call myself fluent, but enough to get by in a conversation. Yet after years without use, I have lost that skill and do not even have much confidence in the few signs I still remember. After sitting with this student for an hour I wished that I had put in the effort to keep up my sign language over the previous years. Without the necessary resources, such as a place to use these skill on the regular, this is extremely difficult.

In an ideal world tutors, teachers, and other educators, would have access to resources like ASL classes so that they could have at least a basic understanding of sign language. The only reason I was able to learn it at all was because I took ASL as my foreign language when I was an undergrad student. Now, I doubt I would be able to afford the classes on my own. If they were offered as a job resource I would probably have taken 54

them to keep up on the skill. It does not have to be mandatory, but it should be available. With access to our own resources, we could not only better educate disabled students, but also make sure they known what resources they have at their disposal. If the deaf student I worked with had access to a translator, she would have gotten a lot more out of our sessions. Maybe even been able to pass her course.

When we talk about providing resources for disabled students, we often only think about the things directly needed by those students. The resources needed by the people responsible for educating those students are often overlooked. Neither type should be neglected, but resources devoted to helping tutors and teachers pull double duty. Not only do they help the educator, but they also help the student as well.

Work Cited Center for Online Education. Support for Students with Hearing Impairments. 2018

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Lack of Empathy in Higher Education Jess Beck It happens again. “My paper is due tomorrow. I need to know it’s okay.” “I just need someone to help me with my grammar.” “I am really bad at writing.” All too often, I hear these or variations on these phrases.

And every time, I roll my eyes. It’s not that I don’t understand the struggle of confidence in writing; this essay is evidence of that. It’s just that I sometimes forget there’s a person on the other end of that chat room who hasn’t had five years of English education and countless additional hours either teaching, tutoring, or professionally writing on which to rely. I have my go-to, cliché phrases that I repeat like a machine on automatic. We get through the session, and students usually feel better when they leave versus when we started. I move on quickly with little or no afterthought. However, when the mention of having to write a research paper for my evaluation came up, everything suddenly got very real and very personal. I write every day, sure.

Emails, FaceBook posts, text messages, policies for procedures at work; I write a ton. However…academic writing? A research paper? It hit me like the proverbial ton of bricks. I don’t identify with the students I help because I haven’t been in their position in a long time, and I need to change my perspective, seeing individuals, because I now understand their struggle.

As it is, I have been out of the student side of education for quite some time, but I do remember that Howard Gardner (2011) argued individuals have the capacity for nine different intelligences and have individual strengths and weaknesses in each of these areas. Sadly, higher education seems to continue to focus on verbal and analytic-reasoning skills, which may help us un56

derstand the higher ratio of non-traditional college students (meaning students that are older than twentyfour years) we see currently enrolled in technical schools, colleges, and universities. Let’s face it; people like to pursue activities that come easy to them or in which they excel. Most high school students entering the college or work environment struggle to find confidence in intelligences like linguistics or logicalmathematical, and they instead go to work to pay the bills and start their adult lives or simply get away from a traditional education where they struggled (Wlodkowski & Ginsberg, 2017, p. 36). Many people may need the time to mature to recognize the importance of how college can help them advance their careers. With the growing number of colleges offering degrees in disciplines beyond the classics, many more adults are finding themselves in the classroom and still struggling to master those language or logic-related studies.

This is where resources like the Writing Center at Stark State can help. However, instead of trying to empathize with the students struggling with writing, I often find myself secretly judging these individuals. If I changed my perspective before I started my sessions, I think I could do more good. For example, instead of looking at a student’s writing as the “writing professional” that I am, I should try to pretend that I am in their position. How would this session go if I was a linguistic professional trying to get help learning how to use a CAD program in engineering? I can tell you right now, I would want the person on the other end of that conversation to know a ton about the program, but I would also want that person to understand that I have no earthly idea what I am doing. And I want that person to acknowledge my struggle. In order to better help the students that meet me for online writing ses57

sions, I need to put myself in their mindset and acknowledge that they are not always comfortable with the work they bring for review.

When I finally realized that I needed to change my viewpoint, I needed to find someone who could give me the means to truthfully and honestly change my ways. Wlodkowski and Ginsberg (2017) gave me two realistic options: first, “if something can be learned, it can be learned in a motivating manner,” and second, “every instructional plan also needs to be a motivational plan” (p. 44). I started thinking about how I could integrate these two rationales into my brief encounters with Stark State College students. If I want to motivate students to enjoy reading, I need to reiterate my understanding of their feelings (without going overboard and allowing them to become a victim to the assignment’s stringent requirements). It’s normal to be overwhelmed or to feel lost. Furthermore, I need to genuinely believe this without a snicker on my end. I need to meet these individuals where they are, meaning that I need to be more aware of how the language I use to explain (what I consider) basic concepts may make a student feel about his or her own writing. Small steps, but I think it will make a considerable difference in student return rates and individuals seeking out help on their own (without prompting from a professor).

Next, even though I am not the student’s teacher for the semester, I need to have the plan that, with every single interaction I have with students online, I have the opportunity to make a plan about how we can tackle their writing assignments together. I need to ask students to explain back to me in their own words their understanding of my explanations and give positive reinforcement when they can do so. Often, I feel like I am just telling students what to do, and maybe this is 58

where we are collectively failing. While the professors need to have requirements for writing, I find that many assignments are on irrelevant topics, and the students just don’t have any personal connection or care for what they are writing about. If we are encouraging our K-12 teachers to provide alternative assignments to help meet student intelligences, maybe we can start to offer more alternative assignments in the higher education classroom. Does a student have to write an argumentative research paper to exhibit their knowledge of APA style? I would argue that students may find more relevant assignments when given the choice of a PowerPoint presentation, a brochure, or even a technical product description for informational purposes. If we collectively take the step back to honestly look at how we are planning out our classes, and even our tutoring sessions, I think that we will find much more success in the level of participation and interest from our students. Additionally, we will challenge ourselves to step outside the box of traditional education for nontraditional students.

Sadly, I know that I am not going to write a selfevaluation paper that reaches the far-off teachers of the world and motivates them to rethink, review, and repair their syllabi. What I am hoping for is for more empathy in my own interactions with students. This paper has been a struggle for me to write because I have been out of the student-seat for so long. It challenged me view the students and their efforts in a different light. Fortunately, I know that I am going to grow as a writing assistant because I took a longoverdue, objective look at how I was simply going through the motions of tutoring and not “seeing� the person on the writing side of that essay or assignment.

I adore writing, but I definitely have a new-found love and empathy for the individuals we have the pleasure 59

of serving each and every day.

References Gardner, H. (2011). Multiple Intelligences. howardgardner.com. Retrieved from https:// howardgardner.com/multiple-intelligences/ Wlodkowski, R.J. & Ginsberg, M. B. (2017). Enhancing Adult Motivation to Learn: A Comprehensive Guide for Teaching All Adults. San Fransisco, CA: John Wiley & Sons.

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Being a writing tutor is sometimes a vague space, we are not quite instructors, but still considered to be authorities to students. Operating in this space means that our jobs largely consist of translating and paraphrasing entire lessons that a student has already been taught. A lot of times I’ve noticed that when it comes to preparing someone to teach or to tutor, we also forget to explain how important it is to communicate clearly, in different ways, and without confusing academic language. We also forget to address or teach students on how to communicate in an academic setting. There is an implied power dynamic in this structure, and oftentimes what really holds back communication is fear of reprimand. This fear can be either of the instructor or of fellow classmates. How do we remedy this imbalance?

The layers of power dynamics in academia, and largely the world, are obviously complicated and hard to define. In this case I plan to mostly address the classroom and tutoring spaces. There’s no one to blame really, we have simply gotten used to education being done in a certain way. Tutoring is fairly experiential in the way that it is done in the Writing Centers I am familiar with. While thinking about this I began to think through what I could personally do in order to be more accessible with a larger number of students. Part of that is taking a really critical look at the demographics within the population of tutors themselves. What is our age range, experience, cultural/ethnic/racial background, gender, and sexual orientations? Well, when you look at it, we are not particularly diverse in any area of academia overall.

In our particular college we have a huge amount of 61

In our particular college we have a huge amount of cultural diversity, and a wide age range in our student demographics. Communicating in a way that crosses all of these demographics is difficult and largely leaves us repeating ourselves. Also, all of us have done sessions that become, well, tense. This is largely because with so many different kinds of people there will also be many differences in opinions. This also happens in one-on-one interactions with tutors and tutees. While our student body is mostly comprised of nontraditional students, and students of color, the staff and instructors at our college don’t reflect that. This leaves an implied hierarchy that makes it difficult for marginalized students to feel comfortable speaking up and to us.

In her article Alison Jones talks just about this, and some of her solutions to this struggle. In the very beginning of the paper she says, Most pressingly, as a teacher I ask, what if "togetherness" and dialogue-across-difference fail to hold a compellingly positive meaning for subordinate ethnic groups? What if the "other" fails to find interesting the idea of their empathetic understanding of the powerful, which is theoretically demanded by dialogic encounters? What happens when the other refuses to join in the "multiple voices for mutually empowering conversation" in the progressive classroom? Gayatri Spivak's complex question "Can the subaltern speak?" is addressed here not in terms of the silencing of the oppressed, but through reflecting on the dominant group's responses to subaltern resistance to speaking. (Jones, 1999) I take this to mean that in both group discussions and 62

dialogues in class it often is the dominant culture whose voices take preference in the classroom, even though they may be the minority in the class. This makes it hard for the marginalized people in the class to feel comfortable addressing the prompts assigned to them. When it comes to group discussions it is more likely for them to be told that their experiences are wrong or inaccurate because the subjects that marginalized people bring up make the people who have the societal power uncomfortable.

I have endless personal examples of this as generally, I am the only Black Indigenous person representing my profession in most spaces. For example, during a project about a cause that the students felt represented them, I noticed that in a class of mostly Black students, many of them were afraid to speak up about the causes they felt were important to them. Why? Well, their instructor and two students in the class are White (I know this largely because several of the students talked to me about this after that session). This is a class of about, depending on the day, 16 people and 14 of them were left unable to represent themselves because they were afraid that their two White classmates were going to shut them down.

In order to put power back in their corner I opened up the discussion by talking about something obscure that none of the class was using, but still had controversial dynamics associated with it. This caused a White student to raise his voice at me, but because I was the authority in the room at the time I was able to speak up and say, “We are here to discuss topics like these, and since we have listened to you without being confrontational, you need to do the same for everybody else.�

The argument ended there but also opened up the space for the rest of the students to speak honestly 63

about their prompt ideas without fear of reprimand and confrontation in our next studio session. The momentary friction facilitated by myself, the person in the position of “power,” did however, allow the room for everyone else to confidently bring up their thoughts.

When you have someone who reflects your demographic, or someone who doesn’t but is conscious about the power imbalance and pushes for space in teaching environments that allows marginalized people to feel safe, everyone benefits. Being exposed to lives and opinions that make you uncomfortable is not actually harmful to anyone. Education is not the space to remain constant, the pursuit of any type of education should be somewhat uncomfortable. There is some strain in expanding one’s horizons, and that’s good for us all. I cannot only cater to a privileged minority and allow it to be of detriment to the vast majority of the students in the class. While leaning into something that could have led to conflict was fairly nerve-wracking for me, only the person with the perceived power can redistribute that power in an equitable way. Jones herself discusses doing this in her own classrooms in New Zealand, taking Maori students out of the margins, and giving them the space to reclaim their education. “As part of the European "mainstream," the experience of being classified as "other" to Maori...was a learning experience. The feeling of exclusion, or being a left-over, is not pleasant.” (Jones, 1999). The system that they had been educated up until Jones conducted this study, had left Maori students feeling unheard. Conclusions have been drawn not only from this author, but from many other researchers that this is very harmful to the education of all marginalized people. You cannot learn, question, write, or research if you are so hindered by fear of backlash and being ignored that you never speak up.

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This ideology also does not necessarily have to do with properly representing who the majority of a class is either. Better thought and better writing are cultivated by pushing people to think outside of themselves, so when you enter a classroom, workshop, or studio session, I urge you to look around. Who is speaking, and who is not, who is open to sharing their work, and who is afraid? If your classroom or studio session any transgender, disabled, non-neurotypical, queer, or nonWhite students, maybe give them some of your power.

Let them have the space to humanize themselves to people who don’t understand their perspectives and lives. It may not always work smoothly, but that is one more educational experience you have provided, both for yourself and for those listening. As a writing tutor I listen to lots of things I don’t agree with, things that dehumanize me on a personal level every time I hear them. I do it though, and I have been doing it throughout my life and college. In the end it is because I am a lifelong learner, a lightweight philosopher, and for nearly 5 years a dedicated non-directive tutor.

Something else to note about demographics: 40% of Millennials in this country identify as non-White, and as time goes on and generations pass that is only going to increase. Currently, Black women are holding and pursuing the most PhDs in the country. Black women are the largest and most qualified group of academics in this up and coming generation. This is a sign of the times, sooner than we think, “majority culture” will have less to do with accurately reflecting our population in both academia and the nation, and more to do with who holds privilege and power. It follows that enrollment of marginalized people is going to continue to increase. If we do not reflect upon how to make our spaces accessible for people like this, I only foresee two outcomes: higher dropout rates for marginalized stu65

dents, and educational spaces that become outdated and irrelevant. Both of those outcomes work in tandem with each other, leading to lower graduation rates, and subsequently less funding for education. To confront this reality is to admit this; we in education will have to evolve or see our fields die.

References Jones, A. (1999). The limits of cross-cultural dialogue: Pedagogy, desire, and absolution in the classroom. Educational Theory, 49(3), 299.

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Tutoring Theory and Academic Writing: Preparing Students for the Real World Katelynne Shepard I have had considerable experience in academic writing — as a student, tutor, and adjunct — and I've also been working as a full-time freelance content writer, editor, and content strategist for six years and counting. In that time, I have seen many people with a strong academic background, including PhDs and tenured faculty members, fail miserably at making the transition from academic to professional writing. It usually ends with the person going on a rant about how the editor knows nothing and clearly doesn't don't understand what good writing looks like.

The truth is that our backgrounds — be it education, job history, or even hobbies — influence the methods we rely on most when tutoring, and I believe that my professional writing experience causes me to view many of the things common in academia and teaching/ tutoring writing through a different lens with a focus toward a more practical style.

Content Writing vs. Academic Writing One of the biggest differences between academic writing and content writing is that academic writing is prized for complicated sentence structures and highbrow vocabulary. Sometimes it seems like the person who can make the reader get the most out of breath is the smartest or most publishable, and it's very common and acceptable to write in a manner that alienates nearly everyone except for those in that specific discipline.

When discussing articles published in the medical discipline, Collier states 67

Why say died when you can say experienced a rapidly fatal outcome? This is why polysyllables abound, so we get the words intergenerational, multidimensional, conceptualization, consanguine and conjugality in the same paragraph. Then there are statements so obvious they needn’t exist. Is it really necessary to note that unproductive diagnostic measures are unnecessary?

(E1407) Content marketing is the opposite. The goal is to convey the point in a manner that will reach the most people and have the best conversion rates. This often means clients requesting paragraphs of three sentences or less — or 75 words per paragraph tops — and middle school Flesch Kincaid scores. After all, a potential buyer is likely to turn away if they go to a website and have to use a dictionary to understand the product or service.

Another key difference is in how the writer feels when they've finished the piece. A student who finally finishes that 1,000-word paper they've been working on for two weeks probably has a sense of accomplishment or some emotional attachment. They wrote it. It's theirs.

However, for a copywriter, the words are just a means to an end. That same 1,000 words would take a skilled copywriter 60-90 minutes to complete, and at the end, they'd hit submit and immediately move on to the next thing on their list. Most of the full-time freelance writers I know are writing between 3,000 and 10,000 words a day, usually 5 to 7 days a week. There's no time to bask in a clever analogy or expertly crafted introduction because more words are waiting.

But even with all of these differences, writing is still writing, and there are plenty of things that academic 68

and content writing share. The first of these is audience. Whether you're writing marketing copy in an attempt to target a certain consumer demographic or trying to craft a persuasive research paper, knowing — and speaking to — your audience is key. Everything from the research chosen and the formatting to the word choice and sentence structure is working toward a central purpose and trying to influence or make an impact on a certain subset of people.

Both types of writing also require attention to detail, especially when it comes to grammar and mechanics. If an academic paper is riddled with errors, the resulting grade isn't likely to be good, and if a copywriter submits something with so much as a typo or errant comma it could be the difference between getting paid and not.

Lastly, content writing and academic writing are similar in that the message is almost as important as the words used to convey it. Keywords and search engine optimization are at the root of any successful content marketing strategy, but stuff your articles and blogs full of SEO soup, and the Google spiders will pass you by. The same goes for students who think they can throw out some pretty words and high vocabulary and successfully BS their way through a five-page paper the night before it's due. They can turn it in, but it's not going to bring the result they want.

Bringing a Practical Approach to Tutoring Sessions Yeah, sure copy writing and academic writing are kind of similar and kind of not, but this brings us to the million-dollar question: So what? How does taking a realworld approach to sessions actually help the student?

Here are a few practical examples based on scenarios every tutor has faced.

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Put the Emphasis on Clarity Assuming the student truly is in the end stages with just some proofreading and sentence-level corrections taking place, what the tutor chooses to focus on can make a big difference. While there is value in having students try to find more specific or descriptive wording, there's also something to be said for accessible writing that's easy to understand while still making a point.

A five-syllable word may win some brownie points on a paper, but teaching students to prioritize clear and concise writing is a far more realistic preparation for the majority of the writing they're going to be doing in their future careers.

The same is true of complicated sentence structures and long paragraphs. We teach in business writing classes that it's important to get to the point immediately because people are busy and they don't want to spend five minutes reading an email trying to figure out what someone needs. This should also be applied to traditional academic writing.

If we truly want to teach students to write in a way that expresses their well-researched and thought-out views in an attempt to affect an audience, we need to ensure that the content is accessible. One way to do this is to expand the "read it out loud" method tutors often give to students who have trouble catching typos and small mistakes and teaching students to read their work aloud to catch wordiness, unrelated parenthetical elements and syntax issues (Larocque 38).

Don't Force an Attachment I have seen many instructors have the same conversation with students:

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Instructor: You're going to write a paper on something that is meaningful to you. It can be an object, a place, a person or anything that you think is important for people to know about you.

Student: I don't have anything to write about.

Instructor: Well, what has had a big impact on your life?

Student: Nothing.

Instructor: Is there any particular place that really makes you feel relaxed or at peace?

Student: No. And this eventually continues until the instructor basically says, "Ok, just pick something!"

It's true that students often turn in better work when the topic is something they connect with and feel passionately about, but sometimes this may be unnecessary and can stall out the writing process before it has even begun.

As a copywriter, you can certainly choose whether to take an assignment, but if you're always holding out for something that is in your niche or a topic you really enjoy writing about, you're not going to have any grocery money that month. Content writing is very much about doing the work that's there regardless of whether it inspires you, and 95 percent of the time, it won't.

A key part of college is coming to the understanding that tasks — writing and otherwise — aren't always enjoyable. Sometimes you just have to do something because you have to do it, and much of life is about jumping through the hoops to get what you need.

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An alternative approach can be to help students understand that the act and practice of writing is what's most important here as it relates to their prospective career.

Many students undervalue writing and don't understand why being able to use proper verb tense or commas correctly makes a difference if they aren't going to be a novelist. However, written communication skills are important in nearly every industry today, and this isn't likely to change as more and more things are done via email and computers for documentation purposes.

One study published in 2016 found that more than half of the practicing accountants surveyed believed that "written communication skills" were a "factor in hiring entry-level accounting graduates to their firm." This study also found that the writing skills of spelling/ proper word usage, grammar, punctuation, and clarity were all deemed to be "necessary for entry-level accountants." Being able to provide these facts can go a long way toward getting better student buy-in. (Riley and Simmons 246) Be Honest About Return-on-Investment In my role as a content writer and editor, I'm always looking at my hourly. It doesn't matter if something pays me $200 if it's going to take me two days to do it.

I'd rather take easy work that I can do quickly for less money because it means the hourly breakdown is going to be much higher. Return-on-investment, or ROI, is an integral part of content writing, and it can be applied to students and tutoring sessions as well.

If it's two days before the paper is due and the student is totally off track, is it really best to stick to the idea that a clear thesis and appropriate research need to come first? If the student is in that bad of a situation two days before the paper is due, the truth is that they 72

probably aren't going to be much better off even if they do manage to fix the higher-order issues. In this case, it might be better to think like a professional writer and go into damage control mode. Restructure the thesis, clarify a few points, create a more engaging conclusion, and then go to bed and prepare yourself to accept the C. The key takeaway in all of this is to understand that just because the tutor has an extensive academic background and the tutee is currently a student doesn’t mean that the session should be limited to what's commonplace in higher education. Stepping out of the academic box and introducing concepts to students in relation to the future goals can create a more engaging and more productive session.

Works Cited Collier, Roger. "A Call for Clarity and Quality in Medical Writing." CMAJ: Canadian Medical Association Journal = Journal De L'Association Medicale Canadienne, vol. 189, no. 46, 2017, p. E1407. doi:10.1503/cmaj.171265.

Larocque, Paula. "Speak and Hear Your Work for Seamless Writing." Quill, vol. 102, no. 5, Sept./ Oct. 2014, p. 38.

Riley, Tracey J. and Kathleen A. Simons. "The Written Communication Skills That Matter Most for Accountants." Accounting Education, vol. 25, no.

3, 2016, pp. 239-255.

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Self-Revision and Communication Tactics in the Online Writing Center Nathan Floom This June marks my seventh year in the writing center.

This year was another one spent chatting online with dozens and dozens of students in our online writing center. Working solely online with students is always an interesting experience. With our new program occasionally students log in with their cameras and microphones on. At the start of one session I could hear a student’s parrot squawking in the background. While not all my sessions start off with a parrot (thankfully) most of them take place in a chat box on Blackboard.

With our newly upgraded system, Collaborate, I am able to do all sorts of neat things like screen-share papers, see a student write and take notes in real time on a google doc, etc. In this brave new world of online spaces and fancy new features I always find myself reflecting back on the most important part of our job: language.

Working online, I feel, requires a lot more emphasis on written communication during tutoring and more thought given to how we convey information online.

For example, we all know that ALL CAPS IS YELLING on the internet, but what we sometimes forget is how sometimes simple sentences or a delay in messages being received can create a large and ineffective disconnect between student and tutor. Kathryn Raign, in her article “Creating Verbal Immediacy: The Use of Immediacy and Avoidance Techniques in Online Tutorials” investigates this idea of language use and what I call “self-revision” when tutoring students: “Tutors work with an incredibly diverse body of students, so they must be careful to tailor their responses to the individ74

ual student” (Raign). When working with students I have the unique ability to not only chat with them about their writing to help them improve their skills but also to “self-revise” myself when answering questions. Have you ever been in a session and said something only to stumble and perhaps wish you had explained it better? I know I have. Online is no different, but online when something is written and sent it almost appears as if it is “set in stone” to the receiver. There are no take-backs or laughing off something absurd.

What I can do is write my responses out in the chat box and take a moment of consideration before sending them. If a sentence I say doesn’t seem to work, or perhaps advice I was writing no longer makes sense after a student response, I can change it. I can re-work it. I can revise myself during a tutoring session. To me, online communication and how we can revise our words in sessions with more careful consideration for the online student is something important to my practice in the writing center.

What really interested me at first about this subject was the idea of permanence through our writing. Once something is written it becomes record, it becomes something solid and concrete. I can save an article somebody wrote to read later and it won’t change. It becomes a sort of “truth”. I can copy and paste an email into my notes if it’s something important. Whenever we send messages online it becomes record, something that can’t really be changed at all or even taken back. In the online setting of the writing center, I am very aware that each message I send and that every session I have is effectively “recorded” in some way. Each message, every typo, every turn of phrase enters into a permanent record of sorts for both myself and the student.

Several whole classes of students have had to copy and paste their tutoring sessions into a word document to 75

turn in to their instructor along with their papers. Some students save our chats as notes to refer back to later.

Again, this idea of permanence: my advice and my line of questioning entering into a recorded space. Jesse Kavadlo, in her article “Creating Verbal Immediacy: The Use of Immediacy and Avoidance Techniques in Online Tutorials” writes a little about this idea: Online tutorials are also more permanent. As I explain to tutors, once they send their responses, it is potentially available for anyone to interpret, unlike the unrecorded, plausible deniability of the face to face session. Tutors, then, must be especially vigilant online, never writing anything to a student that they would not want that student’s instructor, mother, or university administrator to see. (Thankfully, I have never received a complaint about an online session from a professor, parent, or president.)

Kavaldo points out two things really well in her article.

She focuses on the separation and disconnections students and tutors can have online, as well as the need for online tutors to be much more conscious of what they are saying and how they are responding to student work. Now, it should be said that Kavaldo’s online writing center is not done in the same way as Stark State’s. In Kavaldo’s writing center students submit papers online and tutors write responses and criticisms back to the student (in a similar way an instructor might comment on papers). Though the methods of Kavaldo’s writing center and our own might be different, the concept is the same. Once a tutor writes something down it becomes record and is thus open to interpretation. I know that some tutors, knowing this and treating a student’s paper as a sacred object, write very 76

little on papers to respect the original work. When a face-to-face session is happening facial expressions, body language, contexts, and follow up conversations can help facilitate communication and learning. In the online setting a sentence of honest criticism or a line of questioning can easily turn a student towards a feeling of being interrogated or picked apart. So, if one danger of online communication is misinterpretation and permanence then how can we as tutors make sure that our language is as productive with a student as it can be?

How can we make sure that as we tutor our chat conversation is productive and conducive towards a positive experience?

In Raign’s article she breaks down, with examples, the different language forms used most effectively with students online using samples from tutors. In my practice this year I have started to include some of her suggestions and findings from her study. Raign says that tutors should communicate in a such a way that shows they want to communicate and continue communicating. “Examples could include: What prompt did your teacher give you? What are your primary concerns with the document? What do you have trouble with when writing?”. During tutoring sessions I find myself nearly always starting by first greeting the student and asking them how their day is going. I have found this sets up a banter and I can also glean if there is an anxiety I can shave off right from the start. The big danger with online sessions is how easy it is for the conversation to devolve into a line of questioning from the tutor and a simple “yes” or “no” or “okay” answer from the student. Raign’s example questions help to avoid that. Also, using the question “tell me more” can help stem that off. I’ve found that allowing the student space and time to form responses helps with this.

Sometimes I’ve seen students intentionally use “k” to 77

avoid having to talk in sessions. This is where I use the “tell me more” line of questioning to get something of a greater substance from the student in conversation.

Raign also argues that, “Given the already dehumanizing nature of technology, we must attempt to use the student's name, or inclusive pronouns such as “we” whenever possible”. This is something I’ve found I naturally do in my sessions. I try to always use the “we” pronoun as in, “What are we working on?” or “How do you think we could rework this section?”. Additionally, I try to make a point to say the student’s name at least three times during a session. In the end, the goal is to appear as human as possible online. Just like inperson sessions, it is essential to try to understand and level with the student exactly where they are and help them upgrade their skill sets. Raign goes on to share how often successful online tutors included things such as using praise, humor, and personal examples using “I” such as, “I see what you mean, that is tricky”. In theory, all of this seems like pretty straightforward advice, but in practice, it can be difficult at times. Students bring to the table all sorts of inherent issues, anxieties, and disabilities. It’s our jobs as tutors to embrace these and try to identify with and relate as much as possible with the person on the other end of the screen.

Manipulating and modifying language use can be the online tutor’s best tool for success.

As this year draws to a close I realize that tutoring, for me, has become an entirely written process. Through my online tutoring I very rarely, if ever, “speak” with a student. I like to think of this as a strength to online tutoring as opposed to a separation. Like I mentioned at the beginning of this I am able to be more careful and calculating with what I am saying. I can write a thought I have down in the chat box ahead of the student and see how it fits. I can backspace. I can adjust 78

my use of language. I can make a point to be more “human”. The response from students, on the whole, I would say is positive. Showing them that I’m a real person, with real thoughts, and real genuine reactions helps the students to engage more with the tutoring process. Ultimately, the more a student engages during a session the more they will learn. The online format should be one that connects people together as opposed to separating them.

Works Cited Kavadlo, Jesse. “The Message is the Medium: Electronically Helping Writing Tutors Help Electronically.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 10, no. 2. http://www.praxisuwc.com/kavadlo102 Accessed 5 March 2018.

Raign, Kathryn Rosser. “Creating Verbal Immediacy: The Use of Immediacy and Avoidance Techniques in Online Tutorials.” Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, vol. 10, no. 2, 2013. http:// www.praxisuwc.com/raign-102 Accessed 5 March 2018.

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The Forest for the Trees Robin Clark We all know the type. They’re required to be here.

They don’t know how to Google. They lost the assignment sheet. The assignment was due last Tuesday and they have to get at least a 90% to pass the course. And then they give the slightest shit-eating grin when we start demonstrating how to access the Digital Library.

They’ve pulled one over on us. Gotten us to do their assignment. If we don’t address this quickly – and I really mean quickly – then this behavior becomes ingrained in their understanding of what we can, will, and are prepared to do as writing tutors. This behavior often is based in the student’s anxiety rather than pure laziness and often manifests either as apparent apathy or hyper-focus.

During this last academic year, I’ve worked with one particular student who has taken this dedication to not learning to the extreme. She is such a hard worker, but only when it comes to not working. She muses on what the next sentence will be, writes that one sentence only with assistance, and then asks about the content, placement, or logic of the sentence. Over. And. Over. She takes suggestions from a session, leaves, and returns in an hour and a half with the sort of question we’d expect to have heard before the end of the session. She searches for email addresses with aplomb to ask the sorts of questions that are answered in the process of asking them.

All of this behavior was learned in her first visit to the writing center. The particular mix of my tutoring style and our two personalities set her up for failure from the start. We worked intensely on each key point and 80

revised them as we worked. The writing center was slow that day, so I let her stay a little long with the mention that this was not normal. We got to a point in the session where she had a full outline and just needed to fill in the information to flesh out the paper, so I walked back to my computer to let her work; she continually called me over to look at each point as she made it. She stayed for over four hours that day, walking out with me at the end of my shift as I locked up.

She also tried to walk with me to my car so she could continue to talk about her assignment. I wasn’t shocked to learn that she’d inquired about my email address (though I was insanely grateful for Leah only giving her my Stark email after checking with me first). She has been emailing me ever since, though the only reply I’ve ever sent her was that first contact to forward her to the writing email or Leah.

As we well know, students don’t come to us knowing how to do peer review correctly. Instructors who follow traditional ideas of “peer teaching” tend toward something like what is outlined by Stanford University: “Research from cognitive psychology has shown that one of the best ways to improve understanding is to teach material to a peer (Topping and Stewart, 1998).

Build this exercise into your classes through presentations, study groups, and quick, breakout “teaching” sessions” (Promoting Active Learning, n.d.). We know that these methods are ineffective more often than not, most frequently due to instructors failing to teach students about what and how they should be learning from these exercises. This is where writing tutors come in. “[The key thing] is to encourage students to ask important, relevant, valid questions that will turn them into profound thinkers” (Ellis, 2014). When instructors overlook this key aspect of their job, it’s up to the tutor to step in to truly help the student.

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Sometimes we need to be reminded of the basics. What are our goals as tutors? What is the goal of the writing center? How do these two goals meet or diverge and which goal should be paramount in our daily practice?

How can we work all of this into our daily routines and keep ourselves from becoming lax? Could our openplan tutoring areas be utilized to check up on one another’s styles? We must be able to apply the sorts of methods we use with our writers to our own practice to learn and evolve to ultimately serve our students, our community, and ourselves as effectively as possible.

References Ellis, J. (2014). Tips for tutors: developing critical thinking in your students. TutorHubBlog. Retrieved from https://blog.tutorhub.com/2014/01/17/ tips-for-tutors-developing-critical-thinking-inyour-students/amp-on/ Promoting Active Learning. (n.d.). Stanford University Teaching Commons. Retrieved from https:// teachingcommons.stanford.edu/resources/ learning-resources/promoting-active-learning

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Understanding Healthy Emotional Boundaries in the Writing Center

Shannon McKeehen It’s crazy to realize that, despite my only working here for two semesters now, I have been a writing center professional in some form or another for thirteen years.

I have gained skills and knowledge at each writing center I have worked for, as all of the centers have been different in terms of the students we serve and our relationship to our respective institutions. I have noticed a few overlapping themes with the roles I have played at each writing center, however: I am still better at setting and maintaining appropriate emotional boundaries in my composition classroom than I am in individual writing center encounters.

I have some theories to help explain this realization. A few of the theories have to do with me and my personality: one on one, I care so much about being as friendly as possible, that at times, I sacrifice some of my own comfort to make someone else feel comfortable; I also know that I sometimes adopt a thoroughly “no problem!� persona around people I find intimidating. My personal background obviously plays a role in my professional life, which is both a blessing and a curse.

However, I also know that boundary-setting is something that a lot of professionals, especially female professionals, have had to successfully navigate, due to pressures for women to behave a certain way at work (Richter, 2013). Additionally, I also know that as writing center professionals, we often read student texts that are emotionally heavy, and knowing how to navigate healthy boundaries in terms of balancing selfpreservation while assisting students can be a challenge. According to Follet (2016), women writing center professionals, especially those with other intersections 83

of identity (race, class, etc), may feel even more obligated to perform their boundaries in particularly “nurturing” or “helpful” ways (p 146).

Angie and I have talked about reacting emotionally to student writing and how it sometimes impacts our jobs.

In my own case, I have had some intense sessions with students who have written about rape and other traumas. Because I am a very sensitive person, I have sometimes had to take a short “breather” between sessions to emotionally recuperate and “regroup.” According to Perry (2016), writing center work is emotional work, in which we exhaust emotional labor. She recommends “creating an environment in which consultants feel valued, heard, validated, and supported,” adding that when such an environment is in place, “consultants [...] are better equipped to care for the [...] students who come through our doors” (Perry, 2016). When it comes to spending too much emotional labor, that is where I find myself struggling with erecting healthy emotional boundaries. Taking a “breather” sometimes helps, but not always, and I find myself trying to rationalize whether my emotional well-being should sometimes be placed aside, in favor of prioritizing someone else’s.

What I have been trying to learn is balance. Being helpful and providing resources for my students does not have to mean being completely self-sacrificing. Negotiating that balance is a tremendous challenge for me, as I have always understood and appreciated the value of rapport-building and -maintaining in our sessions, which involves at least a small measure of letting one’s guard down. However, that rapport does not have to come at such a high cost—it’s OK for us to acknowledge our emotional limitations when engaging 84

with intense student work. Regarding this particular issue, Angie found an article by John MacDevitt (2013) that, after reading it, I thought would be helpful to discuss. In it, he states that knowing how to determine healthy boundaries can be difficult; if we look at research on family dynamics, for instance, boundarysetting seems to exist on a continuum. On one end, individuals seem to be “enmeshed,” in which there are zero boundaries, and on the other end, individuals seem to be “disengaged,” or have very rigid boundaries (MacDevitt, 2013, p 138). If we map research done on families onto our other relationships, formal or otherwise, this spectrum still makes sense. When we “[respond] only to problems with grammar and punctuation” we are “at the disengaged end of the spectrum” (MacDevitt, 2013, p 138). Our aim should be somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, so that we may demonstrate responsible levels of empathy for others, in addition to ourselves. Having rigid boundaries engaging with student writing isn’t the answer.

We should be flexible and compassionate, but knowing when a student might be taking advantage of our energy and time is a valuable insight. I have found this semester that talking privately with my coworkers about uncomfortable sessions, and students who may be violating my emotional boundaries, is helpful, to make sure my feelings are reasonable.

While my own pedagogy involves displaying “comradeship rather than superiority,” similar to some of the instructors’ pedagogy featured in MacDevitt’s article, I know that my students are wanting me to share my writing expertise, so despite my best efforts, I am decidedly not a “comrade” (p 140). I have resources and knowledge that the students I work with want me to share with them, which obviously involves disclosure and making transparent my status(es) as a gradu85

researcher, teacher, etc. While doing research for this evaluation, I have realized that my efforts for rapportbuilding may sometimes negate those statuses. Connecting with students emotionally, while often gratifying, is also not entirely necessary to “get the job done.”

In fact, some writing center research shows that students are the ones who should and do prioritize emotional connections with their tutors, not vice versa: Extrinsic motivators, such as feelings of rapport and solidarity and wanting to please the tutor, may lead a student to invest more effort during the short time spent in a writing center conference and, pushing this possibility even further, may eventually facilitate the improvement of the student’s writing and increase student interest in writing over the long run.

(Mackiewicz & Thompson, 2013, p 44) Thus, it may not be as necessary on my end to be so vulnerable in sessions. Being friendly while maintaining a safe distance is key. I want my students to feel comfortable enough to confide in me about their anxieties about writing, but I don’t want them to think that I will become their best friend. In my classroom, I successfully employ a “mom voice,” articulate when I am and am not available to meet, etc. I am gradually learning to use a few of these rules in my other positions as well.

References Follett, J. (2016). "How do you feel about this paper?": A mixed-methods study of how writing center tutors address emotion. Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

MacDevitt, J. (2013). Responding to student traumatic writing: A psychologist's view. Teaching English in the Two Year College, 41(2), 135.

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References cont.

Mackiewicz, J., & Thompson, I. (2013). Motivational scaffolding, politeness, and writing center tutoring. The Writing Center Journal, 33(1), 38-73.

Perry, A. (2016). Training for triggers: Helping writing center consultants navigate emotional sessions. In Composition Forum (Vol. 34). Association of Teachers of Advanced Composition.

Richter, J. (2013). Crossing boundaries between professional and private life. In The Experience and Meaning of Work in Women’s Lives (pp. 157-178). Psychology Press.

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Reality and Compromise: Job Insecurity and Theory contra Product in Writing Centers Steven Fregeau But the difference between expediency and morality in politics is the difference between selling out a principle and making smaller concessions to win larger ones. The leader who shrinks from this task reveals not his purity but his lack of political sense. (Ruskin, 1965, n.p. [p.

6/8]) An overall dwindling of funds for all education-related programs and the mere sustaining of funds for STEM— i.e., “job-readiness”—programs (Caplan-Bricker, 2013; Cohen, 2016; Tworek, 2013) follows a shift in our product-based economy towards an exclusively serviceoriented culture; that is, product is measured as a quantity of services, not as a quality of results. This shift involves also the lingering specter of confirmation bias, opposed to fact-based evidence, and of cost-reduction/ profit-maximization strategies hovering over the heads of administrative and managerial bodies. The clearest example, for us, is the myth that humanities are without product and the cost of these programs is excessive—and that students have no future in them and hence, humanities programs contradict enrollment goals. In fact, there has been no significant decline in enrollment in the humanities since the 1980s (Tworek, 2013).

Still, the humanities are losing funding and developmental programs are being cut on a large scale— writing, the first to be eliminated. Palpable cuts are also being made to our hours and funding in the Writing Center, as student usage decreases. We face these im88

mediate problems as tutors, and we share a definite concern over this not only for ourselves but also for our students and general communities—the next wave of nurses, the next city council members, the next electorate in a democratic nation, and so on. But our first concern is keeping our jobs because before we can make any difference, we must have the means to do so.

Consequently, we need to face ourselves and our situations honestly. We need to admit that developmental classes are being eliminated and our advocacy will not return them; to understand the nature of job insecurity relative to employment generally; and to examine how writing center theory/identity relates to the practical sustaining of writing centers in relation to college administrations and students obsessed with service-asproduct.

Developmental Writing: Its Effectiveness and Ineffectiveness

Developmental writing programs similar to our nowdeceased Introduction to Academic Writing class show positive results in terms of academic performance, skills acquisition, and student retention (Crews & Aragon, 2004; Sacher, 2016; Southard & Clay, 2014). Literature reviews such as Horn and Asmussen’s (2014) recognize the need to reform many developmental programs, but “[fail] to support the notion that developmental education has been categorically ineffective. A positive effect on student persistence has been detected when examining successful completion of remedial education” (p. 16). Additionally, a number of external factors unrelated to the college or its programs tend to affect students who fail to complete degrees following remedial courses, and usually correlate to demographic status (poor, non-white, male, and older students) (Horn and Asmussen, 2014, p. 10; Bailey, Jeong, & Cho, 89

2009, p. 20).

Studies that disagree with these findings (Adams, Gearhart, Miller, & Roberts, 2009; Bailey et al, 2009; Community College Research Center, 2014; Hanford, 2016) do so on different levels, and tend to emphasize financial reasoning, prompting responses such as Goudas and Boylan’s (2012) that demonstrate flaws in data interpretation and methodology. Clearly, developmental programs in and of themselves are not an issue; yet, they are being cut—and have been being cut—nation, state, and community-wide (Southard and Clay, 2014; Hanford, 2016).

The fallacy of arguing to a universal statement from only particular premises shows disregard for categorical truths—throws the baby out with the bathwater.

Since developmental programs and tutoring are shown to be generally effective, particular failings need to be examined on particular levels, and these failings need astute and individualized attending rather than general elimination of programs. Lacking funding, however, no such examination is possible, and if funding for research in these areas is lacking, even moreso is funding lacking for operating developmental programs— including tutoring. As a result, without denying other factors, developmental educators face job insecurity.

Job Insecurity and Employment Multiple studies show that job security or insecurity plays no role in either increasing or diminishing quality of job performance (Lu, Du, Xu & Zhang, 2017; Mäder & Niessen, 2017; Piccoli, De Witte, & Reisel, 2017; Probst, Gainley, Jiang, & Bohle, 2017). Mäder and Niessen’s research shows that high job insecurity is related to “unfavorable levels of negative affect and negative work reflection” (p. 249) yet also leads to high 90

levels of adaptation and performance. Employees could begin to loathe their employers if they perceive insecurity, but they will end up doing the same or better work to offset the threat of joblessness.

In fact, empirical research on job insecurity overwhelmingly deals with “mediation,” or how to make employees feel better about being insecure in their jobs.

The most common form of mediation is communication, or being honest about the security or insecurity of employees’ jobs (Khubchandani & Price, 2017, p. 249; Piccoli et al., 2017, pp. 76-77).

Insecurity in Writing Centers Writing tutors are dealing with job insecurity and all the stresses it entails. Our wages are decent, but we are increasingly unable to earn them; our jobs are not eliminated, but they are increasingly reduced to the level of pastimes or hobbies. Yet there is no reason, no tangible economic reward, for any employer to offer employees job security, since businesses reap no specific economic benefit from job security.

It really is not enough for tutors to show their college(s) that they are valuable people and employees, but rather to show them that tutors can fill our empty seats, and to show that filling those seats makes tutors’ jobs worth their presence on campus. The question is: How do they do this? Tutors have no connections to enrollment, retention, or financial aid; they have no clear relationship to class scheduling, program development, or to anyone, really, who makes administrative decisions. They have little or no access to the mediation of communication.

Additionally, tutors have no access to evidence-based information about who uses the writing center or why, 92

or who drops out after taking developmental writing classes or why they do. The best that tutors can do in this situation, in order to determine where their attention needs focusing, is to use corresponding evidence from studies on writing centers and developmental writing courses in higher education.

Writing Centers: Theory contra Product

Colleges call upon writing centers to defend their existence in terms of product-driven usage reports (Salem, 2016, p. 151), but at the same time, writing centers struggle to hold onto a product-less discourse of difference (Abbott, 2017, pp. 203, 207; Griffin and Glushko, 2016, pp. 167, 169). This dissonance requires imprecise maneuvering between quantifiable data and “iconoclast” or “rogue” identity. But, as Abbott (2017) recognizes, “[i]n an increasingly austere academic climate […], marginality is becoming less tenable” (p. 203; see also Salem, 2016, p. 153). The preponderance of evidence indicates that traditionally “orthodox” (i.e., iconoclastic) writing center methodologies (e.g., minimalist and non-directive tutoring) are in themselves insufficient to advancing student achievement or producing measurable outcomes (Salem, 2016, pp. 161-164; Abbott, 2017, pp. 209-210). Isolating themselves from the mainstream, writing centers exclude themselves from their employers (colleges) and clients (students), and actually push themselves towards destitution of political, physical, and financial resources.

A majority of writing center literature prior to the 2010s lacks empirical evidence regarding the effectiveness of orthodox tutoring practices and methods. More recent studies paint a very different picture of what methods actually work than what most of us have been trained to use and believe. Abbott’s (2017) review of Brizee and Wells recognizes that “[t]he process of teaching begins 93

with what the student currently knows or can do” (p.

208). Salem’s (2016) findings show that privileged students “decisions are rooted in ample information, access to resources, and expansive views of what they can expect to achieve” (p. 150), while underprivileged or marginalized students choose not to utilize writing centers because they have no such roots (cf. Griffin and Glushko, 2016, p. 167 and passim on “correctness” and “cultural conflict”). Most students who need writing center help cannot not be directed. If a student does not know, or is unable to do—and if the privileges of information, access, and expected achievement are absent— then direction, marking papers, and temporary or partial denial of “full ownership” seems entirely in order.

Tutors may need not only to readjust their habits when working with students but also to reconsider how they represent themselves to their institutions in accordance with these current data: first, in order to better help students and second, in order to produce a higher quantity of service-product for their institutions.

Possibilities for Increasing Service-Product in Writing Centers Writing centers face an economic and political reality which can no longer be addressed with the analgesic of uncompromising protest and iconoclasm. To justify themselves, they need to show increased serviceproduct and adapt to a business-model existence within higher education. Some possible strategies, all of which require further research, are given here.

Low-level focus. As developmental writing classes are cut, tutors will need to fill the vacuum they leave. Addressing low-level concerns more often and in shorter sessions could boost quantitative serviceproduct numbers. All English writing—from simple 94

sentences to paragraphs to thesis-driven essays—is based on the same basic “subject-verb-(object)” relation, which dictates low-level grammar and organization (foundation) as well as high-level style and coherence (intricacy). Brief, grammar-intensive sessions could easily segue into—or provide the foundational knowledge for—addressing high-order concerns.

Operant conditioning. A student who earns an A or B (initial reward) on a paper because of “proofing and editing” (currently anathematized in writing centers) will be more likely to return and recommend the writing center, and less likely to belittle it. Having guided a student towards a “good grade” or “fixing” a paper, tutors can reduce their involvement to modeling if the student returns, thus randomizing the reward.

Initial, immediate rewards establish the habits of addiction while random ones enable it, a behavior that every successful business model crafts and maintains. Tutors can then subvert students’ expectations and begin to enable them to make “good choices” in writing by encouraging wanted habits, discouraging unwanted habits, and pointing to instances of reward (e.g., an A on a paper). Students, however, must first associate “better grade” (or even “passing grade”) with “writing center.”

Reimaging writing center identity. The discourse of “going rogue,” “radicalizing,” and “being gadflies” that permeates writing center theory (an contemporaneous offshoot of post-structuralist and postmodernist Theory) seems doubly self-defeating: first, by isolating writing centers from the administrations that determine budgets and funding, and second, by alienating students whose primary concern is academic standing and graduation. Approaching students and administrators as a part of the college and in tandem with established classroom pedagogies—especially as 95

the replacement for developmental programs—could resuscitate writing centers’ presence on campus and preserve their viability. Reimaging their “difference” to “part of,” writing centers could encourage student usage and increase quantities of serviceproduct.

Augmenting data. Writing centers can improve their presentation to the college by increasing the ways they record and report usage—for example, recording not only the students who did use the writing center, but also students who intended to use the writing center, but could not for various reasons. Balancing students’ desire or need to utilize the writing center against their ability to get to the writing center (much in the way that is lacking in measuring the effectiveness of developmental programs) can emphasize the writing center’s value to the college through its clients.

Compromise: Facing a Hard Reality Increasing the quantity of service-product for our colleges will not guarantee us tutors job security (we have seen that employees have no realistic way of asserting their right to job security through adaptation and performance.) It could, however, lessen the likelihood that our jobs will be eliminated for purely economic reasons when set against the austere climate facing the humanities (i.e., could remove a threat). This is particularly important in relation to students developing their skills in standard written English and who have no access to developmental programs, who pass classes and complete degrees but graduate lacking the proficiency in written communication needed for their careers (Crews & Aragon, 2004; Sacher, 2016).

Calcifying the anti-product writing center theory of “difference” to the point of ideology simply puts us in 96

the same category as authoritarians (furthermore, illegitimate ones), subject to the same defeats. Writing centers need to begin the political process of compromise, to add sustainable or realistic practices to what is already established, and to discard those principles which are unsustainable or unrealistic—and stand down from obdurate protest involved in theories of difference. Politics, opposed to protest, is the practice of compromising a community’s principles into a functioning regime.

We have to lose, by refusing to compromise our ideals into the established regime, our jobs and our livelihoods. Intrinsically, this means a loss of trust to mistrust, of productivity to stagnation, and the essential security necessary to attain “higher-order” concerns (let alone tutor in them) to weak and untenable ideals.

Many of us cannot afford that. Extrinsically, this means that the most vulnerable students we have at our school will lose a vital resource: our services. Our survival as a resource for students and as a place for us to maintain our own careers within our vocations depends highly on the compromise of political participation within the college—on rapidly increasing our usage and measuring our service to our employer in terms of products.

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End Notes 1.

High-level concerns are essentially ornamental ones while low-level concerns are essentially needs; no starving person, however refined, makes hollandaise before frying the egg.

2.

The ethics involved in this type of practice present as utterly repellent to me, but at the same time, are completely in line with social and institutional norms and values.

3.

This seems especially relevant to Stark State, where transportation, work schedules, families, and other fundamental needs and responsibilities have a direct impact on our students.

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References Abbott, T. (2017). On the ethical mainstreaming of writing center administration and practice: Reflections on recent scholarship in writing centers [Review of the books Partners in literacy: A writing center manual for civic engagement, by A. Brizee & J. M. Wells and Talk about writing: The tutoring strategies of experienced writing center tutors, by J. Mackiewicz & I. K. Thompson].

Composition Studies, 45(1), 203-211.

Adams, P., Gearhart, S., Miller, R., & Roberts, A. (2009).

The accelerated learning program: Throwing open the gates. Journal of Basic Writing, 28(2), 50 -68.

Bailey, T., Jeong, D. W., & Cho, S. (2009, November).

Referral, enrollment, and completion in developmental education sequences in community colleges.

Community College Resource Center. Retrieved from http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/ media/k2/attachments/referral-enrollmentcompletion-developmental_V2.pdf Caplan-Bricker, N. (2013, September 5). New evidence: There is no science-education crisis. New Republic. Retrieved from https:// newrepublic.com/article/114608/stemfunding-dwarfs-humanities-only-one-crisis

Cohen, P. (2016, February 21). A rising call to promote STEM education and cut liberal arts funding.

New York Times. Retrieved from https:// www.nytimes.com/2016/02/22/business/arising-call-to-promote-stem-education-and-cutliberal-arts-funding.html

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References cont.

Community College Research Center. (2014, January).

What we know about developmental education outcomes. Research Overview.

Crews, D. M., & Aragon, S. M. (2004). Influence of a community college developmental education writing course on academic performance. Community College Review, 23(2), 1-18.

Goudas, A. M., & Boylan, H. R. (2012). Addressing flawed research in developmental education.

Journal of Developmental Education, 36(1), 2-13.

Griffin, K. R., & Glushko, T. (2016). Caught between the promise and the past: A view from the writing center. Composition Studies, 44(2), 167171.

Hanford, E. (2016, August 18). Stuck at square one: College students increasingly caught in remedial education trap. American Public Media. Retrieved from https://www.apmreports.org/ story/2016/08/18/remedial-education-trap Horn, A. S., & Asmussen, J. G. (2014). The traditional approach to developmental education: Background and effectiveness. Midwestern Higher Education Compact. Retrieved from http:// www.mhec.org/documents/category/ research-briefs/the-traditional-approach-todevelopmental-education-background Khubchandani, J., & Price, J. H. (2017, April). Association of job insecurity with health risk factors and poorer health in American workers. Journal of Community Health, 42(2), 242–251. doi: 10.1007/s10900-016-0249-8 100

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References cont. ses. Research and Teaching in Developmental Education, 32 (2), 46-61.

Salem, L. (2016). Decisions‌ decisions: Who choses to use the writing center? The Writing Center Journal, 35(2), 147-165.

Southard, A. H., & Clay, J. K. (2014). Measuring the effectiveness of developmental writing courses.

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Tworek, H. (2013, December 18). The real reason the humanities are 'in crisis': Women started deserting subjects like history and English decades ago. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https:// www.theatlantic.com/education/ archive/2013/12/the-real-reason-thehumanities-are-in-crisis/282441/

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