✓ Engage with composition and peer-tutoring theories
✓ Engage with composition and peer-tutoring theories
My experience as a Writing Mentor was coupled with an opportunity to engage with composition and peer-tutoring theories in ENG 484 — which, ultimately, prepared me to consider the personal background and individual needs of students I assisted in ENG 102: First-Year Composition, an online course offered in the Writers’ Studio by the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts. Particularly, the visions of scholars with expertise in English language and composition, writing and rhetoric, and pedagogy framed my view of composition and peer-tutoring.
Within the first few weeks of my experience as a Writing Mentor, I was prepared to give students practical feedback through collaboration. In “About Responding to Student Writing,” Dr. Peter Elbow encourages writing educators to understand the intentions of student authors and practice humility when providing writing feedback (Elbow). He argues that “[by] treating students as writers, we help them learn to treat us as real readers instead of impersonal verdicts” (Elbow). Meanwhile, Dr. Lunsford emphasizes the importance of using collaboration as a tool to provide effective writing assistance that ensures the autonomy of writing students (Lunsford). In “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center,” she sets forth a vision for a writing center that “[places] control, power, and authority not in the tutor or staff, not in the individual students, but in the negotiating group” (Lunsford). Therefore, I gained an early understanding that effective mentoring practices would depend on my awareness of the goals of the individuals I support and a conscious effort to ensure that mentee autonomy is preserved. Furthermore, the perspective offered by Brannon and Knoblauch, in “On Students’ Rights to Their Own Texts,” made me realize that traditional writing learning environments rely on an uneven power dynamic controlled by the writing teacher’s agenda when, instead, writing educators should “attract a writer’s attention to the relationship between intention and effect” (Brannon and Knoblauch). Since my initial inclination to become a Writing Mentor was predicated on my wish to provide valuable writing support, I viewed the task of helping students use their intention to have the desired effect on their audience as a worthwhile challenge. My exposure to pedagogical theories based on collaborative and civilized writing support motivated me to reflect on my emerging Writing Mentor practice and develop an approach to facilitating feedback.
Within the first two weeks of my experience as a Writing Mentor, I wrote two discussion board posts that described my takeaways from the four readings assigned in the first two modules of ENG 484. In addition to summarizing the main ideas of the assigned readings, I offered my perspective on the composition and peer-tutoring theories proposed based on my past experiences and mentoring philosophy.
“My experience with practices related to feedback, collaborative teaching, learning, and writing is extensive by virtue that I have been a student all of my life — whether it has been my parents, teachers, coaches, employers, friends, etc., I feel like I have always been in a position to learn and have had the opportunity to receive feedback along the way. The most helpful feedback I have received has been the type of personalized and tailored feedback that Dr. Elbow advocates for in “About Responding to Student Writing.” In one of my Perusall comments, I made note of how my manager at my first job, Chick-fil-A, provided me with feedback appropriate for my role and experience, and based on my needs — I would consider his feedback “good” because of this. In school, I have had teachers and instructors who have marked my paper with red ink, only pointing out my errors while overlooking my writing successes. Such feedback was not necessarily “bad,” but it was surely discouraging. I have been the recipient of both good and bad feedback. I have also been lucky enough to benefit from the power of collaboration in learning environments. For example, I had the opportunity to participate in The Human Event, a mandatory seminar-style first-year course for students in Barrett, The Honors College where philosophy, art, and culture are discussed in detail. The Human Event, ultimately, honed my ability to think divergently as a result of being in a classroom for seventy-five minutes a day, twice a week with academically-motivated and thoughtful peers.” — excerpt from my Characterizing the tenets of effective, useful feedback discussion post (ENG 484)
“Overall, I think these practices proposed by Brannon and Knoblauch (1982) along with Cooper et al. (2000) can be easily embedded in an online learning environment. I think that these practices can be implemented in a few ways. Tutors/Writing Mentors can provide feedback in such a way that is inherently dialogical while maintaining a lighthearted and friendly tone; doing so would likely enhance student comfort with the writing process and receptivity to feedback. For us Writing Mentors, Canvas is a great platform on which we can provide feedback. Additionally, for larger assignments, students can be asked to be explicit about their purposes and choices to help establish an understanding between the instructor and the student. This can also be done on Canvas. Lastly, during synchronous feedback sessions with students, the comfort of students can be measured via a simple poll that gauges the extent of comfort with their writing progress at the start and end of a feedback session — this could be done over Zoom and would be a simple way of assessing if the feedback approach/the underlying pedagogical philosophy is aligned with a particular student’s writing support needs.” — excerpt from my Establishing an even power dynamic within the tutor-student relationship discussion post (ENG 484)