Informal Observation: Remembering This Is A Job

Solum 1 Renata Solum WRIT 3752W Professor K. Jamsen November 20, 2008 Informal Observation: Remembering This is a Job One week ago I was sitting in Walter Library, waiting for my study buddy and staring blankly at my account activity page at Wells Fargo Online. The anomaly on the list of withdrawals and deposits was puzzling, certainly, but what really threw me was the realization that it was happening every two weeks. Every two weeks, something called UMPAY was magicking me some money. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but the connection I failed to make (in that moment, and only for a moment) was that the things I do in the Writing Center on Mondays through Thursdays are keeping me in an apartment and putting food in my belly. Bonus! I am paid for what I do here. With that anecdote I suppose I’m framing the curiosity that spawned this research. I embarked on this inquiry with an aim to better understand what happens when a consultant reminds himself that consulting is a job—with good ways of going about it and bad—and that, despite how much fun we have here, on some level we do answer do one another and to the higher-ups. More specifically, I was curious as to what behaviors, habits, or techniques a consultant avoids or demonstrates when he feels that other consultants are somehow present during his session with a student. All of us, as consultants, have had opportunities to observe and to be observed. It seems only natural, when conscious of our colleagues, for us to attempt to apply the strategies we have learned and avoid the unproductive devices against which we have been warned.

Solum 2 Perhaps most conscious of the prescribed “DOs” and “DON’Ts” are those of us with only two months of writing center tutoring under our belts, because despite the lack of experience, we have indulged in the same months’ worth of pedagogical discussion in our undergraduate course on Writing Consultancy. Like middle school students new to the dance floor, some of us find ourselves shuffling about, wishing we’d practiced more in the comfort of our own bedrooms. I speak from experience. Fresh from the latest reading on what writing center tutoring ought to be, we’re exceedingly aware of ourselves, and our implementation of theory. We’re afraid to break our clients in our bumbling. We’re afraid to overstep sanctified boundaries of non-directivity. On a side note, sometimes we’re afraid we won’t have the balls to firmly explain to clients the policies of which we are so aware. Who cares, you’re wondering? It seems logical that the majority of students who visit the writing center, maybe some “frequent fliers” excluded, know little if anything of the theory behind some of the things we do here. Occasionally, one may leave wondering why we answered all his questions with questions. This may be the best indicator they have of our efforts to stick to some enigmatic credo. But there are other individuals in the writing center—our colleagues—who may be more interested in and more knowledgeable about whatever it is we are trying in our sessions. Our fellow consultants are in the best position to overhear our exchange with a student and parse our conversation, or recognize certain elements of our body language, and for some of us this possibility adds to our self-awareness. What constitutes “best practice” at SWS? Our holy information sheet geared toward students is a good place to start if you’d like to know what we will and will not do

Solum 3 here. For some some useful tidbits from Getting the Most from Student Writing Support (GTMFSWS), see Table I. Table I Source: Student Writing Support, University of Minnesota. Getting the Most From Student Writing Support. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota.

Our writing consultants will Help you get started on an assignment Discuss concerns about structure and organization Address questions about clarity in your writing Model revision and editing strategies Teach you how to proofread Direct you to other writing resources Provide you an opportunity to reflect on the session

Our writing consultants will NOT Proofread your paper for you Write your paper, or tell you what to write Tell you what your instructor wants Evaluate or guarantee a grade for your paper

Like I said, it seems highly unlikely that the average SWS client recognizes the pedagogy behind these commandments. Perhaps a second item, from the Student Writing Support Consultant Handbook, will throw our policies into sharper focus, at least to one more familiar with the “purpose” of a writing center. The handbook declares, “the student is the expert; it is his/her paper and our job is to respond as readers” (Handbook 10). Furthermore, “As experienced readers and writers […], consultants do have some authority; however (and therefore), they should use their knowledge to work collaboratively with students on their papers.” If the axiom, “the student is the expert,” sounds familiar, it’s because it smacks of tenets from Jeff Brooks’ 1991 contribution to Writing Lab Newsletter, “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work.” Brooks’ vision is of a tutoring session in which “The student, not the tutor, should “own” the paper and take full responsibility for it” (Brooks 169). This vision takes concrete form in my favorite three of Brooks’ four steps to “Basic Minimalist Tutoring”:

Solum 4 1. Sit beside the student, not across a desk—that is where job interviewers and other authorities sit. This first signal is important for showing the student that you are not the person “in charge” of the paper. 2. Try to get the student physically closer to her paper than you are. You should be, in a sense, an outsider, looking over her shoulder while she works on her paper. 3. If you are right-handed, sit on the student’s right; this will make it more difficult for you to write on the paper. Better yet, don’t let yourself have a pencil in your hand. By all means, if you must hold something, don’t make it a red pen! (170) I have come to suspect that Brooks’ article is somewhat of a crown jewel among the canon of writing center literature. Also noting the similarities between the paradigm of “minimalist tutoring,” the purpose underlined in our handbook, and—to some extent— our Getting the Most flyer, I formulated the assumption that these tutoring behaviors and methods comprise the “good way” of going about this job of ours. But is “minimalism” the kind of practice my colleagues would outwardly like to stick to—perhaps if and when it works? If so, what are the conversational or bodily indicators of more directive practice that we wouldn’t be caught dead doing? Do they match up with Brooks’ DON’Ts? Perhaps the behaviors of which a consultant is most conscious when in view or earshot of other consultants have nothing whatsoever to do with minimalism or directivity.

Solum 5 Seeking to find out, I began my inquiry with a survey distributed to all 42 SWS consultants via our LISTSERV. The questions were “open-ended” insofar as I made little to no attempt to collect quantitative data. Space for about a hand-written paragraph followed each question and I encouraged the consultants, in my distribution email, to give me as much or as little information as they desired. In fact, I welcomed electronic returns, hoping that the invitation to type one’s responses would inspire longer answers. I designed the questionnaire with two aims in mind: the first was simply to find out what conditions cause a consultant to feel as though colleagues are listening in. The second, and most important, was to find out what—if anything—my colleagues adjust as a result of those conditions. The first aim, which ended up taking a back seat, was inherently linked to my own observations of the two SWS “satellite” locations between which I divide my own weekly hours, and my curiosities about a third, which I have yet to visit. Appleby 9, a basement room, is arranged bullpen-style with no visual or acoustic barriers separating the four consulting tables; when things get slow it’s possible for only one of four consultants to be with a student, in which case I know I have sometimes felt as though the other consultants have nothing better to do than to listen in. In Nicholson this situation is less likely. Nicholson 10 is a much larger, open space that includes a computer lab for the use of all students, not just SWS clients, and its state is most often one of bustling activity. A visual barrier sometimes separates pairs of consultants and students from other pairs, but this arrangement is subject to a consultant’s preference if there is more than one carrel open. Interestingly, in Nicholson there is the addition of two directors’ offices, both of which directors like keeping their doors open. Does the open door affect

Solum 6 consultants’ style when their chosen carrel is located within earshot? A third satellite, new this year, is one located at the McNamara Academic Center (MAC): Exclusively for student athletes, this space houses tutoring services for many University disciplines, and SWS consultants hold sessions with walk-in students in individual rooms. I do not consult at the MAC, so I was particularly curious as to how this arrangement, unique among the three locations, makes a consultant feel exposed. Like I said, however, survey responses yielded much more rich data about the second component of this equation— how the feeling affects consulting style—so the focus of my analysis began to drift away from physical space. In an effort to make “consulting style” sound like a concrete set of behaviors, manageable to reflect on, I made some suggestions to my responders: Think of your body language, I asked. Once or twice I inquired specifically about subtle change in volume— do consultants instinctively lower their voices during a session when the room becomes awfully quiet, not out of a desire not to disturb quietly working consultants and students, but out of a desire to keep the session private? I also certainly had Brooks’ particular ideas about pens in mind, and wondered if people would say anything about whether the student or the tutor holds the paper, because these are specifics of which I find myself being conscious. I received 13 in-depth and highly introspective sets of responses. Of course, my reflective and eloquent colleagues came through for me, as I had known they would. Their responses yielded a few interesting patterns: some I expected, and one that was a pleasant surprise.

Solum 7 I was relieved, first and foremost, to find that I am not alone in my own, occasional self-consciousness! I knew this, in the back of my head, but it was refreshing to see it manifest in much more experienced consultants, who strike me as being quite self-assured in their work. One vivid testimony even made me laugh out loud. Consultant C wrote, tongue-in-cheek, “you can’t tell what people are doing through the walls, and for all you know, they could be sitting there, twiddling their thumbs, judging every word that you say.” G said of sessions conducted near the employee lunch table in Nicholson, “There’s always someone sitting there, and I feel like if they’re bored they might just listen in on my session, and judge the quality of my tutoring.” And, sure enough, many consultants responded consistently with my predictions about non-directivity. This is to be expected, since I was not pulling non-directivity out of thin air—I’d come to take it for granted that the ethics of our writing center are inextricable from the ideals that inspired Brooks. I received rich data on the pragmatics that represent such ideals, and also on other interesting methods that my fellow consultants consider “best practice” at SWS. Similarities to the statements on Getting the Most were also ubiquitous. To begin with, the most obvious nod to Brooks concerned, in fact, a pencil. This particular consultant, B, admitted to being “often teacherly and sometimes directive,” and said of being observed, “I do remember once trying to avoid having a pencil in my hand in order to practice leaving the student as clear owner of the essay (it was hard for me, but interesting).” Consultant H simply stated, “I would say that I am especially conscious of being non-directive, patient, and clear while being observed.” Consultant J noted that the degree of directivity correlated with frustration, saying, “If I got frustrated or was

Solum 8 maybe too directive, I’d try and improve that (e.g. calm down).” All of these examples were in line with my suspicion, which was that “best practice” at SWS is non-directive, and that consultants are especially conscious of this while under formal or casual observation. Unintentional parallels between consultant concerns and the purpose we convey to students in Getting the Most were of particular interest to me. “For example,” said Consultant H of her attempts to demonstrate non-directivity, “when [a director] was observing me earlier this semester, I had the student sit at the computer and look up resources herself, instead of simply showing her where to look.” I was pleased to note the similarity between this instance and the promise that SWS will “Direct you to other writing resources” (Getting the Most). Furthermore, the addition of a collaborative element (not “simply showing her where to look”) is a clear nod to the SWS handbook’s entreaty to work with a “spirit of collaboration” (Handbook 10). One aspect of SWS pedagogy I hadn’t considered in my predictions is another prominent charge of the handbook: that is, “the dominant writing center pedagogy that suggests that it is best to work with ideas and organization first […] and editing and mechanics last” (Handbook 10). This hierarchy of concerns (“global concerns” over “local concerns,” respectively) aims to help the consultant and student cooperatively prioritize the session—and is in line with Murphy and Sherwood’s understanding of Brooks’ minimalism in their discussion, “The Tutoring Process”: The authors say that “Basic grammatical or mechanical errors may be symptomatic of deeper problems with text development, and just correcting those errors for the student will not simply resolve the larger issues” (Murphy and Sherwood 17). Consultant G said, “I try to avoid looking

Solum 9 at low order concerns such as grammar when I feel as if I’m being observed.” This person may simply be doing so with the same, general motivation as Consultant H, who said the main thing is “Just trying to be careful to stick to our mission and policies.” Much of my “data” raised more questions than it answered. For instance, vagueness pervaded many responses, with plenty of consultants saying observation makes them more careful, and leaving it at that. Consultant C wrote, “If I’m in a situation where no one surrounding me is consulting, my volume level drops down to what my elementary school librarian would call a “two-inch voice.” Slow deliberateness was a big concern for this consultant, who also said, “Especially if I’m sitting […] near [the directors’ offices] and their doors are open, I’m super self-conscious of every word I use with a consultee.” “I want to make sure they think I’m a good employee,” C also said. Of course, I guessed at some aspects of a “good employee,” but I wasn’t comfortable leaving it at my assumptions of minimalism. Evoking the contingency plan I included in my survey disclaimer, I followed up with C in an interview, to find out exactly what makes a “good employee.” Consultant C’s definition went like this: Well… probably what I think of as a good employee is—well, I don’t know, what’s a bad employee? I think a bad employee is someone who sounds like they’re doing too much work on the student’s paper: by—this is what I imagine, as [the directors], like what they might think of, when they’re hearing a bad employee. Someone who’s like doing too much of the work, giving too much ideas… um, maybe someone who sounds disinterested, in the—in what the consultee has to say. Um… or someone

Solum 10 who, maybe, like sounds super sure of themselves in what they’re saying to the consultee, like giving grammar rules or something, but they’re totally wrong, and—whether they know that or not. “Doing too much of the work” is relatively straightforward. What interested me was Consultant C’s preoccupation with being “totally wrong,” especially in areas in which she feels less confident. Obviously informal observation has served this consultant in two directions: She internalizes the situations she observes other consultants encountering, and in turn is most conscious of the same situations when under observation. One of these areas, in particular, was grammar. The consultant continued, Especially articles, I think—well, there are just some certain things that like non-native speaker specialists are super good at explaining, ‘cause they’ve been teaching it forever, right? And like, no matter how long I stare at our… QuickTips thing… I’ll never know how to explain things like count versus non-count, “a” versus “an,” specific like—It’s hard for me. There are some cases where I can explain why the article’s correct there, ‘cause it’s like a specific instance of a thing, but that doesn’t apply everywhere… Here C expressed some degree of anxiety concerning her experience. The reference to “non-native speaker specialists” reveals this consultant’s feelings of inadequacy to meet the needs of certain students, and it is clear that being observed or feeling observed is a block as far as stepping out of her comfort zone. However, this consultant also makes ample use of outside resources when she encounters such a situation, to avoid the awkward pattern she has observed other consultants falling into. As C wrote in response

Solum 11 to my survey, “Instead of trying to explain the rules first, I would most likely go straight to the quicktips or reference books so I wouldn’t sound foolish.” Gillespie and Lerner, in “The Tutoring Process,” explain two benefits of knowing one’s limits, as a tutor: “Referring to the handbook is a good idea if you know something is wrong but don’t have the answer at your fingertips, and it also models a behavior we want writers to imitate: to go for the handbook and look up the rule” (Gillespie and Lerner 34). Consultant C’s strategy, to which she turns especially when under observation, is in line both with Gillespie and Lerner and with the collaborative ideal here at SWS. C’s internalization of situations she informally observes is one reason why this research began to take on an optimistic bent mid-way through. Overwhelmingly, my favorite pattern among the 13 survey responses was an almost unanimous sense of the benefits of informal observation. “I think having heightened consciousness like that is a good thing, forcing self-evaluation,” said Consultant B, and C exemplified this optimism well, too, saying, “I don’t think that it would affect the session negatively (perhaps it would make it even better, because I’m so careful about what I say and how I say it).” Another sweetening element culminated in the 11th week of my first semester as a writing consultant. With the semester coming to a climax here at the University of Minnesota, there is no place on campus better situated than Student Writing Support to witness both a frenzy of creative energy and the occasional explosion of fermented student frustration. A few of us caught the brunt of the latter one Wednesday when a disgruntled student—upset that with one hour left to submit her final paper, we were powerless to turn her course grade into an A—threatened the peaceful, safe environs of

Solum 12 the Writing Center, which many of us had taken for granted. Lucky for us, there is an element of our professional relationship as consulting colleagues that is also somewhat underrated, and that is the understanding that not one of us is alone here in our interactions with a student. The week of the bad apple, I could no longer fail to appreciate our myriad opportunities for debriefing. SWS makes use of a password-protected blog where we can share our stories, solicit advice, and provide input, whenever the need (or fancy) strikes us. Furthermore, situations like the one I described above are profoundly easier when we remember that there is a center full of allies to back us up even while things are going down. Informal observation can facilitate that. It all drove home a few response items that I had initially considered extraneous. For instance, Consultant A said, “Sometimes, spying can be a good thing: One time, things went badly and my student was impatient, aggressive, and rude and [the director] could hear the whole thing. I was able to go get her and have her talk to the student and she already knew what was up.” H echoed this on a slightly different note, saying, “She has called me in after sessions before to tell me how well I handled a difficult situation.” Not all debriefing concerns the student, however, and the last obvious benefit of informal observation in the Writing Center appeared to be the opportunity for growth as a tutor. Consultant E articulated his appreciation for its usefulness, saying, “I don’t always like to feel as though I am being watched, but I think we provide a positive and supportive atmosphere at SWS. I would expect that anybody who noticed anything unusual in my consultation would provide constructive feedback.” Consultant B, a veteran of the Writing Center and the one who admits to sometimes being “teacherly,”

Solum 13 expressed her awareness that informal observation is a way in which new tutors learn. Such awareness elicits a unique effect on this consultant’s style. She wrote, […]although my sessions are collaborative, I am often teacherly and sometimes directive. When I am being observed, particularly by an undergraduate consultant, I think I may hold back a bit on my normal approaches because it would not model the approach the consultant is encouraged to take. All said, I was delighted to see the optimism my colleagues expressed over something that has occasionally caused me anxiety. Informal observation, as my colleagues have demonstrated, doesn’t need to give us the creepy-crawlies; in fact, if handled well by the observer and the observed, it presents opportunities for discussion, debriefing, and reassurance. As I suspected, it also serves as a reminder to self-check—a reminder, as Consultant H said, to “be careful to stick to our mission and policies.” This is an obvious component of being part of any organization, regardless of how easy it is to forget it’s a job. There is little I would suggest we change about this arrangement. With an understanding of such benefits as my fellow consultants and I have encountered, SWS already encourages consultants to engage in informal observation. Throughout the course of this research I have realized that collaboration between consultants at SWS is one component of this learning experience that I can no longer take for granted.

Solum 14 Works Cited Brooks, Jeff. “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work.” In The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, 3rd ed. Eds. Christina Murphy and Steve Sherwood. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 168-173. Gillespie, Paula and Lerner, Neil. “The Tutoring Process.” The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2000. 23-36. Murphy, Christina and Sherwood, Steve. “The Tutoring Process: Exploring Paradigms and Practices.” The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors, 3rd ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. 1-25. Student Writing Support, University of Minnesota. Getting the Most From Student Writing Support. Student Writing Support, University of Minnesota. Student Writing Support Consultant Handbook. 7th ed. 2008.

Solum 15 Appendix A: Consent Information Sheet

Solum 16 Appendix A: Consent Information Sheet (cont’d)

Solum 17 Appendix B: Survey

Solum 18 Appendix B: Survey (cont’d)