First Shadowing

I'll be honest, this is my first voyage into the world of "blogging." I am not quite sure if I am ready to transition to this whole, document my life online type of idea. Either way though I am willing to cover my experience as a shadow. I shadow a rookie-tutor named Emily Smith. Emily is a junior who just returned from studying-abroad. She works in the Writing Center 8 hours a week (the maximum) and also volunteers 4 hours through the new Sunday library tutoring programming.

I arrived a couple minutes earlier feeling a little like a lost child on the first day of school. I've got to be honest, the lighting in the hallway on the way into the writing center is really intimidating to me. It just seems like the low-lighting and the claustrophobically small hallways promote impending doom. That aside I found Emily without much of a problem and took a seat as we waited for the tutee to arrive. Emily handed me a fresh copy of the assignment and I began to look it over. Immediately I noticed that the author used the word Fallacious improperly and excessively (seven times over four pages). Once the student actually arrived I took a seat on the couch and just watched and listened. The tutee, Hillary, had emailed Emily a copy of the assignment in advance. This was of great help to Emily as she was able to fully edit the paper before Hillary even arrived in the center. Emily begins by complementing Hillary on the work as a whole. She then proceeded to critic the rest of the work. She suggested that Hillary attack the assignment by reordering her paragraphs in order for them to flow better. Emily also pointed out that Hillary would start the claim, then state what the claim implies, then explain why the claim is important. Emily suggested that Hillary go back and state the claim first, explain it second and provide a counter-argument to close the statement. Then the two girls when over the paper and looked for each individual claim. They did this by highlighting each claim in different colors. This "distinguishes each claim more clearly," and allows the author to see where she could create new paragraphs. In the end Hillary departed quite satisfied with the help she had received and I stuck around to quickly question Emily on tutoring concepts.

I asked Emily what the keys to this session were, she answered that it is important to listen to the writer and resist making changes to the paper the author has written. She recommended leaving all surface-level errors and only addressing the content in itself. This session as a whole was a great introduction to the program. I look forward to more positive experiences in the future.