Week 12 Reflection

I was very excited to tutor a couple papers for Organic Chemistry in the past week. It was nice to read scientific papers that were not lab reports and focused more on an interesting chemistry topic; in this case, they had to choose a molecule or chemistry technology that changed the world. This assignment is fantastic for getting writers to develop their writing skills and explore a chemistry topic that they are really interested. It would be exciting to see more assignments like this coming out of the Natural Sciences. My first session for this paper centered around the writer's concerns about writing for the audience while answering the prompt that asked them to advocate for their compound to be included in a couple narrative non-fiction books. We decided to split up here paper into more distinct subsections so that the change in audience focus was apparent. In the tutor feedback the writer said, "She was able to answer my specific questions and help me work out the sections of my paper I was unsure about." I am glad I was able to help with certain topics that they were struggling with. I think it is very important in the beginning of the session to listen to the writer's own concerns about their paper or wherever they are in the writing process, and then give my response to their paper depending on what I see as high-order concerns. Another writer I worked with on the same paper said, "Best of all, she never told me what to do but rather encouraged me to think of a solution that works for me and my paper." this comment was nice to hear when I have been worrying about being too explicit or directive in my tutoring practices. It is good to know that this writer felt like they had the ownership of their paper in the session and that I was just acting as a writing coach, rather than teacher. In the future, I want to strive to help writers take ownership with their work, and my function as a tutor should be to encourage that and offer feedback.

In addition, I have found that not pushing my own brainstorming methods is not as dependent upon my own tutoring strategies, but rather my response to what the writer comes to the session with. For example, my weekly writer came in after brainstorming through free-writing, so we went through what she wrote and highlighted connecting ideas and thoughts or examples that  might support her thesis. As the writer said, "This session was especially helpful because I brought in a free write and Savannah helped me organize my ideas and highlight my main ideas." This strategy was actually something I have never done before but because I was able to adapt to the situation, I could meet her where she was. In the end, most tutoring strategies really depend on the tutoring situation.