As I was reading “Non-traditional students in the writing
center: Bridging the gap from a process-oriented world to a product-oriented
one” by Angie Smith, something didn’t quite feel right. As she wrote about her
help from DeDe, and then her experiences helping non-traditional students, it
hit me: there was no mention of undergraduate consultants. Smith only talked
about non-traditional student tutors helping their non-traditional student
peers, and I couldn’t help but wonder what she would think of our writing
center, which hires exclusively undergraduate students. After reading the rest
of her argument, I think she offers some good advice for working with non-traditional
students, but underestimates undergraduate consultants.
Cynthia Haynes-Burton’s point that Smith highlights about
transitioning non-traditional student writers from “product oriented” to
“process oriented” was interesting. These writers are “so accustomed to
producing a product that [they]
wanted to skip over the process
needed to come up with a polished final draft” (13). Many times this involves
reminding writers about how to formulate an argument, write a strong thesis,
and back it up with evidence. I liked that Smith included three examples from
her own experience as a tutor, both successes and failures. In a strange sense,
to me, it gave her credibility when she admitted her inability to help Joan, in
that she wasn’t trying to paint a perfect picture of her experiences and
advice. Smith also highlighted the difference between traditional and
non-traditional students: generally, non-traditional students are more
organized and eager to learn, and will bring in drafts quite early, yet lack
confidence. This difference would be good to know going into a consultation
with a non-traditional student. However, there are many other points Smith
brings up as a non-traditional tutor that I feel an undergraduate tutor would
be plenty capable of handling.
Smith claims that all non-traditional students have the
memory of former teachers marking up their papers in red pen. This is nothing
writing consultants haven’t seen before though, and are trained to do the
opposite so this shouldn’t be a problem. Another reason that Smith points out
for why non-traditional writers would feel more comfortable with
non-traditional consultants is that they think undergraduates would think
they’re “dumb.” This, again, is something we are trained not to do; we strive
to never make our students feel inadequate or unintelligent. It’s possible that
Smith has never seen an undergraduate writing center that’s as good as UR’s so,
I’ll adjust my original claim. Rather than say that Smith has underestimated
undergraduate consultants, I’ll just say that she’s underestimated what they’re
capable of.
You will do fine with product-oriented writers. You will see enough who are your peers! We might have hired a few SPCS "specialists" but these students have jobs and would still need Eng. 383, a tough requirement unless someone, like Eng. 383 Maureen Hershmann from a year ago, returns here to school specifically with the idea of teaching writing. We get such a non-trad about every five years or so, and they do good work in the program. That said, they cannot see every one of their peers who needs assistance.
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