Pro Blog Post #5

  

     I really had no idea what to expect going into the writing coach role. In some ways, I was even worried that this practice would bring out inadequacies and deficiencies in my own writing skills. It doesn't feel like it was that long ago when I was a high schooler, so I was under the impression that it wouldn't be unlikely that these students were possibly already better writers than myself. In hindsight, this was a silly thing to think, which isn't to say that my tutee's writing skills were poor, but rather the role I took on as a writing coach was outside the realm of "good" and "bad" writing. As a reader of somebody else's writing, I tried to question everything, to find the significance in everything, and to give the upmost attention to every word and detail.

    The first email with attached writing I received was from my DSHA student, which I'm not sure is a good or bad thing, because it set the bar pretty high for the rest of my tutees. My DSHA student's writing was brimming with creativity and personal emotion, and it gave me a perfect snapshot of not only their abilities as a writer, but themselves as a person. I could tell this student wrote this piece for themselves, and not just to satisfy the assignments requirements. Furthermore, this student embraced writing in a way which had their internal voice and thoughts vulnerably out in the open, and if that wasn't admirable enough, their writing also focused on things which they obviously cared deeply about. Most noticeably, this student's writing would often examine their relationship with their mother, which was conveyed so eloquently in their writing. To put it bluntly, this student's work was admirable in their sentimentality, personality, and openness which I couldn't imagine myself tapping into to nearly the same level when I was in high school.

    Now to shift to the STM student's, I found my role as a writing coach to be a lot less gratifying. These were great writers, but I felt that I didn't have a chance to get to know them as creative writers and people nearly as much as my DSHA student. The assigned writing tasks probably had a big part in why this is, which I know I don't have much control over. Because of this, their writing lacked a notion of an actual human behind the screen, and I feel like my feedback suffered as a result. I really don't want to come off as rude or ungrateful for this opportunity, but I do feel like the specific prompts given to these students didn't align with the goal of this activity. Additionally, when compared to my feedback and interactions with my DSHA student, the online-only/internet medium felt more like a barrier rather than a tool which harbored connection and strengthened STM student's writing.

    If I were to further make sense of the vast difference in my experience between coaching the DSHA and STM writers, I would want to point out that considering I wasn't the one who assigned the prompts themselves, I felt further disconnected from the content at hand. I pointed out sections in the act responses which didn't make the most sense due to not having read the play, but I wasn't sure how much this mattered to the students/teacher because again, I wasn't the one who made (and would be grading) this assignment. In the assigned reading "What Tutoring isn't," McAndrew & Reigstad argue that "part of being an effective tutor means equipping writers with strategies for discovering their own answers..." Without prior knowledge of the play, along with not knowing the teacher's expectations for the act responses, I struggled to find meaningful feedback beyond surface level advice and academic writing formatting. Another part of McAndrew & Reigstad's writing stressed the importance of body language along with tutoring environments, which as stated previously, the e-mail dynamic of this practice nullified completely.

    For my resource which helps novice writers, I struggled to pinpoint exactly what to look for. Lots of resources varied between different writing disciplines, such as writing novels, essays, poetry, academically, etc. With this in mind, it's hard to provide a resource that "helps support the needs of novice writers" when those needs vary depending on what kind of writing they are perusing. If I had to provide something, I would share this website I found called piclits which has you pick out an image from a list curated by piclits and has students interpret them into writing. Each picture has an organized list of words which can then be re-arranged to form a writing piece. I like this website because it is multimodal, reaching across different mediums in an effort to spark writing. I've done some activities similar to piclits in a previous writing class, and I think it's a great way to help jumpstart a student's creative writing focus because they have something to go off of, but can then expand beyond what the picture presents if they so desire.

    In terms of what student writers need from teachers versus a peer/coach, I think the most noticeable difference is the teacher is the one who assigns the grade, which gives them a unique and complex role. Thinking back to my own writing, I found myself writing in a way which was most likely to bring a good grade. I never set out to challenge myself, my writing, or give too much away about myself through my writing. This could be due to a lot of factors, but primarily, I simply don't recall many writing assignments in high school calling for that approach. I figured the more I inserted "myself" into my writing, the worse (less academic) it would be, and thus my grade would suffer as a result.