The Pedagogy of Awkwardness Meets Writing Center

Next week is the first week we are all officially on the schedule and I am excited and nervous and it feels like the first day of school all over again during the seventh week. I feel equipped with the past few weeks’ readings, in particular: “What Tutoring Is: Models and Strategies,” “Motivational Scaffolding, Politeness, and Writing Center Tutoring,” “The First Five Minutes…,” and “Tutoring in Unfamiliar Subjects.” My biggest concerns are with myself: inability to hear students properly, and to be so ignorant to an unfamiliar subject that I am not helpful. The past two weeks have given me concrete strategies for working with all students, and Greiner’s text was especially helpful for what to do if I personally don’t know what a student is writing about.

I look forward to the next two weeks of reading about ELL students. Selfishly, I look forward to seeing how these readings do or don’t connect with the TEFL course I am taking. I also hope to find more strategies like Greiner’s piece that are applicable not just to one set of unfamiliar texts or a group of students, but all consulting.

As I gear up this weekend to be on the schedule come Tuesday, I am reflecting on the ways that teaching and consulting are similar and different or can aid one another. To assuage nerves I remind myself that working one on one with students are similar enough to conferencing or students visiting during office hours. Once nerves are lifted I become excited to be a peer instead of teacher in consultations. I know there are power dynamics that everyone within writing centers are trying to name and maybe redefine, but I am relieved from feeling the power dynamic between student and teacher. In a consultation I can make suggestions, work through sections, and help writers… and they do not feel required to make those changes. It feels like the conversation we had between tutoring and consulting. In tutoring or teaching a student may feel obligated to take suggestions because the dynamic is one of all knowing teacher or person-I-am-going-to-because-I-need-help tutor. Consulting is freeing in a way I may not have experienced yet in working with other people and writing. Again, I understand that there are dynamics I have not yet experienced or read yet, but it is these feelings of odd giddy excitement that carry me into next week.

I will not, however, forget the essential skills that teaching has taught me. One of those skills the cohort and I like to call “the pedagogy of awkwardness” and it is characterized by not feeling like I have to fill silences, being unapologetically quirky, and getting geekily excited about almost anything. I also have been known to “I don’t know what to do with my arms” or things of the like… but I hope those don’t happen in a consultation because I will be sitting with the writer instead of in front of a classroom filled with humored eyes. I also generally have confidence in my ability to articulate a majority of writing-related things, and—again—plan to wed these skills with those we have read about.

This is my shortest journal to-date, but expect next week’s to be crazy and filled with all the feels. Punctuation cage fight was amazing and I also cannot wait for next Grammar Thursday… and who thought that is something I would ever say?! Have a great weekend!