Tutoring!

So there have been many things that I have been meaning to blog about but have not been able to find the time because it is the last week of the quarter and my teachers have all decided to cram in as many test and other grades as possible! I have been having the most fascinating mood swings and they are so damn interesting because I never knew I could go from bright and peppy to hateful and full of angst in less than two minutes! Typical teenage behavior we all learned about in Sex Ed but I've never really experienced it and its just cool when I step back for a second and think to myself "wow so this is what it is like to be normal!" Well that is not the point of today's blog although it would be a good topic to explore at some other time.

So today I went through my day as normal (and with all the new highs and lows!) and got to third block, Advanced Composition (aka EWC tutoring time) and was really not in the mood to tutor after I went to lunch (especially since this person hadn't signed up for me until after I went to lunch so it caught me off guard.) However, I couldn't just tell one of the senior tutors "no I don't feel like it" for obvious reasons. So I went and got prepared and my tutee came in with absolutely nothing done. She said that she had a draft somewhere but didn't bring it with her. "Great, not only is she not prepared but I'm not sure what to work on her with", I thought. I noticed on her cover sheet though that she had circled "transitions" as one of the things she wanted to work on. I asked her, "what do you want to know about transitions" and she basically said anything and everything.

At first I thought it would be just a quick review of what transitions were but then it turned into a 20 minute discussion! We talked about the purpose of transitions, examples of transitions (my favorite was transitioning from a paragraph about her favorite color, blue, to the cookie monster and NO we didn't say that they were both blue!), transition words, transitions that she could use in her draft (wherever it was) and how people use transitions all the time even when they speak. I drew like 4 different diagrams for her and I really wish we had taken a picture of the sheets of paper we used! I even used math to try and get the point across! I used the transitive property of equality (if a = b and b = c then a = c) where a = example from text, b = theme/what both examples have in common and c = example from text. So if she uses a quote to support her theme in paragraph A and another quote to support her theme in paragraph C then what (besides the theme) do paragraphs A and C have in common that links them through transition B? If you aren't following I'm sure its because it was more of a visual diagram explanation that just sounds weird written out.

The point is that I really enjoyed the conference because we essentially just talked about writing and what makes good writing (good transitions make excellent papers!) Typically the tutee comes in with a draft and we read it out loud and then we just edit what they have and I make suggestions for what they could do (whether they execute these suggestions is a complete mystery to me). I realize that it is sessions like these, where we can discuss actual writing and create random examples, is why I like tutoring so much. I legitimately laughed out loud several times and it was just great to see my tutee's face light up with understanding. It felt great to tutor something so basic yet it is a topic that you can delve deep into. I wish all freshmen came in with such great questions!

UYL
Andre

P.S.
Visit the EWC's blog at edisonwritingcenter.blogspot.com for writing by os tutors or funny posts!