Kathleen 4

I appreciated the discussion on how different students learn, but am not entirely sure how to make use of it, particularly with appointment students. How will we know if they have a learning disability? Will they always think it's relevant? Will they always volunteer their learning style, or should we ask? (Similarly to how I brought up whether or not I should ask if my student was multilingual, which you all encouraged me to do.) Are we expected to always teach to visual, auditory, and kinesthetic learning at the same time?

There was also a mention of problems students might be facing in their lives that impede the writing process. I wonder how much to take this into consideration, since we don't give grades to our students. How should we approach a student who is clearly experiencing personal difficulties in comparison to how we approach all students? If a student expresses a problem in his or her life that is impeding their writing process, to what extent should we spend our time talking through that problem? Should we just acknowledge their admission and move on? How do we make sure they feel heard?

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  1. IanFebruary 12, 2019 at 8:29 AM

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  2. IanFebruary 12, 2019 at 8:30 AM

    You're hitting on what I find to be the main challenge of writing center work, particularly in a 30-minute window: trying to quickly identify where we can be most helpful to students, and then to pursue that work with whatever time remains. I, for one, don't think that working through the occasional personal problem with students is beyond the scope of our work. Obviously there's a line (we are not licensed therapists) but I also think a huge reason students use our services is just to have a ready, empathetic ear. If I can help a student talk through their writing anxiety, or make a plan for tackling a mountain of work, or simply validate their stress in a way that makes them leave our meeting with a renewed sense of purpose and confidence, then that, to me, is a successful conference.

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