This article, by Cynthia Haynes-Burton, reflects much of our experience in the Madonna Writing Center. The ages of both our staff and our "customers" range from late teens to the 60s. Also like our students, some of us older staff members have experienced dramatic shifts--expected and unexpected--in our professional lives.
You younger tutors may not have had these experiences, but your parents, neighbors, or family friends may have. And we all face a measure of career uncertainty, no matter how old we are or whether we're a tutor or student writer.
To some degree, we can all empathize with our older students. We've seen how uncertain and fearful many of them are when they first come in. Some of our older students who've lost their jobs have also lost a large portion of their identities and self-confidence along with their income. They may have a greater sense of urgency about earning a living than about developing critical thinking skills.
A few of you younger tutors have expressed that, on occasion, older students seemed a little uncomfortable about working with you. Could you comment on that here? Did you modify your approach to put the student at ease? Do you think older students are more comfortable with older tutors? What are some of the unique challenges you've faced with older students?
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I was excited to see this article, since I'm a "thirty-something" student and tutor. One thing in it I appreciate is the comment about making sure the age and other demographic ratios among tutors mirror that of the student population as closely as possible. I'm glad that between our undergraduate peer tutors and our professional tutors, we represent a wide range of not just ages, but of majors, professional backgrounds, and socioeconomic characteristics.
ReplyDeleteAside from a few good points, however, this article reminds me too much of "Intellectual Tug-of-War: Snapshots of Life in the Center," in that the first page is practical, but then the clarity dissolves in a jumble of post-graduate obscurantism about ideology and pedagogy that tutors don't think (or have any business thinking) about when we sit down to help students. Students over thirty, as pointed out in the article, have enough anxieties when coming to school for the first time, or back to school after many years -- The last thing we need to feel burdened with is that kind of baggage.
The author, like the author of "Intellectual Tug-of-War", reads too much into ambivalence of students who come to the writing center, saying quasi-profound things like "freedom is also something we fear" (271, last para.). It's less a matter of hitting some ideological impasse than of conditioning -- Many people were simply never (or too seldom) allowed to have a say in what they wrote about, so now being allowed to do that is an unfamiliar educational concept. Another thing that bothers me is the automatic assumption older students are returning to college. Many of us never got a degree in the first place, so assuming we've "done this before" can do students a serious disservice. A semantic issue I have with this article is the use of the term "subculture" (270). Sub-cultures are people that band together, and the college experience of non-traditional-age students is more often one of isolation, from our age-mates and work-related peers. My last issue is with the conflicts this author and her source Trimbur have with the term "peer": "Peer" is not automatically synonymous with "age-mate." Peer more accurately refers to similarity in role (such as student or work profession), not necessitating having physiological demographics (e.g., age) in common to be considered true peers.
This article did make some good points, but most of it was too obscure and clinical to help traditional-age students gain a truly practical understanding of older students they tutor. Regarding such concepts as "the confusing nowhere of in-betweenness" (271, para. 3), people simply don't think of their lives in terms like this. To better understand students of different ages or other background characteristics than ours, the best way is still to rely on our own dialogues with such students, rather than assigning complex ideologies to these students or our interactions with them.
This article was very helpful to me, as it not only applied to working at the writing center, but also to my work as tutor at the CPI office. I feel that each non-traditional student, just like a traditional student, brings a different level of confidence and skill to a tutoring session. The article’s emphasis on the fact that non-traditional student often suffer from a lack of confidence seemed very spot on. I thought the suggestion to recruit tutors from all age groups to be tutors was a good one.
ReplyDeleteAs a student of the traditional age, I do, every now and then, get a sense that certain students would prefer to be tutored by someone their own age. When this happens, I usually just continue tutoring normally, and the student will just focus on their paper. I haven’t really encountered anyone that I feel really was made uncomfortable by our age difference, but if I did, I can’t think of anything I would do other than to just help them to the best of my ability. What they choose to get out of the session is out of my control.
APA is, of course, the bane of many students who come into the Writing Center, traditional or not. However, traditional students, even ones who confess to never having used APA don’t seem to get as frustrated with the process of making the paper reflect APA requirements.
I believe that the Writing Center at Madonna does a decent job of encouraging this type of student, and this article will definitely help peer tutors to be more sensitive to the specific needs of non-traditional students.
I too am a 30-something student who has enrolled in school due to a lay off and the desire for that job that I have always wanted. It sounds like a cliche but it is true! I am not sure if it is because I have a 20-something master's degree, but I did not feel this article quite applied to me. The concepts of insecurity, nervousness and lack of desire to ask for help do apply, but I feel that they apply to all students, not just us oldies.
ReplyDeleteI feel that the different between younger, traditional students and nontraditional students is that many nontraditional students have been working in professional careers for a time and have learned a level of perfectionism and desire to satisfy a boss (or teacher). Adults who have made the change from professional to student seem to complete assignments as assigned. In my past career life, there was not much room for interpretation when given a work assignment. I now see this in my studies. I do what is asked and I attend all my classes. I am conditioned, from the working world, to do as I am asked (told). I did not have the options to not attend meetings or complete work assignments. This has now translated to my schooling. After receiving my first semester grades, I cannot say that this conditioning has had a negative effect!
The part of this article that I found most helpful was the section about transition difficulties. I have encountered non-traditional students in the writing center who have a lot of anxiety about the writing process. This always puzzled me to a certain extent, but I think that this article was able to explain the source of that anxiety. I can see how, to some non-traditional students, working with a much younger tutor could add to their anxiety. I definitely agree that a wide age range of tutors is important in the Writing Center. When I do work with non-traditional students I have realized even more how important it is for me to be very respectful and make sure that they never feel belittled by receiving "help" from someone so much younger.
ReplyDeleteOften when I sit down with a "thirty-something" student who is new to the Writing Center, one of the first things the student does is list the number of years (or, in some cases, decades) since s/he last had to complete a school assignment. As the article mentioned, grammar and correctly formatting papers is usually one of the student's biggest concerns; so, too, is ensuring a thorough understanding of what the instructor wanted. There can definitely be a sense of anxiety, and I have generally found that taking a few minutes to chat about school, classes, and possibly even the student's transition from an established career to a new field of study helps put him or her at ease. The article makes a good point when it states that tutors in the Writing Center are well positioned to help with the transition of non-traditional students, whether they are in college for the first time or returning. Even though we might not be the same age as these students, we are still peers in the idea that we are all students sharing the academic experience of college. I have not encountered anyone who was uncomfortable working with me because of an age difference; most of the time the students seem grateful simply to have someone willing and able to offer writing help. Overall, I felt this article offered some good advice on how to adjust styles of tutoring to meet the various needs of the different students who come to the Writing Center.
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