Post observation

After visiting the writing center I was very pleased with what I found. The writing center is a useful workshop for students as much as the library can be. Students go there to find help with their writing assignments and hopefully improve their writing skills. My experience as an observer was with one tutor that was helping two students at a time. He was able to concentrate on both of the student's concerns about their papers and help them with their issues. The only incorrect thing was that he started marking the student's papers and high lighting wrong things which he stopped right away because he remembered that is not such a helpful technique. I believe he did a great job and was able to split the time wisely between both students allowing them to feel comfortable. the thing I liked the most was that he focused on the high order concerns like the thesis and structure of the paper instead of other lower concern issues. His session was a student centered one since he was more concentrated on listening to them then on telling them what to do.

Throughout this week our class is expected to visit the writing center to watch tutors in action.
Before I get a chance to be there and watch this one on one learning interaction my expectations are to be able to engage in the tutoring session as much as possible and to be able to recognize in the student the aspects a student who visits the writing center usually needs help on. Besides focusing on the student's needs I would also focus on the tutor's strategy to make the student's writing issues disappear, and decide whether they seemed to work with that student or not. Hopefully i will learn enough teaching techniques that I can put to practice in the future.