Returning to ENG101

It was very exciting to return to Prof. H’s ENG 101.  This session I worked with a young student who had nothing with him, no draft, and no sense of what topics option were, not even a pen and paper.  All he knew at that point was that he was behind every stage of his essay.

I knew first he needed to find a topic to write on.  There were a variety of topics on social justice issues.  I asked him if any of these topics interested him.  He looked on a list that I printed out from the class blog (thanks to prof.) But it looked like he had never seen one before.  He ended up picking the “stop & frisk” topic to my surprise.  Trying to be funny to break his passive attitude, I said to him, “You look pretty White to me”.  I always thought this appeared to be a racial issue, and he was on another track.  And he said, “yes…in these days the police officer like to pull the White guys over…”. I adopted the technique of “Twenty Questions” and that felt like he was being interviewed.  Little by little, I instructed him to write down the entire “interview”, which indeed documented his personal experiences (including get arrested, attending courts).  And the funny part was that he knew how to get around judges (regardless what ethical background) and had succeeded to escape all convictions by wearing nice attire and exhibiting a decent demeanor.  However, this does not work the same way with the police officers.  He said that most officers summoned him happened to be White.  Is this interesting?  At least to me! 

As the session went well, I kept telling him this is a great staring point, and he should continue to develop the body of his essay based on his view and thought of “stop & frisk”.  I also urged him to start his research on the topic, through the internet search engines, library, course materials, newspapers and so on.  I told him it will be a really interesting paper if he can put his thoughts on paper decently.  However, we did not have enough time to organize it as an outline.  I gave him the Writing Center’s schedule that I always carry and encouraged him to pay visits along his writing process starting from scratch to final polish.

Since the tutee response to my questions was much better than the first two tutoring sessions, this time I am able to adopt the Collaborative tutoring, which the tutor will initiate the move to a new phase and who usually identifies the problem area on which to focus.  It seemed to work well on this tutee.