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Working

with

COWS

A training manual for tutors in the Center for Speaking and Writing (COWS) at Whitman College

Olin 191

Director of COWS, Prof. Lydia McDermott mcdermlm@whitman.edu

Office: Olin 185

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Table of Contents Who We Are as the COWS!...........................................................................................................................!3!

Who We Are Not!......................................................................................................................................................................................!3!Who We Work With!...............................................................................................................................................................................!3!

Qualities of Successful Tutors!.................................................................................................................!3!

Who Are the Writing Fellows?!................................................................................................................!5!What Are the Writing Fellows’ Responsibilities?!...........................................................................................................!5!Can You Be a Writing Tutor in the COWS AND a Writing Fellow for a Professor?!................................!5!

Using WCOnline!..............................................................................................................................................!6!Seeing Appointments!.........................................................................................................................................................................!6!Walk-In or Drop-In Appointments!............................................................................................................................................!7!

Filling Out a Client Report Form!............................................................................................................!7!

What Else Does the COWS Do?!.................................................................................................................!9!

Helpful Resources and Tips!......................................................................................................................!9!

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Who We Are as the COWS The staff of the Center for Writing and Speaking is committed to working closely with students in order to meet their writing goals. Our aim is to provide students with a safe and receptive space in which to write, and with the tools they need to approach academic writing with confidence and zeal. We help students at ANY stage of the writing process, from brainstorming to polishing. We are a group of trained peer tutors working together as a community to build a vibrant culture of writing at Whitman College.

Who We Are Not We are not a proofreading service. Our product in tutoring sessions is the conversation we build with other students around their writing. This is not to say that we cannot help with grammatical and syntactical issues, but that out primary concern is the development of the individual writer rather than the development of an individual paper. We are also a student-centered and student-driven resource. This means we are not in the business of reporting to professors or fulfilling requirements for classes. If professors wish to require consultation with a writing tutor, they should consider hiring a writing fellow to work with their individual classes.

Who We Work With We work with anyone at any stage of writing. Out goal is to reach students vertically, from their first year to their final year, and horizontally, across all disciplines and needs on campus. Though there are services in place for English Language Learners (ELFS in the LLC), and students with disabilities (ARC), we also serve these students in a collaborative endeavor to become better writers of standard academic English.

Qualities of Successful Tutors Successful writing tutors…

! Listen!well.!! Have!fun.!! Are!friendly,!acknowledging!students!by!name!and!introducing!themselves.!! Let!the!tutee!do!the!work.!! Are!patient!and!encouraging.!! Provide!quiet!time!and!are!comfortable!in!moments!of!silence.!! Use!primarily!questioning!strategies,!rather!than!answering.!! Read!what!is!at!stake!for!the!tutee!and!respond!appropriately.!! Manage!their!time!well.!! Are!invested!in!the!COWS!and!help!to!keep!it!a!productive!and!clean!space.!! Ask!clarifying!questions!and!ask!to!see!the!assignment!sheet.!

Unsuccessful tutors… ! Believe!they!have!all!the!right!answers.!! Jump!right!into!small!problems!without!having!read!the!entire!draft!for!larger!problems.!! Do!not!ask!tutees!what!they!want!out!of!the!session.!! Talk!disparagingly!about!professors!or!fellow!students.!! Do!most!of!the!talking.!

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Responsibilities in the Center for Writing Tutors Openers If!you!are!the!first!on!the!schedule,!you!need!to!open!the!center,!check!to!make!sure!things!are!tidy,!and!brew!coffee.!

Closers If!you!are!the!last!person!in!the!center,!make!sure!you!end!your!session!at!11:50.!Tidy!up!the!room.!Turn!off!the!coffee!maker!and!rinse!out!the!pot/dump!the!grounds.!

Library If!you!work!the!library,!bring!a!laptop!and!plan!on!filling!out!appointments!and!client!report!forms!on!WConline!for!all!your!drop!ins.!It!is!easiest!to!just!take!the!first!few!minutes!of!the!session!to!do!this.!Also,!make!sure!the!whiteboard!announcing!your!presence!is!set!up,!visible,!and!legible.!

Appointments Whether!you!have!an!appointment!or!a!dropQin!consultation!you!need!to!do!the!following:!HELP!

• Hello—greet!your!client!and!make!him/her!comfortable.!

• Establish!the!context—What!is!the!assignment?!What!does!the!client!need!help!with?!How!soon!is!the!assignment!due?!Prioritize!concerns.!

• Listen!and!Restate—Try!having!the!student!read!aloud!to!you!and!just!listen,!or!invite!them!to!listen!and!take!notes!while!you!read.!Talk!about!what!you!hear:!Here!is!what!it!seems!like!you!are!saying….!This!is!the!most!collaborative!part!of!the!session.!It!is!conversation.!Resist!using!! your!pen.!

• Plan—The!client!should!leave!the!appointment!with!a!plan!of!action!that!the!!two!of!you!have!established.!Save!the!last!few!minutes!of!the!session!to!recap!and!set!up!goals!and!plans!for!what!to!do!when!they!leave!the!center.!

TRY!TO!END!THE!SESSION!BY!10!TIL!THE!HOUR.!Use!the!ten!minutes!between!appointments!to!fill!in!the!client!report!form!and!regroup!for!the!next!appointment.!IT!IS!OKAY!TO!TELL!THE!CLIENT!YOU!WILL!NEED!THAT!LAST!TEN!MINUTES.!Drop-ins!

DropQins!should!run!very!much!like!appointments,!but!they!may!be!much!quicker,!depending!on!how!busy!you!are.!You!have!an!additional!step!in!the!process!at!the!beginning—put!the!client!in!the!system!and!fill!in!an!appointment!form!(each!drop!in!time!slot!has!room!for!up!to!three!appointments,!so!you!just!click!like!you!are!making!an!appointment,!and!note!the!actual!length!of!the!appointment!in!the!report!form).!The!appointment!form!is!important!because!it!tells!us!when!we!are!getting!the!most!dropQins.!!!

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Who Are the Writing Fellows? Instructors across the curriculum teach many kinds of writing; each understands best the skills and techniques writers need for that instructor’s area of inquiry. A professor of French may need to teach composition in French; a professor of Chemistry may need to teach the composition of captions for figures in lab reports; a professor of Anthropology may need to teach the composition of ethnographies; a professor of Theatre may need to teach play summary; a professor focusing on the research paper may need to teach forms of bibliographic reference. The College already offers support for more general instruction in writing through the Writing Center, the First-Year program and course work in Composition. The program for Writing Fellows creates a structure to support writing instruction in discipline-specific writing skills across the curriculum. Instruction in writing is labor-intensive and becomes sharply more onerous as class size increases. Some advanced students have learned well those writing skills important to a particular discipline or instructor. Through the program of Writing Fellows these capable students will be employed by the Written and Oral Communication Initiative and assigned to specific courses where they can help the instructor with discipline-specific aspects of writing instruction. Whitman College does not employ Teaching Assistants, nor should it. The responsibility for the evaluation of students remains the obligation of the instructor, but Writing Fellows may be able to expand opportunities for the one-on-one or small-group work, which is the hallmark of a Whitman education. The Writing Fellows program is an opportunity for instructors to work closely with an advanced student in the definition and instruction of a specific writing skill. In doing so, the instructor can more precisely define the task and can consider more fully the ways in which it may be taught. The Writing Fellow will bring to this work his or her own experiences as a student working to learn the skill in question. The dialogue between instructor and Writing Fellow can help the instructor develop pedagogic techniques, even as it immediately improves the quality of student writing in the course. The onus for the supervision of the Writing Fellow will be offset by an alleviation of onus for other types of work with the students of a class, and thus the work of the Writing Fellow can improve the quality of student writing with no additional burden upon the instructor.

What Are the Writing Fellows’ Responsibilities? Where the COWS serves students and is student-driven, Writing Fellows are chosen by and employed by individual professors. We pay them at the same rate as COWS tutors and we offer training opportunities, but their responsibilities are to the professor.

Can You Be a Writing Tutor in the COWS AND a Writing Fellow for a Professor? YES!!! They complement each other well. Also consider you can be an ELF (English Language Fellow) for the LLC or a Speaking Fellow for the COWS. You can do all these things! They only build on each other.

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Using WCOnline We use an online scheduling system for both appointments and walk-in consultations, in the COWS and in the Penrose Learning Commons. The address is www.mywco.com/whitman. It appears as a link on our website at www.whitman.edu/cows. You must use a Whitman email to register in the system, at which point, I can assign you hours on the schedule. After you have registered (link above the logon on the login page) and logged in, you will see this page:

This is the default home page, which is the fall schedule for COWS (Center for Writing and Speaking). As a tutor, you have basic administrative access, so you can select a different schedule and location with the drop down menu (see red circle above). Select your location: (ARC, LLC, COWS, PIRAHNA, or SEC).

Seeing Appointments In the above shot, we can see that Caitlin and Marisa have scheduled appointments, because they have rectangles that are bright blue. This is what a student sees when looking for an appointment. The white rectangles are available time slots. The very dark blue rectangles are hours we are not available for tutoring. As a tutor, if you have an appointment, it will be bright yellow. The student who is scheduled with you sees it this way too. Anna will want to click that yellow box at the end of the appointment, in order to fill in the client report form. This is the most important step because it gives us information

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about who is seeking our help and what kind of help they are seeking.

Walk-In or Drop-In Appointments If you have a walk-in appointment, you should take the first few minutes to sign that student in and click your own appointment time slot, so that you can fill out a client report form, when the session ends. If we are very busy, and you do not have time for this, write down on paper as much as you can to enter into the system later. Let’s say that Anna S. on this schedule ends up working with a student from 9:00-9:30. In order to document this time, she would click on the empty box at the beginning of the 9:00 hour. Then an appointment registration sheet would pop up:

It looks like this. There is a drop down menu with the client’s name. In this case, it would actually be Anna’s name that showed up here. If the student she worked with has registered in the system before at COWS, then their name would show up in the dropdown menu. We’ll pretend that is the case.

Filling Out a Client Report Form

Anna will also choose to change the end time from 9:15 to 9:30. Anna will fill out some of the information asked in this form. Anything she does not know, she can fill in with a random letter (n…). At the bottom of the pop-up window, she will see a box of “admin options.” There, she should click “walk-in”, and then “save appointment.”

At the end of an appointment or walk-in consultation, you want to add a new client report form.

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Write whatever makes most sense for the kind of work you did with the student. I like the comment box “plan of action” because it stresses that this session did not “fix” a problem, but helped a student develop a plan for dealing with their problem during the session AND as he/she leaves the session. At the bottom of the form, Anna will find the option to email this form to various people: “client,” “resource,” and “administrator.” “Client” is the student who came in. If she would like a reminder, this might be a nice thing to do. “Resource” is the tutor, Anna. I doubt she needs this email. “Administrator” is me, the COWS Director, and the director of your program. Use this option if you have a legitimate concern about the student. There is also an option to add an email address. NEVER EMAIL THE REPORT FORM TO A PROFESSOR UNLESS THE STUDENT ASKS YOU TO. In that case, you can enter this address here. You must have an explicit request from the student! Then save the form and you are done!

Why Do We Bother Filling This Out? In this way we communicate with each other: tutors with other tutors, tutors with tutees, and tutors with me. And I know what is going on in the COWS even when I can’t be there late into the evening.

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What Else Does the COWS Do?!

! Workshops!

! Thesis!Boot!Camps!

! Open!Houses!

! Open!Writing!Hours!

! Visit!Classrooms!

! Faculty!Writing!Hours!

! Speaking!Fellows!and!Tutors!

Helpful Resources and Tips http://www.peercentered.org/ A peer-tutoring blog.

http://writingcenters.org/resources/peer-tutoring/ The International Writing Centers Association Page. http://writing2.richmond.edu/training/tough/index.html videos for working on tutoring in difficult situations http://library.camden.rutgers.edu/EducationalModule/Plagiarism/ a fun video quiz show about plagiarism. http://www.peertutoringresource.org/ for any peer tutoring

https://wlnjournal.org/ Online access to the WLN, a journal of writing center scholarship, which features columns by tutors.

http://writing.wisc.edu/wac/ resources on writing across the curriculum https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/ for help with a variety of writing and grammar issues

http://www.usingenglish.com/teachers/ ELL resources with printable handouts

Make sure you check out CLEO group for genre guides and other advice and see our Wordpress site. https://whitmanwriting.wordpress.com/

I will invite all hired COWS tutors to contribute to this blog. Consider doing this in down times.

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