ENGL 505A

To read Newkirk in conjunction with the Harris article, we’re left with a very interesting dilemma about the role of teachers in a one-on-one conference. Whereas Harris draws distinctions between in-class peer review and the tutoring that goes on in the Writing Center, so too must we draw a distinction between the teacher in the classroom and the teacher in conference.

While a teacher in a classroom can take a variety of approaches to education, what is fundamentally the same (for the most part), is how the teacher is viewed by the student; as an intellectual superior, or at the very least, someone with power over them in that they “control” the student’s grade. As such, when a student arrives for their first conference with the teacher, there is already a set of expectations placed on the interaction. The student comes in expecting to find out not the vague “how do I fix this paper” that plagues Writing Centers, but “what do you want me to change so I can get an A” questions that only a teacher can answer.

Much like Harris describes as the back and forth wrestling between tutor and student over whose agenda must be followed in these meetings, the student and teacher find themselves in a similar bind. Newkirk’s article is interesting in that it brings to light the failures and successes of both teacher and student, but ultimately leaves me unsure about how exactly to move past these expectations and set the appropriate agenda from the start.

The “successful” teacher-student scenario (the third scenario described) comes about because of a student’s own epiphany. While the teacher is good about offering leading questions and allowing the student to free-think, the student is making the connections for themselves. Sadly, this is not always the case. We see this in the first scenario where the teacher offers a number of lead-in questions that are meant to prompt the student to think reflectively, but the student doesn’t bite. The analysis of this conversation only focuses on the secondary, personal information between the teacher and student and culminates in the “wait and see” approach.

However, this seems an ineffective strategy if the goal is to improve the writer’s confidence. While a student may have some epiphanical moment where light shines down from the heavens and they are left astounded by their own knowledge and power, the chances are the student will make minor grammatical changes, hand in the paper, get a low grade, and lose even more confidence in themselves and their writing.

While I don’t specifically have an answer to the problem of scenario 1, it seems to me that at a certain point, a teacher needs to start over with the student and try to come at the problem from a different angle.
I think the difficulty in Newkirk’s article is that he compares three scenarios that aren’t really comparable. The first scenario is an awkward student, the second is an awkward teacher, and the third is an “ideal.”