As far as my self-assessment for this session is concerned, I think I did pretty well. In fact this may have been the best tutoring session I've held for this class. Unfortunately I think it might have the least impact on the grade of the student I worked with.
The student I was assigned to work with had stopped coming to class for the majority of the semester, then decided to come back toward the end of the term. He really missed just about the entire class and had nothing at all to work with. After this session I spoke about him with the ENG 101 professor I'm tutoring for through API. She told me some students just do that, she had a word for them. I forget what it was, it might have been "ghosts." She said they disappear for nearly an entire semester then come back and expect to be able to just pick up where they left off. Her opinion was that in most cases, if they'd already missed the majority of class, there's really not much you can do for them. I'm glad I didn't hear that until after I tutored him, because hearing that might have discouraged me, which might have discouraged him.
Like I said, I was able to help him. If nothing else maybe he'll do well on this one assignment, and learn what it is he needs to do the next time he takes the class.
The assignment we worked on was to pick a social justice issue similar to the ones they'd been discussing all semester in class, form an opinion about it, state that opinion through a full-fledged thesis, then support that thesis in an argumentative essay of 1,000-1,500 words.
He hadn't been there for any of the discussions or readings, or at least didn't recall any of them. He didn't have a copy of the assignment. He didn't really know what a thesis was. We had a lot to cover and really not much time. The one thing I had going for me was that he seemed cheerful and enthusiastic. He was ready and willing to dive right in. I didn't mention that it might have been better for him to have dived in about six weeks ago because I didn't want to ruin his good mood which was one of the few things I had to work with.
So we started from the beginning. He and I reviewed the assignment together and I made sure he really understood it. We discussed the suggested topic ideas and he latched onto stop and frisk right away. He's a criminal justice major and wants to be a cop so he was already interested in the issue. The next thing we did was review exactly what a thesis was. We spent a few minutes on that and he settled on the working thesis that "Stop and frisk was a legitimate tactic for the police to use in an effort to reduce crime." I don't agree with his thesis but didn't tell him that. Instead I posed questions about it to try to get him to think about it more. I told him it was a good thesis in that it was a strong opinion and not just a statement of fact, but explained that even though it was an opinion, he still had to back it up with information from credible sources.
That led us to the next thing we needed to cover, sources and research. I explained what a legitimate source was and what his professor was looking for in regard to their sources. I gave him a very brief run-down of how to find sources though the library's subscription databases but also urged him strongly to go to the library and get help from the research desk. I told him that was what the librarians were there for and that he was going to need their help.
After that we did some brainstorming about his thesis and how he might go about backing it up. We discussed aspects of the issue he would need to look at, the kind of data he would need from sources to back up his thesis, etc. He had some ideas that really didn't have much to do with his thesis, like airport security, bag screening, etc. I told him that in my opinion, while a case could be made that those are social justice issues, they were only tangentially related to what he had chosen as his thesis.
I told him it was okay to alter or to completely change his thesis during his research if he wanted to, that if in his research he found a lot about airport security and decided he really wanted to go with that, he could. But he would need to make a strong clear case that it was a social justice issue, form a new thesis about it, and then back that up with data. If he wanted to stick with stop and frisk and talk about airport security, he'd need to demonstrate a clear link between the two. The way I write it here makes it sound like we took more time on this than we did. We didn't talk about airport security much at all, it didn't seem related so I tried to nip it in the bud.
He had what I thought was a great idea for an introduction involving his own personal experiences with being stopped and frisked. But his professor's assignment specifically said, "This is not autobiographical and should not rely on personal experience." I didn't think a personal anecdote in the introduction would necessarily lead to a paper that "[relied] on personal experience" but we asked the professor about it anyway. It was a good thing we did, because he said to skip it.
The session took the form of an extended conversation. I wrote down everything we discussed and underlined key points. I also had a numbered list of the things he needed to do. I didn't keep a copy for myself so I don't remember exactly what it listed but basically I told him:
1. Get help with research at the library
2. Get five legit sources
3. Review those sources, take notes, underline
4. Reconsider thesis, try to make it stronger, more specific, make sure it's supported by sources.
5. Start writing.
I told him it was fine to save the intro and the conclusion for last, or to write a basic version of either on of them and then return to it later. I also told him that the information in his sources might not support his thesis and that if that happened he needed to reconsider the thesis or find better more supportive sources. I had my netbook and we had wifi so I did a quick search for sources and showed him that most of what came up was anti-stop and frisk. I explained that those were fine sources for him if he wanted to address the argument against his thesis. I also said that was probably a good idea. But that it might make more work for him because if he used a source that was against his thesis, and he wanted to refute it, he'd need another source to support his refutation, which meant more research.
We were only able to find one supportive source during the brief research we did together. At first it looked okay because it was from a legitimate print source (The National Review), albeit through their online portal. But after taking a closer look it appeared to be to vehemently worded to really serve as a good source. It referred to Michael Bloomberg as a "prissy little autocrat" and made blanket suppositions without any data to back them up (it said "there is ample evidence that this and other measures have made a real impact on crime in the city" without bothering to share any of that data, things like that).
As far as what I might have done wrong, well, I was very careful not to express my own opinions too strongly. I certainly didn't try to talk him out of his thesis. I think it's fair, and honestly, helpful, to point out possible weaknesses in his thesis. Maybe I was too careful about that? Maybe my own biases came through anyway? We only looked briefly but even searching "stop and frisk works" only brought up one marginally credible source that supported his thesis, and to call it inflammatory would be too kind.
I also suggested that he might want help from the writing center. I know that's an example of responding too late, or it could be looked at as one. But he hadn't heard of the assignment until we met. He only had a basic idea for a thesis. He hadn't done any research and had no real idea how to conduct it. I tried to cover as much as I could of an entire semester of ENG 101 in 40 minutes. I think I did an okay job, and he left with a map for where to go next. I think it was fair to put the writing center on that map.
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