First, a quick peek into the Workshop Window:
Earlier this semester, I worked for the first time with a student via Zoom for a Writing Lab session. When we were through, I clicked "end call," smoothed a worried wrinkle between my eyebrows, and turned my attention to my own schoolwork. While I was not displeased with the overall tone of the session and I do think that my tutee was happy with the help received, there was something tickling the back of my brain—a sense that I had slipped into a zone toward the end of our conversation that left me feeling both confident in my helpfulness but simultaneously confused about the quality of the experience. First time jitters? Maybe. So I turned my attention back to my reading and soon realized the source of my discomfort.
You see, the whole experience emphasized the privileged place of power I held during the interview, and while I could examine this privilege from multiple angles, I focus here on the role I played in steering the workshop conversation. Brannon & Knoblauch (1982) note “although student texts are not, in fact, authoritative, we must nonetheless accept a student writer's authority to the extent that we grant the writer control over the process of making choices" (p. 165). I know this logically—but intuitively, I was humbled to realize what is said is not so easily done in practice.
Here's what happened:
I wanted to ensure I showed my peers (the students I tutor as a Writing Mentor for Arizona State University’s Writers’ Studio) “that we take their writing seriously” (Brannon & Knoblauch, 1982, p. 166) by initiating a meaningful and sustained dialogue. So when Student S initially approached me for help, I responded to her request by cutting and pasting the key information from the assignment analysis plan, and then I highlighted personal questions after each section header to provide a “reader response:” What was I, as a reader, hoping to get from reading their final product?
For this assignment, the students were asked to respond to three parts: Step 1-elaborate on the rhetorical situation, Step 2-describe the multimodal elements that will be used, and Step 3-elaborate on 2-3 questions that show how the student will “dive deeper” into the topic for their research. As an example of how I attempted to initiate this meaningful and sustained dialogue, the initial request was made via email and my response was sent in preparation for a later, follow-up discussion. In the email, I could almost feel Student S’s nervous anxiety: “I added my document I know I need a ton of work mainly insight on maybe a better direction please help lol.”
When I downloaded her work, I could see that her anxiety was reflected in her writing. Among other issues, her document was not recognizably focused on her topic (which she had introduced in previous discussion posts) but instead was a response to a news article about LeBron James.
Moving forward, I decided to focus my efforts to helping her solidify her topic, audience, and thesis. As per her request, she also wanted to ensure that she was adequately addressing the specific assignment requirements (Steps 1, 2, and 3)—with a focus on clarifying her rhetorical focus (Step 1).
The technology for this interaction was based on this "prep" email with the intent to follow up in a voice-only Zoom call. For the sake of brevity, here is an overview of the first question of the assignment, my initial reader response, and just a few clarifying questions I asked her to consider:
1. Describe Your Target Audience: Who is your specific audience within your community? What do they know about your chosen problem already? Why do they care? What do you need to explain to them about this problem? What details do you know about your audience that you can incorporate into your project?
• What you’ve accomplished so far to answer this question: "Anybody who is a parent, single or married , guardian , teachers , coaches, school staffing."
• As a reader, I’m wondering: You've identified who should care about this and why in your work. But as you have pointed out in your discussion responses, what people think they know about this problem isn't enough. Your appeal is that there are serious consequences when children are left unsupervised after school with no (or inadequate) access to after-school activities. So your goal is to show the magnitude of these effects, right?
• Some other questions to think about that may help you fine-tune your appeal to your target audience: * What details about this problem would really speak to the “parents, guardians, coaches, and school staff” to bring to light the magnitude of this problem? What images or statistics that could help? Quotes? A specific public official that you’ve heard speak about this topic?
* How will you describe this problem to these specific stakeholders? As you progress in your plan, you might consider narrowing your focus to one particular group (e.g., just focusing on appealing to school administrators or just making an appeal to parents to seek out alternatives, etc.) so that you can fine-tune your details to appeal to this stakeholder group specifically.
1. Describe Your Target Audience: Who is your specific audience within your community? What do they know about your chosen problem already? Why do they care? What do you need to explain to them about this problem? What details do you know about your audience that you can incorporate into your project?
• What you’ve accomplished so far to answer this question: "Anybody who is a parent, single or married , guardian , teachers , coaches, school staffing."
• As a reader, I’m wondering: You've identified who should care about this and why in your work. But as you have pointed out in your discussion responses, what people think they know about this problem isn't enough. Your appeal is that there are serious consequences when children are left unsupervised after school with no (or inadequate) access to after-school activities. So your goal is to show the magnitude of these effects, right?
• Some other questions to think about that may help you fine-tune your appeal to your target audience: * What details about this problem would really speak to the “parents, guardians, coaches, and school staff” to bring to light the magnitude of this problem? What images or statistics that could help? Quotes? A specific public official that you’ve heard speak about this topic?
* How will you describe this problem to these specific stakeholders? As you progress in your plan, you might consider narrowing your focus to one particular group (e.g., just focusing on appealing to school administrators or just making an appeal to parents to seek out alternatives, etc.) so that you can fine-tune your details to appeal to this stakeholder group specifically.
After reading through “On Students’ Rights” (Brannon & Knoblauch, 1982), I revisited these comments with a more critical eye. Yes, I was asking questions that attempted to honor the student’s control at choosing her audience and fine-tuning her appeal to specific stakeholders, but honestly, I can see that my in-depth questions here are leading the student to my version of an Ideal Text. I think this is why I ended the meeting feeling unhappy. My attempt at producing helpful, authentic dialogue was too much—I think that next time, I must offer some general questions but in much smaller chunks. I need to sit back and allow the student to “achieve their own purposes” (Brannon & Knoblauch, 1982, p. 159). After all, as noted composition studies scholar Peter Elbow notes, “my best chance of figuring out what is right for this student at any given point depends on knowing about what was going on for her as she was writing” (Elbow, 2001, n.p.). By presenting general (but relevant) questions about her target audience, I trust that she will own choices and questions for those stakeholders, which in turn will create an incentive for her to (organically) consider the best choice of genre and multimodal elements. She already knows what these options are from the course readings—I do not think I need to reiterate them as hidden-agenda suggestions that will create an Ideal Text. Just something I will have to keep working on.
References:
Brannon, L., & Knoblauch, C. H. (1982). On students' rights to their own texts: A model of teacher response. College composition and communication, 33(2), 157-166.
Elbow, P. (2001). About responding to student writing. Memo. Web, 13.
