Thoughts on the Directive/Non-Directive Continuum, Establishing Rapport, and Other Miscellany.

You're right, Melissa.  I had to hold onto my hat when reading this week's articles.  I'm afraid I did a bit of ranting to the other people that were in my church's library halfway through my reading of "A Critique of Pure Tutoring"...something to the effect of how I hated that the article made so much sense because it was contradicting everything I believe in.

After my rant, my friend Sam said simply, "Well, I guess you'd just have to be flexible and go with whatever each student needs."  That ended my rant abruptly.  Truth.  I finished reading and of course that's the conclusion that the article come to as well.  That'll teach me to hold my ranting until the end.

Back on the side of minimalist tutoring, I tried some of Brooks' ideas in my consultations this week.  Namely, I tried sitting on the other side of the writer so that my right hand was far away from their paper.  It occurs to me that when I put my right hand closest to their paper, their right hand has to be far away from it, and assuming they're right-handed, that is bad.  I don't tend to write in a lot of stuff on writers' papers, unless it's me being a scribe for their ideas in the margins, but I like that move of making it easier for them to get at their paper than it is for me.  It's worked out really well so far, making me, just by virtue of my physical placement, much more focused on the writer's ownership of their paper.

In the realm of email consultations I'm plugging away.  I rather like it, but it's still hard for me. It's odd just writing a letter to someone and throwing it out into the abyss, knowing that you'll never know how they responded to it.  Not knowing anything about a writer apart from their name and a few pages of writing is disconcerting.  I've also been focusing on trying to spend the first bit of an appointment on small talk to try and learn more about the writer, and email consultations are an odd contrast to that.

That's the news for this week.  Last official post, but I may continue writing because it's a good way to organize the week's events. :)