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Apprenticed to Failure: Learning from the Students We Can’t Help. By Steve Sherwood. “Failure- on our part and the student writers’- is an inevitable part of writing center interactions”
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Apprenticed to Failure: Learning from the Students We Can’t Help By Steve Sherwood
“Failure- on our part and the student writers’- is an inevitable part of writing center interactions” • “A good failure challenges our technique, deflates our confidence in being able to help every writer (or solve every problem) we meet, and goads us into learning more about our diverse field to avoid repeating mistakes. Failure toughens us” • “Failure is key to our growth as tutors and writing center professionals
Byron and Jackie • Byron- “I probably should have seen our fragmented sessions together, which moved with the same jolting starts and stops as his prose, as a window into Byron’s thinking and writing process (and perhaps the key to solving his problems).” • Jackie- “I functioned as her translator, going line by line and asking what she meant, checking her words against her perceptions, discovering they did not express what she had in mind, and puzzling out other possible interpretations”.
Writing and Anxiety • Writing creates tension and anxiety, and students often focus on fear of failure instead of hope of reward. • The more important a paper is, the greater the feel of failure, and therefore there is more anxiety about writing the paper. Anxiety causes writer’s blocks. • Writing Centers can be evaluation free zones, where students can “risk, learn, and improve until they’re ready to face more harsh realities”.
Failure is Helpful • Some psychologists note that failure “is a history of being successful”, expressing the need for “a primary source of misjudgment” • Tutors who have never experienced failure can not help writers who are afraid of failing.
Ways to Fail as a Tutor • Distracted from tutee • Misjudge • importance of long term versus short term goals • Strengths and weaknesses • Let personality problems or personal beliefs get in the way • Give unclear or inappropriate advice • Lack of time • Lack of experience or specialized knowledge
Using Failure as a Tool • Reassure students with stories of times when you may have suffered a setback or failure in writing and then made a comeback, emphasizing perseverance. • Encourage students to free write and not be afraid that it may be bad.
Solution? • TALK about failures with other tutors. Sharing your experiences can both comfort you and help other tutors learn from your mistakes • Don’t approach work with fear that a student will reject advice or pose unsolvable problems. • Accept that all tutors fail sometimes. “We must learn to acknowledge our failures in order to take from them life lessons that inform our future actions.
Understanding Failure in Tutoring “Don’t despair. Try something else. Have patience; the student is infinitely more frustrated than you are. Try every possible way you can think of to get your message across and if they all fail, then try something else” • Failure as a tutor will be tolerated. Do not use fear of failure to keep you from taking risks. • Understand that there are limits to how much tutoring can accomplish.
Check out the new wiki page “Horror Stories” and add your own past experiences or experiences you observe while shadowing! Sharing these experiences will hopefully give us a better idea of understanding in dealing with some common obstacles we might face.
