Tag: teacher

Tutor or Teacher?

Becoming a Scholar—capital “S”—is a vast undertaking which include encounters with cognitive dissonance at every turn that manifest themselves in the texts we read, the research we conduct, and the writing we produce. However, the becoming of a scholar is frustrating—rife with feelings of intellectual inadequacies, performance (teaching, researching, and publishing) anxiety, at times, an ever changing sense of belonging or exclusion. These encounters and feelings are not unlike those feelings of clients who enter the writing center. Although many clients are not grappling with teaching, researching, and publishing, they are often grappling with being a productive and good student, as well as learning how to read, critique, and write academic prose. Often, clients seek our assistance with helping them to fully understand both what they are reading and not only what they are supposed to write, but HOW the academy wants them to write. However, as a consultant, where does one ethically drawn the line between consultant and teacher?

I am not at all suggesting that writing center consultants do not, at times, function as a type of tutor/teacher hybrid; however, when clients, and in particular students, are given an assignment on any given topic, Queer issues, socioeconomic issues, class structures, etc., how much are consultants to challenge students to interrogate their own body of knowledge with regard to the topic, as well as challenging and critiquing the body of knowledge of their peers and teachers? Is there an educational line consultants should not cross when tutoring clients? What issues in client writing are best “left to the instructor” and how do we decide?