(no subject)
As of about 3 weeks ago, the Reading & Writing Center (RWC from here on out) at NVCC Annandale no longer had a director. I went in two weeks ago to fill out some paperwork, asked some questions about who was training the new tutors, and found myself as the Acting Writing Center Instructor. The ESL Center Instructor, Veronica, and her boss, Michelle, had that wild look around their eyes that people get when their coworker has quit and they've had to take on the empty position's responsibilities as well as their own.
There's a possibility that this is what I want to do as a career. I've never really forgotten the lesson of the sad Latin student teacher we had in high school...she'd completed most of her education and just had to finish up with doing some time in the classroom. At which point she found out that she just couldn't teach. Getting this position full time means that I'll have some opportunity to explore whether or not this is actually something I want to get myself into.
Obviously, this isn't permanent (as a matter of fact, the job listing's up on the Nova website if anyone out there is interested). I am simply not qualified for the position, not having had the kind of education I need to run the place to its fullest potential (e.g. grad school in education). On the plus side of things, one thing that I know I can do is to tutor, so I'm going to make sure that the tutors are fully trained and ready to go; I figure this is probably the most important point for the RWC because most of what we do is tutoring.
O. came in this week to schedule an appointment, and had an enormous smile when she realized that I was still going to be at the RWC this year. I can't meet with her now, though. She needs a tutor who will be able to work with her for the duration of the semester, and since there's still a chance that we might move, I didn't want her to have to deal with the transition between tutors halfway through the semester when she would need help. Nicole, the previous Instructor, has accepted a teaching position and is still on campus, so I was able to talk to her about which of the new tutors she'd hired would work well with O.
I felt really terrible handing her off to someone else, even though I'm sure the new tutor will do a good job. But O. is fragile, and vulnerable in ways which I obviously can't go into here, and I'm worried that her new tutor will dismiss her concerns and feelings as just ploys to get attention, won't know her history, won't understand.
Reading someone's writing is intensely personal. Developmental English students tend to write essays about events that have happened to them, people they found to be influential, their plans for the future, that sort of thing. I think most people find it easier to talk or write about themselves before they start to branch out into other subjects, maybe that is why. For the past year, as O.'s writing improved, I got to read all of those essays, learn who she was, and encourage her to talk about herself. She read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and we talked about its similarities to and differences from her own life.
I am expressing this poorly, and I will blame the weekend travel, and worry about tomorrow, when tutoring begins and I have to train 5 new people. I hope I can do good.
There's a possibility that this is what I want to do as a career. I've never really forgotten the lesson of the sad Latin student teacher we had in high school...she'd completed most of her education and just had to finish up with doing some time in the classroom. At which point she found out that she just couldn't teach. Getting this position full time means that I'll have some opportunity to explore whether or not this is actually something I want to get myself into.
Obviously, this isn't permanent (as a matter of fact, the job listing's up on the Nova website if anyone out there is interested). I am simply not qualified for the position, not having had the kind of education I need to run the place to its fullest potential (e.g. grad school in education). On the plus side of things, one thing that I know I can do is to tutor, so I'm going to make sure that the tutors are fully trained and ready to go; I figure this is probably the most important point for the RWC because most of what we do is tutoring.
O. came in this week to schedule an appointment, and had an enormous smile when she realized that I was still going to be at the RWC this year. I can't meet with her now, though. She needs a tutor who will be able to work with her for the duration of the semester, and since there's still a chance that we might move, I didn't want her to have to deal with the transition between tutors halfway through the semester when she would need help. Nicole, the previous Instructor, has accepted a teaching position and is still on campus, so I was able to talk to her about which of the new tutors she'd hired would work well with O.
I felt really terrible handing her off to someone else, even though I'm sure the new tutor will do a good job. But O. is fragile, and vulnerable in ways which I obviously can't go into here, and I'm worried that her new tutor will dismiss her concerns and feelings as just ploys to get attention, won't know her history, won't understand.
Reading someone's writing is intensely personal. Developmental English students tend to write essays about events that have happened to them, people they found to be influential, their plans for the future, that sort of thing. I think most people find it easier to talk or write about themselves before they start to branch out into other subjects, maybe that is why. For the past year, as O.'s writing improved, I got to read all of those essays, learn who she was, and encourage her to talk about herself. She read The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and we talked about its similarities to and differences from her own life.
I am expressing this poorly, and I will blame the weekend travel, and worry about tomorrow, when tutoring begins and I have to train 5 new people. I hope I can do good.