Common Ground

This past Monday we went to the Boys and Girls club to help students with their digital stories and more importantly, to learn ourselves how to interact and create a safe and productive atmosphere with people other than the typical Richmond student. 

To be honest, I'm not sure how effective our session was. First of all, we had to pair up because there were not enough students to tutor. This presented many difficulties. For example, I'm afraid we intimidated the girl who we worked with a little bit since there were two of us trying to help her at the same time. Possibly if we had known that we would be teaming up and who we would be teamed up with, we could have worked out a strategy together and been both less overwhelming and less unorganized. Secondly, our student had not yet done her interview, which left us a little at a loss as to what we should do during the hour. Thankfully, both Michael and I realized the importance of finding that common ground that Smith speaks of in her article, "Non-traditional students in the Writing Center", and spent a majority of the time simply getting to know her, making her feel more comfortable with us, and casually discussing what she thought of the project and what she thought of stories in general. In this aspect, I feel that we were fairly successful in establishing a rapport with her, and she seemed fairly interested in what we had to say.

The most interesting observation I have taken away from the experience is the concept of speaking in the same language. This very much relates to the concept of common ground, of having things in common with the student you are tutoring. I was very nervous about speaking in the same "language" as this girl, as we did not have much in common at all. Even at the most basic level, I wanted to make sure I didn't use words that she would not understand that I would typically use in a classroom, such as "exposition" or "denouement" while also not seeming condescending in speaking in overly simple terms. And to be honest, it was fairly difficult and there were times when I saw just blankness in her eyes while I was talking, like she did not understand a word I said even though I was speaking English. However, when I asked her about her life and what she liked to do, she answered that she loved to read, and that immediately created a commonality that I tried to play off of during the rest of the hour. Honestly, I was giddy the moment she said that, to find something in common with her, and it definitely helped ease the tension and create a backdrop off of which I could move towards discussing what makes a good book, what makes a good story, what she wants her story to convey, etc.