Responding to Reading

 This week, I thought Monday's readings (Excerpt I from Twelve Readers Reading; Lindemann, Ch. 14; Scenarios: Responding) very helpful for me to reflect on my own experiences as a writing tutor.  There are times when I've read students' essays where I don't agree with the argument they are making, but I try to stay an objective reader and focus on what is working and what is not working (bringing to mind the short essay we read earlier in the semester, Diagnosing Reading).  However, there are times when students push back against my input and suggestions, which is why I found the Scenarios: Responding text intriguing.


However, like my classmates have mentioned, there are particular situations in Scenarios: Responding that I thought were troubling and wouldn't know how to approach personally, such as Trevor's Journal entry, James' essay proposal, and Dwayne's narrative essay.  While I thought the questions at the end of each scenario provoked a lot of interesting thoughts and maybe how I would handle my approach towards these students, but it seems like an intimidating task when students are outwardly hostile towards you.  While a lot of my training as a writing tutor has been focused on how to handle difficult situations and deescalating, I wonder how I would really respond in the situations in this particular reading.  It's easy when you're not on the spot to say, "Oh, I would do this!" or "This is how I would handle it if I were in this professor's shoes..."  I guess that brings me to a broader question of how can we respond appropriately to this situations if they arise?  However, part of me thinks appropriateness went out the door when several of these scenarios described aggressively hostile and romantically forward situations.

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