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| Lyn Bennett (Abriel photo) |
In the following interview, Professor Bennett shares her love of writing and her belief in the importance of studentsÕ development of their writing through academic course work and practical experience. She discusses her pleasure in sharing her interests with her students through the Practicum for Writing Tutors course.
What interested you in teaching the Practicum for Writing Tutors course?
I am interested in writing pedagogy and the nature of writing Ð how writers go about writing. ItÕs been a passion of mine throughout my academic career and itÕs my area of research. But I am also really interested in the perennial problem of teaching students how to write. I thought that working with upper level undergraduates and deploying them among first and second year students as writing tutors would give me an opportunity to play the role of mediator. I could share what I learned from my own research and teaching and these students could then go and share their learning and experience with first and second year students.
How did you get interested in student writing?
I have a very long-term interest in the subject. As a student myself I was always interested in the writing process. I developed my own process because nobody taught me anything about writing in my undergraduate degree. I was determined to do very well, and I came up with my own system by trial and error to figure out how to write to get those AÕs.
I went on to do a degree in the acquisition and development of writing skills in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Carleton University Ð that is essentially a rhetoric and composition MA. When I was there I worked at the Writing Tutorial Service and worked with students in a number of different disciplines and also learned a lot about the theory behind composition pedagogy that piqued my interest. I did my Ph.D. thesis on seventeenth-century womenÕs poetry but it was a rhetorical approach to reading their poetry very much situated in the history of rhetoric. So itÕs like having a dual Ph.D., itÕs as much in rhetoric as it is in English literature.
What do you hope students will take away from the Practicum course?
More than anything I hope students will realize how capable they are and how much they have learned during their university studies. Students in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences gain all these skills in the course of their degrees but many of them do not fully understand what those skills are and what they make them capable of doing. A lot of my students are planning careers in education or to go on to graduate school, where teaching skills are directly related to the work they will do. So when they see themselves successfully helping other students to improve their writing and getting good grades, it certainly boosts their confidence and makes them feel like professionals. It allows them to realize that they do have skills they can offer out there in the Òreal world.”
The course will also certainly help them with their own writing. The students in the course have told me that they are more conscious about the way they write and how they succeed at it. Once they are aware of that process they can replicate and build on it. Through the course they learn to become both rhetoricians and rhetors Ð people who theorize and write about rhetoric and those who use it.
Why do you feel this course is an important contribution to department and/or Faculty curriculum?
There is a real interest now in building community among students. There is a sense of community among the tutors in the class who are forming a kind of professional community of people doing the same kind of work. But they come from different disciplines so they also get the opportunity to interact with students they might normally never meet. A sense of community is also formed between more advanced students and beginning students as they tutor them.
This course will also give the students a sense that Dalhousie and the Faculty are places where people really care about learning, and that learning and teaching is a team effort and it happens throughout the course of their university degree. It will also help students to recognize that assistance in learning can come from different quarters Ð from fellow students, from more advanced students, teaching assistants, and professors. I hope students will learn that Dalhousie has a really good support system for students who are willing to seek out and use all the resources at their disposal.
How does the tutoring component of the course work?
Students in the course become tutors right at the beginning of the course. So we are meeting and talking about writing and other things that are associated with their careers as writing tutors. Theory and practice are simultaneous, which is good for their development as tutors and scholars. Tutors participate in courses in different ways, depending on the professorÕs needs. Some tutors have participated in writing workshops during class, others have given lectures on writing. Some tutors are engaged in tutoring for individual students who seek out help. Others are doing a combination of these things.
The instructor and tutors work together. I really like to see the professor, writing tutor, TA triangle as a teaching team Ð these groups complement each other. The course instructors who have agreed to use the tutors have realized very quickly that the tutors are an asset to their courses. In fact, there is no reason why in the future the composition component in each class canÕt be handled by tutors, allowing professors to concentrate on the disciplinary content rather than writing pedagogy.
What methods, approaches and/or assignments do you use to foster student learning in this course?
The experiential learning component is the most effective kind of learning. I am just amazed how much the students learn on the job. I have asked the students to use the Dalhousie e-Portfolio to talk about their training, practical experience, and teaching philosophy. I am encouraging them to reflect critically about these things to help them in their own learning process, in addition to helping them realize how much they have learned. I ask them to reflect on how the session went, the kinds of things they tried to do to solve the kinds of problems the students have, the strategies they used, and how successful or unsuccessful they were. I find it critical, and very constructive, that as they engage with the theories they learn in the classroom, they can put them into practice in tutoring sessions. In their final term paper called the Òtheory and practice essay” I ask them to bring together their theory and practice by reflecting on what they have learned in the classroom, some of the theories they have learned, and how they have applied it with the students they have tutored.
On alternate weeks I have what I call Tutoring Meeting where we talk about all sorts of things, including some very practical instruction that they seem to appreciate. We talk about strategies including how to avoid doing the work for the students. We talk about online resources useful to their practice as tutors. The online assignment for the course requires each student to find their 3 favourite websites that they use as a resource and that they would recommend to students they tutor or they use for tutoring. That worked very well. Each student picked their favourite website and wrote a brief description about it and I put it on the WebCT site, so we are compiling a bibliography that will be helpful for future students.
What is the most difficult challenge youÕve overcome in the design or teaching of this course?
I guess the most difficult and on-going challenge is to get the students to feel comfortable being writing tutors and talking in terms of a discipline with which they are all unfamiliar. In some classes I do all the talking and itÕs hard to get a response from them and it is because they feel insecure about the field even though they are writing fabulous reading responses. They are not sure about the standards. They need confidence and so I try to make them feel more comfortable. I try to help them understand that even professors have crises and I talk about my own experience. I know how difficult it is to teach and to write about teaching and they are required to do both.
Do you think the students in the course are enjoying teaching?
I do think they are really enjoying it. Especially when they feel like they are making progress with a student, they feel euphoric. It certainly comes across in their teaching logs and during tutor meetings how much they do get out of it. You know there are moments when they find it difficult, like we all do. We have bad teaching days and fabulous ones. You canÕt be the best teacher in the world with every student. But I think they are overwhelmingly largely successful.
What do you enjoy most about teaching this course?
I like teaching this course because I feel I am participating with the students in a different way than I do in my other classes. I certainly try to create a spirit of collegiality in other courses too, but this course is a little different in that we are both doing the same kind of job and can share our experiences. I am really enjoying teaching students from a variety of disciplines because I learn a lot from them.
I also like having the opportunity to enable students to be more hands-on. In disciplines like History and English we know how valuable what they are learning is, and how important the skills they acquire are, but often students do not realize this fact. In this course, they get tangible, practical experience. I like being able to help them do that. I am looking forward to next year when we expect to see increased enrollment in the course. The word is getting out. Other students are hearing from their colleagues about the Practicum and want the opportunity to engage in these same experiences.
** Interviews are conducted by Suzanne Le-May Sheffield, Associate Director (Programs), Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT), Dalhousie University. The CLT works in partnership with academic units, faculty members, and graduate students to enhance the practice and scholarship of learning and teaching at Dalhousie University. CLT takes an evidence-based approach to advocating for effective learning and teaching practices, curriculum planning, services to support the use of technology in education, and institutional policies and infrastructure to enhance the Dalhousie learning environment. For more information on workshops and programming, please visit http://learningandteaching.dal.ca/ If you would like to nominate an instructor to appear in this series, please contact: Suzanne Le-May Sheffield at suzannes@dal.ca or call 494-1894.