Imagine this. You’re working at the UCWbL and you have a face-to-face appointment come in. You shake hands (in a pre-COVID era), introduce yourselves, build rapport, bada bing bada ba. Your writer seems like a really cool person and you just know you’re going to do great things together. You ask them:
“So what are you working on today?”
“An argumentative paper,” they say.
“Great! What’s it on?” you say.
“Climate change,” they say.
“Awesome! Very current–” you say.
“I’m arguing that it doesn’t exist,” they say.
“Oh,” you say.
Oh.
Oh.
Oh?
What do you do after you say, “Oh”? What do you do when a writer has a controversial stance in an argumentative paper? What? Must? Be? Done?
I came across this dilemma a few weeks into my first quarter at the Writing Center when I received a Written Feedback paper that was anti-immigration and opposed the acceptance of illegal immigrants into public American universities. It was a hard pill to swallow, especially as a first generation college student whose parents are both immigrants. I stared at the computer screen, already fifteen minutes into the hour long appointment, not knowing how or where to start. I kept asking myself, “How am I going to give feedback on something I know will not convince me or change my mind?”
The answer is: doesn’t matter, you gotta.
With the experiences and advice of seasoned tutors and some outside sources, I’ve quantified the ways that you can approach this situation in four easy steps so that you can keep your cool and give your writer the best tutoring experience they can get. Ready?
STEP 1: Relax
Or chill out. Alternatively, you can also calm down. Don’t jump to conclusions about your writer’s character because of an assignment. The nature of their assignment may surprise you. It is also important to set your own biases and opinions aside when it comes to tutoring and meeting new people. An article by Raymond and Quinn advises to “make the student the primary agent in the writing center session.” When you insert your own biases or beliefs in the appointment, you are putting yourself before the writer and
– Robbing the writer of their authority over their papers
– Isolating them from their writing process
– Inhibiting your ability to connect with them.
(Raymond and Quinn 65).
So take a breath, and listen to them. What they have to say may surprise you!
STEP 2: Assess the situation
Listen to your writer and start to understand how they got to that topic and stance. Assume good intent and don’t make assumptions, they could very well have that particular stance because they’re required to, they thought it would be an interesting challenge, or they genuinely want to understand how people on that side think about the topic. Just because they’re writing for that position does not necessarily mean they agree with it. School is wacky because sometimes professors make you do things you don’t want to do (🤷)! Assess the situation and you’ll be able to understand your writer more!
STEP 3: Tutor!
Now you tutor them! You can’t just say, “YOU’RE WRONG” because that is your own opinion and you can’t teach that. Plus, one of the core practices of the UCWbL is to teach writers transferable skills. Negativity is not a transferable skill! If your own opinions are fogging up your tutoring lens, go back to basics! Separate the writer from the paper, and show your writer how their argument could use some revision based on the solid fundamentals of an argumentative paper, not based on opinion, political correctness, etc.
A few weeks after my experience with the anti-immigration paper, I received another paper that was advocating for gentrification in Chicago, arguing that gentrification is good, and that racism is not a problem because slavery does not exist anymore. “Racism is not a problem?” I internally screeched. After sharing the dilemma, Kristen V. who was working reception said, “You know you have to let them say whatever they want, right?” to which I said, “But WHY?”, and Kristen said, “Because it’s what they think.”
And that’s really it.
We all lead separate lives with different backgrounds of information and perspectives. Your writer could have a differing opinion for a variety of reasons. They might be required to have this viewpoint, they might have chosen this stance because they thought it would be easier, they might not know how to communicate what they really believe, they might have skimped on the research or they just might not be invested in their assignment very much. Perhaps all they need is motivation. Tutors enhance student’s motivation through rapport and solidarity in their assignments (Mackiewicz and Thompson 39), so build them up and give them something good they can walk away with.
STEP 4: Assess the situation
After 30 to 120 minutes, chances are you may not have the same opinion of your writer (whether this is face to face or through another modality). If you get to this point and see that, yeah, they are problematic you can:
- Show them the resources they could use in their next steps of revision
- Ask for help from another tutor
- And say bye, come back soon!
Because there’s really only so much you can do. As Writing Tutors, it’s not our responsibility to lecture writers on our own understanding of right and wrong. It is our responsibility to help them organize their own thoughts and build better writing, all while maintaining an atmosphere of respect.