To help you take stock of your work as a Peer Writing Tutor and to make sure that you continue to identify what you are doing well and note opportunities for growth, we ask you to reflect each quarter on your work.
🤔 Prompts
Using the ePortfolio template assigned to you, you write reflections for both of the prompts below for each modality—synchronous (Face to Face and Online Realtime) and asynchronous (Written Feedback) Writing Center and Writing Fellows appointments.
🎉 What I Think I Do Well
Reflect on what you think you do well. In your reflection, address the following:
- What are you proud of in your work as a tutor?
- What areas of your tutoring do you effectively enact Writing Center core values, beliefs, and practices?
- What specific appointment strategies do you employ? Why and how do you find those strategies effective in helping writers?
- Describe anonymized examples from your appointments as evidence for your assertions.
- In your second quarter working as a tutor—and beyond—look back at your reflections from previous quarters and write about how you’ve enhanced your tutoring practices over time. For instance, are you now doing something well that you previously reflected on as an area to improve on?
🧗 What I Need to Improve
Reflect on what you need to improve on. In your reflection, address the following:
- What challenges do you face in your tutoring practices?
- Describe anonymized examples from your appointments to illustrate your assertions.
- What specific steps are you taking to address those challenges?
- How can you apply Writing Center core values, beliefs, and practices to help your growth?
- What support might you need make those improvements?
- In your second quarter working as a tutor—and beyond—look back at your reflections from previous quarters to consider prior strategies you’ve used for improvement and/or to track improvements in context over time.
📋 Requirements
- ~250 words per modality
- Asynchronous Writing Center and Writing Fellows Appointment Reflections (Written Feedback)
- Synchronous Writing Center and Writing Fellows Appointment Reflections (Face to Face and Online Realtime)
- ~500 words total
Note: in rare cases where you have 2 or fewer appointments in either of these modalities, you do not need to complete reflections for that modality this quarter and you should document that fact on that modality’s page from your quarterly ePortfolio before submitting.
📜 Sample Reflections
Asynchronous Appointments
What I Think I Do Well…
When I conduct a Written Feedback appointment, I think that I do a good job of considering the requests of the writer when deciding on agenda items. While I have always read the appointment form before starting a written feedback, I noted in my Winter Quarter reflections that I wanted to improve on how I collaboratively set an agenda with a writer who isn’t physically present as is the case in written feedback. In May 2021, I attended the professional development workshop on Co-Curation in The Writing Center, and it helped me to understand how to intentionally center the writer in agenda-setting even when they are not physically present. Because of this, I now explicitly acknowledge the rhetorical situation of my feedback in the summary letter, using statements such as:
“I know you’re not here with me as I’m typing this feedback, but I read through your requests in your appointment form and here’s what I understood from that…”
These types of acknowledgements have helped me to respond more honestly and effectively to writers’ requests in their Written Feedback appointments. I feel this emphasizes our core values of transparency and collaboration.
What I Need To Improve on…
I am still struggling with time management in my Written Feedback appointments. Although I am trying to be better about prioritizing agenda items and not overloading the document with marginal comments, I still have a hard time deciding on which things not to comment on. Recently, one of my co-workers suggested that I finish a single marginal comment for each agenda item as a starting point for providing marginal feedback before moving on to additional comments for each agenda item, and I have found that to be helpful. By using that strategy, if I find myself running short on time near the end of the appointment, I know that I have already addressed each agenda item at least once. I also look forward to bringing this up in my check-in meeting to discuss additional strategies that I might implement.