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Have Laptop, Will Tutor: Chronicle of a Writing Teacher

By Mona Pelkey

Many years ago I graduated from college and landed a position as an English teacher at an urban high school rife with gangs, drugs, and crime. Armed with chalk, an overhead projector, and almost enough books for my 150 students, I taught American and British literature, grammar, spelling, and of course composition. Composition was a particular challenge for more than half of my students, because they spoke languages other than English at home. Most of them exhibited little interest in improving their English reading and writing skills; indeed, many of them were just marking time in school, distracted by hormones and the violence in their homes and neighborhoods.

A special few, however, requested tutoring after school, and many afternoons I held face-to-face sessions with students who realized the value of good writing skills. These students wrote, revised, and asked questions in real time and in person. Sentence by sentence, we toiled to construct paragraphs that made sense, and struggled with idioms, irregular verbs, and other idiosyncrasies of the English language. I sat right next to the students, pointed out errors on the page with my finger or with a pencil, and addressed each concern, one at a time. Although I was very good at thinking on my feet, I was sometimes frustrated because no matter how I explained a certain point of grammar, the student in front of me did not understand. I often wished that someone had shown me how to teach writing. The teaching methods courses I took in college often focused on education theory only. The one practical thing I did learn was that students are discouraged by corrected essays returned bleeding with red ink, so I made sure to stock up on green pens instead. Even student teaching was inadequate preparation for the demands of my task. After two years, I left that school, and my next position as an adjunct teaching remedial writing at a community college offered me a better opportunity to sit down with all of my students, one-on-one, to discuss particular writing concerns. As a group, my remedial writers were less challenged by language barriers and more motivated to work, but I still felt an uneasy inadequacy. I was very good at writing academic papers myself, but I was less proficient at explaining the intricacies of thesis development to college-level developmental writers. I lacked collegial support as well, so I had no one with whom to discuss my concerns, or to turn to for mentoring. I felt as though I was alone and drifting through my career, and anything I learned about becoming a better teacher was serendipitously discovered through trial and error.

Fast forward twenty-eight years. After many years of parenting, volunteering in schools, subbing, stints in graduate school, library work, and finally finding my niche as a college learning assistance professional, I again found myself in a new place, seeking a new job. After months of fruitless applications and interviews for conventional employment, I decided to acquiesce to economic necessity and answer a recruitment notice from a company that contracts online tutoring services to colleges, high schools, and individuals across the United States. for a job tutoring writing online. I was offered a position as a tutor in the OWL (Online Writing Lab), and I accepted it, even though I could not imagine how one might effectively tutor writing without face time with students. I had been challenged even with face-to-face tutoring years before. I also was reluctant to begin a lonely life of working online. In the later years of my career I had enjoyed the collaboration and camaraderie of my colleagues, and I was hoping to find employment that offered the same. After months of unemployment, however, I was grateful for any suitable opportunity to work with students again. This online job is just a temporary measure, I told myself, until I find the day job of my dreams.

I began training at home, during the summer, in preparation for the fall semester. Once I read what seemed like reams of preparatory materials and upgraded my laptop to meet the technology requirements of the position, I was ready to work with a mentor, who promptly emailed a request to begin working on practice student essays. I learned how to find and download sample student essays from a queue on the company website, and save them in a special file on my laptop. I then was asked to attach a standard feedback form, upon which I would write written constructive feedback to the “student,” following a standardized format provided by my employer. The format recommended that I address the concerns of the student, and focus on higher order concerns such as content development before lower order concerns such as grammatical errors. Once finished, I was to send the marked-up essay back to the queue, all of which was to be completed in approximately thirty minutes. Theoretically, the essay would then be returned to the student, if this exercise were not a training scenario. After each essay I reviewed, commented upon, and returned, my mentor evaluated my work and offered helpful suggestions to improve the quality of my feedback and my efficiency in returning the essays. With each practice scenario, I found myself gaining confidence as well as competence. My mentor was experienced, professional, and highly encouraging, and she helped me realize that I could actually become good at this. At the end of my training, I joined the Online Writing Lab team, and awaited my first scheduled shift, which was still a few weeks away.

The first week of the semester was tough, and after a few grueling nights of typing furiously to meet deadlines, only to miss them abysmally, I learned to dread the start of my 7-10 p.m. shift. I felt like a failure. The work was not only challenging, but I felt very alone as well. I was overwhelmed with essays lacking clear thesis statements and coherent conclusions, essays with so many mechanical errors that the logic of the students’ arguments was completely masked, and even essays that consisted of two solid pages of run-on sentences, fragments, and comma splices, without one complete, correctly constructed sentence in the entire assignment. Although I had been presented with similar challenges in the past, I had always been able to work with the students face-to-face and take as much time as necessary to address the issues at hand. Yikes, I thought to myself. How am I going to help developmental writers overcome their shortcomings in the allotted one-half hour per student essay, without benefit of face time? It did not seem possible. To say that I was discouraged is an understatement.

The plethora of writing errors I faced, the loneliness, and the time limitations were not my only challenges, however. To my horror, the first time it rained during my scheduled shift, I lost my internet connection. I panicked because I could not return the student’s essay on time, and I could not even email my supervisor, my mentor, tech support, or the lead tutor on duty to advise them of my situation. Fortunately, the rain stopped after a few hours, and I was able to return the paper I had reviewed, but I was upset to lose three hours of work time. A couple more such outages drove me to setting up my “rainy-day classroom” in my car, and seeking a place to “borrow” wireless internet. Now during storms I review student essays while parked at one of our local Wi-Fi-equipped fast-food restaurants. (I have learned that it is really hard to use a laptop if you are sitting in the driver’s seat.) The constant ringing of my cell phone was also a problem; as a member of the “sandwich generation,” I am constantly on call, so I am loath to turn it off. Inevitably it rang five minutes after I downloaded the first student essay, almost every evening, for the first two weeks on the job. Because I am literally on the clock while I am evaluating student writing, phone interruptions take up valuable time: in addition, I lose focus on my work. I asked my out-of-town family to refrain from calling during my shift unless it was an emergency, and when that didn’t work, I resorted to turning off the phone altogether. (Now if I can figure out how I can turn off my husband and the dogs, I’m home free.)

Despite the inconveniences and frustrations, I have become rather fond of my online employment. After months of practice, I have learned to navigate my job technologically, and I don’t panic anymore when something goes wrong with the website or the internet connection. I have learned to instant message the lead tutors when I have questions during work hours, and to count on tech support as well. In regard to the actual student essays, I can more quickly find and focus on the most critical areas for improvement, and offer constructive feedback intended to help students of various abilities improve their papers and become better writers in general. I have learned to view the time limitations as my friend rather than as my enemy, because they help me to avoid commenting on every error I see, and inadvertently discouraging the students. I am a better teacher because I am more attuned to the fact that the most important thing, in the long run, isn’t whether the student turns in a flawless paper, but whether the student is learning to write and learn better through the experience of writing. Knowing this helps me to remember that the student’s essay as one of many drafts, not a product that must be perfect the first time around, and that his success or failure is not entirely up to me.

My biggest surprise, though, is that I have joined one of the most collegial groups I have ever encountered. We are available to one another through instant messaging during our work hours and through email around the clock. I have found the professional listserve for this company’s online tutors to be incredibly supportive and absolutely invaluable. We are a constant source of help for one another, working as a team and covering each other’s shifts if necessary, to ensure timely service to students. The listserve also serves as a vehicle for academic discussions as well. We discuss the eccentricities of the English language, best practices for teaching, creative ways to offer positive feedback, tips for working more efficiently, and more. I have learned more about teaching writing from my present colleagues than I ever had in methods courses, student teaching, or in the conventional classroom.

As the fall semester draws to a close, I realize that I have received a real education in the past few months. My dearest hope is that our online tutees feel the same way.

Questions or comments? Contact the author at mpelkey@learningassistance.com.

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