A Writing Coach's Guide

by Kaitlin Fisher

• What stands out to you most from your work at Asheville High School? What was especially interesting, surprising, rewarding, or even frustrating?

The thing that stands out to me the most is how open the students were with me. The first night, these students were telling me about their future goals, how they plan on achieving their goals, and how they came to this point in their lives. I think this was also so shocking to me. Another shocking thing was how interested the students were with me. They asked me why I went where I did, what I majored in, etc. I think the most rewarding thing will be hearing where they end up going.

• How has your service-learning experience influenced your understanding of writing? The writing process? Of teaching and learning?

This service- learning experience has influenced my understanding of writing through actually helping students with their writing. It is one thing to write it down on paper, but to actually help students write their own papers was an amazing experience. This experience also influenced my understanding of teaching because I was able to compare how I worked these students to how I worked with my AVID students. I think the two different groups helped me to see what no class will ever be the same and that I will need to prepare for complete opposite classes.

• How has your service-learning experience influenced your personal growth? (For example, what have you learned about yourself from this experience? About your own biases or assumptions? Have your ideas changed?  Have you discovered any new skills or personality traits?)

I have learned that I love helping seniors! Even though they are so excited to be moving on from high school, they are still willing to engage with me about their work. I have also learned that I love helping students write. Many days my students already had essays to edit, but the days that I had to help them craft essays, were the best days!

• How has your service-learning experience influenced your understanding of the Asheville community? Of the public school system?

This service-learning experience has helped me to see the diverse educational aspects within the Asheville Community. To begin with, I have also worked with AVID students at Asheville High. My AVID students did not turn on their cameras to talk with me. These students never wanted to have an actual conversation with me most days. In contrast to that side, helping seniors craft their college essays was a completely different experience. The high school seniors were excited to talk to me about my experiences in college, and about their essays. I think seeing these two opposite sides of Asheville high have made me think more about how to truly engage with students, even those who do not speak back.

by Natalie Harrell

Although I did not meet in person with my student to talk about her essays, I think we still were able to get a lot of work done despite the obvious barrier. While I feel this experience would be exponentially different if we were able to meet in person, this was still beneficial to me. The coolest thing and one of my favorite things to see during this experience was my student improving upon her writing in such a short amount of time. She had a series of short, 250-word, essays she was required to write for the schools she was applying to and she wrote one, I gave feedback, and she fixed this on that specific essay and I did not see the same pattern in the next essay. To see her improve made the entire experience worthwhile, despite the challenges.

            I have always loved to write and I also have always read a lot, which invariably improves one’s writing. I have never had a ‘hard’ time writing, and so it was interesting to see someone, who arguably is on the opposite side of the educational spectrum to me in terms of subject area (she is much more science oriented) not able to come up with ideas for a paper as easily as I could. Of course, I have been in her shoes before, writing college essays for schools, and I have several years of writing experience on her. To see that not everyone writes in the same way as I do, including the process of brainstorming, was a good learning experience for me. Throughout this course, LANG 396, I have read several articles on the idea of how much feedback is too much feedback, so before leaving a single comment on my student’s paper I asked her if she likes a lot of comments or if this overwhelms her. She preferred a lot of comments on her work and so that is what I did for her, and of course it may be a bit more difficult to do this in an actual classroom with thirty students, but this helped her and I could see how the comments helped her.

Personally, I had to set aside my own wants of completely re-writing what she had written. Especially because these essays had word limits and they are quite personal I could not tell her exactly what she should or should not do and expect her to feel comfortable sharing these details. I feel like I learned how to be patient with the student throughout this entire experience, and if we met more than we did or for longer I would have developed this skill more, but I feel like I have really built the foundation of patience.  

When writing one of her essays, my student mentioned that the honors and AP classes at her school are lacking in diversity and this is exactly how my own honors and AP classes were. This begs the question, how much of this falls on the teachers, and I think a lot of it does. In one of my classes we talk a lot about implicit bias and how to actively fight against this and I think that this is something I need to do in the classroom, and every teacher should do, to ensure no child gets left behind or forgotten just because the teacher does not see themselves in the student. Likewise, at least in the school I attended, the teachers chose for the students what classes they would be placed into and if you are not placed into an honors class then you have to jump through hoops just to get there. If teachers are disproportionately placing students in classes they should not be in because of the teachers implicit bias and not based on the students capabilities then they are greatly doing their students a disservice. We talked a lot about the bubble of inclusivity that Asheville is but also noted the parts of Asheville that are not so inclusive.

This whole process has taught me a lot about my own strengths and weaknesses, how to address these, and how I want to teach writing in the future; but at the end of the day, this helped me build the foundation of my ‘teacher persona’ and I feel there is still much room for improvement.

by Matt Singleton

I don’t have an opinion on Ashville Highschool since we weren’t in the school, but I appreciate Mrs. Gavin and Daniel (moderator). I think they did a fantastic job of staying in contact and answering emails. The first week was excellent. I thought it was going to keep going, but it faded quickly. I only met with my student in week 2 (40 mins) and week 3 (10mins). She canceled three times in a five-week program. I’m not upset or mad; we are in a chaotic time, and everyone deserves grace and patience

I think it’s vital to plan for things not to work out and have a backup plan. I value having the opportunity to meet with the students. It was a great experience to meet the student and help her with the writing process. We spent so much time brainstorming and going over prompts so the student could get their thoughts together.

I learned that I could not control circumstances out of my control. I cannot make the student come to class to get help; they have to want help. I need to be available whenever a student arrives in class and offer them my best every time. Since we are in a chaotic pandemic, I honestly didn’t learn that much about the Asheville community or public school system.  

by Jacob Hunt

I am happy to write that even though I only got to meet with one of my students twice, I still found the experience fulfilling. I did try to email the student with whom I have not met but received no response. The student I did meet with wanted to get to work as soon as he logged on, which was a surprise to me. From what I gathered from other tutors, their tutees did not really want to work, so when my tutee wanted to get started immediately, I was thrilled. I did not have to conduct any introduction activities to help him start writing because he was already zealous to work on his college essay. The experience, though virtual, of helping a student write was amazing. I got to know him more as I read his essay – which was practically finished – and the more time I spent with him.

I not only learned about my tutee, but I also learned things about myself, particularly that I knew more than I thought I did, which is a comfort when trying to instruct others. The experience also taught me how to put what I learned in the classroom into practice. During my sessions, I had my notebook from LANG 396 open, so I could glance over to see what the best course of action would be to move forward in the session; this helped greatly during the session. I realized when I was tutoring that being overprepared is very rewarding because I never know what all I will need. Also, helping this student put me back into the mindset of being a teacher. Since I am mostly studying at school right now, I feel that I have mostly been in a student mindset because I have not had much teaching experience in schools this semester. When tutoring my student, I again felt the excitement of instructing someone, which is amazing.

One of the main reasons that I want to teach is the students. I deeply care for each one, and want to see them succeed, no matter who they are or where they come from. I did not get to see what my tutee looked like because he was working on a desktop and did not have a camera. I made sure to be understanding because I did not know what his situation was. I am not sure if this is the case for this student, but there will be low-income students in my future classroom who don’t have many things we consider commodities like a webcam, so having seen this in my service-learning experience was good foreshadowing of what my future students may be experiencing. I not only need to be prepared to have low-income students in my class, but I also need to be prepared to have students who do not show up or do their work. The experience of sitting and waiting for students to log onto the Google Meet forced me to prepare more tutoring lesson plans, and think of things that the students need if they are finished with their college writing like looking for scholarships, teaching them the different types of financial aid, or telling them about moving into college in hopes to ease their minds and nerves.

I would also like to note that I thought that the Asheville High School personnel and the mandatory training session were very professional. Overall, though I did not see much of my tutees, I found the experience very beneficial and hope to tutor again sometime soon in the future.

by Ethan Gardner

tutoring for me has been quite the experience due to the fact that I am not a writer. These students come to me for help and I feel as if i am uncapable of helping them and that i am wasting their time at times. However this has been a learning experience for me and has truly shown me how essential tutors are in a students life. I have personally went to get tutoring on a few subjects and each time i have went i have learned more than before i went. As i progress towards my goal in my college career I would like to create a club for students who are going through what i am going through now. I believe that this could be a comforting thing during the week. This also could be a good chance to possibly tutor students who are perhaps struggling in their studies as i am. I believe in giving people the chance that maybe i don’t see right now but i would want it to be readily available for any student. If this experience has shown me anything it would be that each writing style is similar in some ways but more different in others. This can be compared to the way that we talk. You and I do not talk the same nor do we act the same we have similarities but not exact matches. This is how i have seen writing to be in these past few months that i have been tutoring other students. You may have the same book topic however your writing style can be as different as black and white. Personally i believe that this has made me a better writing in the fact that i can see things in my own writing that i couldn’t catch before. This I believe has shown many things towards my improvement as a writer.

by MichaelAnne Briggs

Throughout my tutoring experience, what stood out to me the most was that I got a lot better at it. In the beginning I was nervous that I wouldn’t be able to help or suggest something that wasn’t helpful or effective. But as the weeks went on, I got more comfortable with myself and with the students. I began to become more confident in my advice in writing. It was a little frustrating when students did not communicate whether or not I was being helpful. For instance, when a student would “oh okay, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you”, it was super rewarding knowing that I was able to help them get where they needed to be. So, when I couldn’t tell what I was saying was getting through to them, it stressed me out a bit. It was also frustrating when someone would sign up for a meeting with a completed college essay a week before the deadline to submit the application. Especially if the essay wasn’t that good. I felt like they really didn’t want my help. I think they just wanted another person to say that it was good to confirm what they already thought. It also hard to give critics or suggestions because I feel like that would just stress them out.

This experience taught me that teaching or tutoring gets easier through experience. Although I completed my 20 hours, I would say my goals for the future as a tutor for Asheville High School is to get even better at it. I am excited to see where it could take me with more experience. The service learning influenced my personal growth by making me more confident. Just speaking to another person and helping them for 15-30 minutes helped me grow a lot.