Effective Conferences: Student Engagement in Writing and Learning

1. Effective Conferences: Student Engagement in Writing and Learning Hiram College WAC Adapted from Murray, Newkirk, Raforth, Glenn and Goldthwaite et. al.

2. Why Conferences? • “I used to mark up every student paper diligently. How much I hoped my colleagues would see how carefully I marked my student papers. I alone held the bridge against the pagan hordes. No one escaped the blow of my "awk." And then one Sunday afternoon a devil bounded to the arm of my chair. I started giving purposefully bad counsel on my students' papers to see what would happen. "Do this backward," "add adjectives and adverbs," "be general and abstract," "edit with a purple pencil," "you don't mean black you mean white." Not one student questioned my comments..” -- Donald Murray

3. The Conference Process • Pre-conference: • Develop a plan (or plans) for the session • Be ready to scrap the plan • Conference • Break the ice (Intrusive advising opportunity) • Ask questions • Draw a map of the session • Balance the teacher directive with the student directive • Help student build conclusions or action plan: • What should they do next? • What steps can they follow to achieve those goals? • Wrap up (Intrusive advising opportunity) • Post-Conference: • What issues did you work on in conference? • If patterns emerged, what can you address effectively to the entire class? In peer group workshops?

4. Pre-conference: • Develop a plan (or plans) for the session • Discussion of a plan or draft of a new assignment • Discussion of the content or structural revisions of a draft in progress • Discussion of the progress of any long-term ongoing project (a research essay, for instance) • Discussion of a process, particularly changes in a student’s writing process, and the sharing of anecdotes about writing (since you, the teacher, are a writer, too, with your own blocks, ruts, successes) • Discussion of activities meant to deal with specific and identified patterns of formal problems: syntactic errors, verb endings, and the like. -- (Glenn and Goldthwaite 76)

5. Pre-Conference • Vary plan for students who need a different approach • Prepare necessary materials: • Assignment sheet • Hacker guide • Key readings • Be ready to scrap the plan

6. In Conference • Break the ice • Before you get into the discussion of the essay or work in the class, you may want to ask general questions about how the student is doing in general. • If they express concerns, don’t be afraid to move directly into Intrusive Advising.

7. In Conference • Ask questions: • What did you learn from this piece of writing? • What do you intend to do in the next draft? • What surprised you in the draft? • Where is the piece of writing taking you? • What do you like best in the piece of writing? • What questions do you have of me? • (Murray 15) • Once you have established what the student needs from the conference, you may want to map out how you will spend time in the session: “We’ll look at your introduction first, and then we might help you work on organization. Sound good?”

8. In Conference • Balance the teacher directive with the student directive • Ask questions and listen (at most 50% of you talking) • Help the student to hear their “Internal editor.” Is the student making decisions just by asking you questions about their essay? • Help student build conclusions or action plan: • What should they do next? • Ask students to write down what they plan on doing. Make them start to make changes as you sit with them. • What steps can they follow to achieve those goals? • When do they plan to make the changes? When will they work on the essay? • Should they plan a visit to the Writing Center?

9. Intrusive Advising • Possible questions to ask the student: • What did they not expect from these first few weeks of college? What surprised them? • What are they most proud of in their first few weeks of college? • What have they been telling their parents about their college experience? What have they not told their parents? • Help student respond to issues by making a plan. • What can the student do to help address their own issues? • What resources does the college have for the student?

10. Post Conference • What issues did you work on in conference? • If patterns emerged in the class, what can you address effectively to the entire class? In peer group workshops? • Take notes on each student. • What were the expected outcomes? What did you ask students to do? What kinds of checks can you perform to measure student outcomes? • Contact those who need to know about the student: • Mapworks alerts and messages • Other faculty members • Coaches • Other contacts as needed.

11. Resources • Cheryl Glenn and Melissa Goldthwaite. The St. Martin’s Guide to Teaching Writing. 6th ed. New York: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2008. • Donald McAndrew and Thomas Reigstad. Tutoring Writing: A Practical Guide for Conferences. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton-Cook, 2001. • William J. Macauley. “Setting the Agenda for the Next 30 Minutes.” A Tutor’s Guide: Helping Writers One to One. Ed. Ben Raforth. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton-Cook, 2000. 1-8. • Donald Murray. “The Listening Eye: Reflections on the Writing Conference.” College English 41.1 (Sept. 1979): 13-18.