Teachers - When to Send Students

Fall 2007

First Day of Enrollment:
Monday, September 17

First Day of Tutoring:
Monday, September 24

Last Day of Enrollment:

Friday, November 2

Last Week of Tutoring:
Monday, December 3

NOTE: We are closed for Thanksgiving Week (November 19-23, 2007).

The sooner students enroll in tutoring, the better we can serve them. The question is not how soon the student should be enrolling, but how soon you'll be able to identify students who need assistance and how quickly you can convince them of that fact.

Some students protest that they don't have enough time to fit writing tutoring into their schedule. Point out that time spent in tutoring is time spent writing papers for class - if the student is planning on spending any time working on his or her papers for the class, they should consider getting some experienced assistance for some of that time.

Many students wait until the end of the semester when it's clear that they're not doing as well as they had hoped and will often only get four sessions with a tutor. If they start with the Writing Center right away, they'll get as many as ten sessions with a writing tutor. Four sessions may be enough to address an issue or two, but ten will enable the tutor to work on a variety of issues and problems to strengthen the student's writing ability.

Tutoring shouldn't be thought as serving only weak student writers. Strong student writers benefit as well, and for many, tutoring is the quickest path to an A in a Writing Program course. You should be encouraging all of your students to consider tutoring.

EAD and 098 Instructors:

We do enroll students from these classes and assign them tutors - usually our most experienced tutors. And contrary to the commonly heard myth, Writing Center tutors do work with grammar issues and other basic writing fundamentals, though they don't do it for the full tutoring session, as at least half of every tutoring session is spent on analysis and exposition. I don't have any experience in these courses, so I don't have any detailed hints to offer how to know who might be best helped by tutoring. E-mail me any reflection you might have: donald.dow@rutgers.edu.

100 and 101 Instructors:

The first day writing sample should give you a pretty good indication that a student may benefit from some tutoring. You should let students know if you think they'll have difficulty passing the class, and you should discuss tutoring with them early enough in the semester so that they'll sign up when the Center opens.

By the time you've graded the second paper, you should have a better idea who in your class can make it and who will need a little extra help. That's also a good time to put a little pressure on the student to seek tutoring.

Students will often decide to put themselves into tutoring after their third paper if they're still not getting the grades they want. Some may inclined to sign up but may need a little push from their instructor. Take advantage of their disatisfaction with their performance, and don't be afraid to mention tutoring several times. Just like anything else in the classroom, it may need a few repetitions before it sticks. Enrolling after the third paper, especially in 100, is a bit late in the process, but better late than not at all.

201 and 301 Instructors:

Too many students wait until they've gotten a grade for the second draft of the research paper project to sign up for tutoring. By then it's very late in the course, and there's only so much a tutor will be able to help with. Try to identify problem students with the first two papers, and put pressure on the students to seek help before the longer project trips them up.

Key signs to look for would be students who are having difficulty reaching a page minimum for the two or three analytic essays assigned in the first half of the semester or students who can't seem to complete the assignments in a timely fashion. Reading comprehension problems would also indicate a student could benefit from tutoring, as a student who's unable to read the packet texts is a student who is unable to develop a serviceable frame for the research project. Certainly any students who are still having problems with grammar or paragraph organization need to be in tutoring as soon as you can get them to sign up.