Writing Center Tutors Have the Luxury to Focus on Individual Student Care Giving as Opposed to Formal Classroom Settings That Are Less Care Centered

Undergraduate and graduate students come to the writing center for consultations with peer tutors in order to improve their communication skills. During peer tutoring sessions (over the course of one semester) it became clear that these students were meeting with the tutors that I supervised, for more than just help with their writing. I observed six male and seven female students that needed help. There were five international students and they were considered ESL-English as a Second Language students. Interestingly, all the students indicated a high level of frustration (by a perceived lack of caring on the part of their Professors) who made comments on their assignments. They came to the Center, hurt and confused, and in need of some deciphering about just what their Professors wanted from them. The students were uncomfortable with approaching their Professors to discuss the papers. The Professors, were truly overwhelmed with department and research obligations making it hard to meet with students repeatedly. It became clear that the writing center tutor needed to fill this role by employing a more caring tutoring approach. A caring tutoring approach requires nurturing at all times and its application results in higher self-esteem levels. Other tutoring approaches that are not care centered tend to be less nurturing. They tend to focus solely on results that impact the tutee’s grades, with little to no improvement in the tutee’s self-esteem level.