Pencil power: The role of the writing utensil in tutoring.

By Lydia Rucker

Lydia has been a lab assistant
in OCCC's Communications
Lab for almost three years.

Sometimes, they are yellow. Sometimes, they are red or green or speckled with glitter and multifaceted rainbow swirls. No matter what they look like, I think pencils are the greatest tool in the writing tutor’s toolbox.

Several years ago when I first became a writing tutor, using a pencil during a tutoring session was highly frowned upon. 

The reason behind this, I was told, is that tutors are less likely to “fix” a student’s paper and are able to better focus on verbal exchange with a student. 

On my second day of tutoring, I forgot this rule and carried a pencil with me into a tutoring session. Well into the session, I felt a gentle tug on my pencil and before I could look up, it was swiftly removed from my poised fingers and placed on the table beside me.  

After that, I worked with students without a pencil, which made me feel insecure in my ability to aid students. I often asked myself why not having a pencil in my hand was so anxiety inducing, and why, if this method is so popular in writing centers, could I not conform.

"So, I will lift my pencil high
and take pride in my poorly
drawn visual aids because
students shouldn't have to
conform to one method
of instruction . . ."

Then it hit me. I can’t simply hear someone explain a theory or example and expect to understand or connect with it; however, if one adds a visual aid to these, I am so connected, it's crazy!  

I am a visual learner and, therefore, a visual teacher.  When I was again given the freedom to wield my pencil, I did so with gusto. The margins of student papers became filled with badly drawn trees and squirrels, and their backs with fishing poles, bait buckets, and stick figures.

It was fantastic and freeing not only for me as a tutor but for the students as well.  Countless times I have heard “I will never forget the fishing thing you drew on my paper; I will always know how to use conjunctions!” Students began embracing the pencil. 

Making tutors conform to this one method of tutoring was leaving out the needs of our visual learning students; they were leaving the writing center lost and more confused than when they came in. 

"Making tutors conform
to this one method of
tutoring was leaving out
the needs of our visual
learning students; they were
leaving the writing center
lost and more confused than
when they came in."

Forcing a visual learning student to sit through a tutoring session that has no visuals is as ridiculous as having an auditory learner sit through a session with no verbal exchange.

Yes, it is harder for a tutor to withstand the urge to “fix” a paper, but it was still just as simple for a student to write down what a tutor said and use it for their own. 

So, I will lift my pencil high and take pride in my poorly drawn visual aids because students shouldn't have to conform to one method of instruction, and tutors should have the freedom to confidently teach in their own unique way.

Lydia Rucker is a lab assistant at the Communications Lab at OCCC and a contributor to The Complete Thought.