The other week when I was tutoring at the one community college where I work at, the student who I'm working on research papers with had a week with no homework, so we did this "analyze song lyrics" bonus session, to practice brainstorming and paper analysis skills, so she could continue learning, even apart from class material.
But, as it turns out, she hadn't worked on a literature paper in forever, and couldn't even really remember how that worked in high school from a few years ago, so she balked.
In fact, after hitting her first road block, she was like, "Do you have a poem or something?, I don't get this."
I found that a very interesting reaction that I'd never seen in a student before, the impulse to abandon a project rather than grapple with it.
My hunch is, is that this particular student wants to be in control of all material, so she'd rather give up on a project than face an uncertain feeling of being challenged and not knowing where her thoughts are going.
In fact, I noticed that in her brainstorming outline, she wanted to exclude what didn't belong in the categories that she set up, rather than reason through it.
Very, very interesting. I sure am learning a lot, pedagogically!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment