Blog Post #3

I really enjoyed the Crossing Cultures with International ESL Writers article -- it was reminiscent of so many experiences I've had tutoring international students in American curricula. This was a huge issue at NYU's Abu Dhabi campus -- while our student population was 95% non-American, the faculty was extremely homogenous -- most of us were liberal-artsy East Coasters who were surprised by how hard it can be to get out of your own set of biases about what sort of topics are approachable and accessible for students from all backgrounds. I'll never forget reading Richard Rodriguez' essay 'Complexion,' about the challenges of being a darker-skinned Mexican American, and the blank looks from the students, who found the way the writer dug into the emotional components of his childhood frustrating and uninteresting. The professor in the course made the mistake of assuming our one very fair-skinned Spanish (from Spain) student would find some identification with the piece, and naturally -- he did not!

I wonder what we can do as tutors to intervene in these cases, or get our students to ask questions of their professors to promote a culture of interrogating these sorts of prompts. I'm also curious about the fate of the Conversations book, or the increased prevalence of classes featuring One World, Many Cultures type texts -- are we any better off today than we were several years ago?

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