22 March 2016

Dear Colleagues,
I had the pleasure of observing Joseph Cirio in the Reading-Writing Center in March of 2016. In the
session I observed, Joe met with a weekly, registered student, currently enrolled in ENC1101. He had
recently turned in a final draft of the first project to his instructor and was ready to begin to brainstorm
ideas for the next project.
Per instructions from Joe in the previous week, the student brought along the final project he had
turned in earlier in the week. The student had been working on a snapshots paper occupied with different
scenes with a particular food at the center of each snapshot. In the first half of the session, Joe asked the
student to offer some reflections on how well he thought he did now that the project was handed in and,
given two more weeks, which aspects of the project he would revise. With each factor the student offered,
Joe would prompt the student to point to a specific passage in the paper where the student believed
exemplified that factor. For example, the student liked the way he described the details of the scenes he
was composing, particularly how he wrote how certain foods in his narrative smelled. Joe asked the
student to read a couple passages and describe in more detail why those passages worked. This kind of
conversation allowed the student to think in more specific and tangible ways about his writing process,
something I believe is a particularly useful reflection activity in order to frame the students future
composing situations. The student also pointed to a snapshot about a restaurant where he thought that the
ideas didnt seem to be organizedor in his words flowin any coherent way. Joe then reassured the
student to look for such organization questions in other drafts in the semester. Again, the attention to
specific examples seems useful for the student in order to both frame the goals for the term as well as
facilitate a more rhetorically aware student.
In the second half of the session, Joe and his student read through the assignment sheet of the
second project together. As Joe read the prompt aloud, he asked the student to write down any key
questions or key words that might emerge. Together, they looked at these key question and words and
used it to design potential paths forward. Since the prompt asks students to interrogate their own eating
habits, Joe asked his student to talk through his day-to-day, week-to-week eating habits. As the student
offered a laundry list of different foods and restaurants, Joe would jot down and organize those ideas into
different categories based on the key questions and key words the student had earlier written. This back
and forth, moving from the students remarks to Joes reiteration of those remarks, seemed to help the
student formulate different trajectories he might follow for this project. For example, Joe began to notice
the students affinity for snacks between meals and between classes. Noticing such a trend, Joe began to
ask the student how the food from Chic-Fil-a might be similar or different to the gummy snacks he eats in
his bedroom. Such a discussion allowed the student to note both the ways these different foods might be
connected and likewise exemplify different ideas he could approach in his writing.
Joe is a thoughtful tutor who encourages his student to stretch his thought processes out further
while also prompting him to talk aloud how each of his ideas fit together. His emphasis on the students
self-reflection appears key to his tutoring practice and seems well suited to facilitate the students writing
across a variety of writing contexts in the future. Joe is an excellent tutor who is certainly deserving of
recognition for his service.
Sincerely,

Heather Lang
Florida State University