Stanford University

“I have an idea of what I want to say in my head; I just don’t know how to write it,” my student typed into the chat. For hours, I’d been sending messages back and forth with her, cleaning up grammatical errors and teaching her to weave quotes. She was writing an essay about a Hurricane Katrina film, and though math tutoring was my forte, this was the first time I’d volunteered to help with an essay. Math had its challenges, but each problem had a specific solution process I could follow. This new problem she posed, however, caused me to lift my fingers off my keyboard and think more…