Sonnet about this month/Inspired by scenery at Tilden Park, Berkeley (CA)

"May"

See the fruit hiding behind each leaf

Red, green and yellow to be brief

Feel the power of the divine

Breathe in that scent of earthly pine

My, how lonely is this breeze

Close your eyes and let the heaven seize

Dance with the oceans on this day

Live, love, and laugh this May

All this beauty belongs to you

Take it now and forever, it's for you

Blessed be this world, this peace

Intoxicate thyself with this feast

Poem Translations

It's so wonderful to go back to memory lane and gain some perspective. I, for once, always do. At times, I feel: wow I was so immature back then! I've come a long way! Yet, other times, I feel, wow! I wrote that? I said that? I'm quite awesome! Well, just today, when I was looking through an old email to find something else, I found this treasure! I took a Translation course in Graduate school and as our "final project" we had to translate either prose or poetry and I translated a few Persian poems to English. I'm reading it now and I couldn't be more proud of myself...

There were 8 poems in total and I will post 4 of them. 

Poet: Maryam Heydarzadeh

"Don't Grieve Traveler”

Don't grieve traveler, here, even we are foreign

It’s been a lifetime since we witnessed the moonlight glisten

Without you, our spring or autumn it makes no difference to us

Don't you see that all my poems have become gloomy!

Don't grieve traveler; the weather's not bad there

But here, the clouds don’t even rain

Don't grieve traveler; how I adore your heart-ache

That sparkle in your beautiful eyes, I adore as a keepsake

Don't grieve traveler; it's bitter, being far away

I myself know how patient you are; don’t give up

Don't grieve traveler; you will, again, soon return

In your absence, we’ve accomplished nothing worthwhile

Don't grieve traveler; grieving is useless

About your pain, I know that everyone is clueless

Don't grieve traveler; it’s mid-March already

You will return in spring; there’s not much left, so smile

Don't grieve traveler; it's not always so bad

My dear, you’re not always this far

Don't grieve traveler, grieving is not what angels do

Traveling is a test; I swear, it’s no trouble for you

Don't grieve traveler; it's a rebirth

Don't grieve traveler; don't grieve my delight

Don't grieve traveler; you are heaven itself

In the hopes that one day you’ll come back and stay

----------------

“Solitude of a Poet”

I wish, in the village, plenty of love would be

In the bazaar of honesty, inexpensiveness would be

I wish once in a while, we would be graceful with each other

Perhaps briefly, but simple and in disguise would be

I wish in respect to the hearts of travelers every night

In the most transparent memory, a gathering would be

I wish the ocean would lessen his pain a bit

That he would lend it to us, in case any distress would be

I wish when we answered to the thirst of a lilac

The attitude of yours and mine and our tones more humane, would be

Like Hafiz who is full of miracles and inspiration

I wish the color of our nights, more mystical as well, would be

How much we wrote poetry for the rain

Neglectful that the crazy heart was already full of rain

I wish Sohrab[1] had not left this early

Our hearts, full of talk of this Kashani[2] poet, would be

I wish hearts would become full of Nima[3] fairytales

And in memory of him, the moon glowing all night long, would be

I wish the name of all little girls in here

The names of Persian dewed-flowers, would be

I wish the questioning eyes of people

Less into this heartless and materialistic world, would be

I wish the world of our hearts, one of these nights

Into anything that you want and know, would be

If our hearts ever soar I wish we could pray

That the secret of this poem hidden in this last verse would be

---

[1] Sohrab is a famous Persian mythical character by Ferdowsi

[2] City in Iran

[3] Famous deceased Iranian poet who’s full name was: “Nima Yushij”. He was the first poet to have invented the style of “she’re no” literally meaning “New Poetry”

----------------

Poet: Forough Farrokhzadeh

“I’m an Iranian Woman”

My country, the enchanted land

Oh heart of the Middle East

Your name, your history

Your men from their quarters

The immortal

I am an Iranian woman

Your kind of Iranian

I’m both patient and zealous

An infant from your womb

I am an Iranian woman

Neighbor and from the same generation as Shirin[1]

Sister of Tahmineh[2]

Like the story of Pooran and Parvin[3]

I am an Iranian woman

From a civilization

Born in Pars

Like the ocean, I roar

I am the gulf—

Until forever the Persian Gulf

I am an Iranian woman

My eyes full of purity and shyness

As high as a hundred Sivand [4]dams

I have water behind my eyes

I am an Iranian woman

I’ll build you with the brick of my soul

With my bones,

I’ll make a hundred pillars to reach your ceiling

I am an Iranian woman

Your kind of Iranian

I’m both patient and zealous

An infant from your womb

---

[1] Shirin is a mythical character in Persian poetry, equivalent of Juliet from Romeo & Juliet

[2] Tahmineh is also a mythical character (mother of Rostam in “Rostam & Sohrab” by Ferdowsi)

[3] Pooran & Parvin are both really famous Persian poets

[4] Name of a dam in Shiraz, Iran that is supposed to be built soon

------------------------

Poet: Maryam Heydarzadeh

“If you leave me”

If you leave me, I will take to the desert

I will leave the entire copse that is on the ground to insanity

If you leave me, I will lose myself

For a lifetime, I will make you ashamed of what people say

If you leave me, I’ll become the heart of the sea

I will break sun’s pride with the snow of my dreams

If you leave me, I will just become a wanderer

Briefly let me tell you, it will be the end of life for me

If you go, I will make complaints of you to the ocean

Without you, I will make the entire copse in the world disappear

If you leave me, my life would just darken

The next thing I know someone will say that your heart is with another

If you leave me, the chandeliers will grieve

They will then make their complains of you to the lovebirds

If you go, shorebirds will be fed up with their existence

It is then that hunters will catch them

If you go, the ocean is full of tears and in need of fish

Our city nights, like your lovely eyes, are black

If you go, one night, in my dream, I will burn the ocean

I will break the ladder to the sky regardless of its light

If you go, butterflies will blow out the candles

Caged canaries will forget their hearts

If you go, the eyelids of flowers will become wet from the sorrow of your love

Someone else’s heart like mine is without news of your eyes

If you leave me, our windows will close

A heart full of dreams will tire from life

If you go, insanity will never again leave us

Don’t go, let me again see you from the window

If you go, I will be left with the games of destiny

That it left me in hell and sent you away to heaven

If you go, I will complain to the night sky

One night I will sit and pray to God until morning

If you go, the birds will not return to their nests

Without you, which bird knows its way of returning home?

If you leave me, I will make turmoil by the clouds

For the death of the flowers, I will have to find an excuse

If you leave me, the jasmines will have a crack

Will the dews even have patience on the roses?

If you go, people will point me out to each other

They will ask each other what they have heard about me

If you go, everyone will think our love was just a temptation

Stay, so that we can show everyone that our love is holy

If you go, Farhad[i] will shake along with the Twenty Pillars[ii]

Even if just for that, stay with me until forever

If you go, they’ll say: you see, here’s what happens

We want none of it: neither pain nor love

If you go, they wouldn’t know that maybe it is happiness for you

They don’t know that pleasure of happiness could be in difficulties

Even though when you go, you won’t see me anymore,

Even if you want, you would have to wait until the season of doomsday

But I beg you, I swear on your life that is the most precious,

With one look of yours, you take me to the other side of the world

If you can, go somewhere to make your dreams come true

Or did you give your heart to someone else already?

Go, and I will live life with your memories, somehow

Sometimes from enthusiasm of you, I break my heart into pieces

When it’s Norooz[iii], I will put your love in my heart as my Haft Sin[iv]

Even though you’re gone, I still see you by the table of Haft Sin

Don’t grieve; our world is an infidel hyacinth

Whatever we suffer from is knowledge

By the way, if you want to go, am I going to be able to take it?

I’m the one who has to let you go to roving

If you go, I will follow you until the pinnacle of the sky

Then I’ll see all, so don’t go, stay with me

Is this what you want, that I will be wandering the streets

When one day, you go without me somewhere for your pleasures?

If you go, then you will return to see there’s no Maryam left

Then you would have to put flowers on Maryam’s grave

If you go, I will become insane and depressed

I will destroy my heart’s dreams

If you go, a life will be missing here

Stay for the sake of a heart that belongs to Maryam

If you go, my prayers will come after you again

How I adore you and love and the thought of your journey

---

[i] Farhad is a famous mythical character in the love story of “Shirin and Farhad” similar to “Romeo and Juliet”; Farhad is the Iranian Romeo     

[ii] The Twenty Pillars is a historical site in Kermanshah, Iran

[iii] Norooz, literally means “New Day” which is the name of the celebration of the Persian New Year

[iv] Haft Sin, is a tradition in Norooz, which we set seven symbolic things on the table that start with “s”

Confessions of a Writing Center Tutor

Stephen North once wrote:

"Our job is to produce better writers, not better writing."

In his article "The Idea of a Writing Center" (1984), North reviewed the typical definitions of writing centers by the outsiders and eventually, gave his own meaning. It may seem that in the writing center, our job is to help students produce their best work yet and move on to the next writing. No. As Stephen North once wrote and many agree, a writing center tutor must act as merely a guide to help students become more independent writers to soon not require the need of a "tutor".

I've already written extensively here about my experience getting hired into the LaGuardia Community College Writing Center. As a tutor there, for many years, I have been on a roller coaster ride and learned a lot on the job.

Bert Eisenstadt, my mentor and the director of the LaGCC Writing Center, once described the "job description" of a writing center as someone who does exactly what the student needs. If the student wants to focus on grammar, then the tutor must oblige. If the student wants feedback on his or her paper, the tutor must oblige. However, it is very important to know where to draw the line between doing what the student wants and following the writing center guidelines ethically. A writing center tutor cannot in any way, write the paper for the student. Sometimes, it is easy to see what is clearly ethical and what is not. However, most of the times, it is not. 

My Writing Center Tutoring Theory

"The most basic rule of tutoring is to trust the judgment of the students in their writing as writers." I once wrote this in a paper in graduate school responding to the "Tutors' Ideals and Practices" article by David C. Fletcher. The tutor must act as a guide to help students think, brainstorm, write, revise and edit. Nothing more, nothing less. The tutor must guide students to come to a point where they do not depend on or need the tutor any longer. Why is this so hard to grasp or internalize? Well, according to Paulo Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, most teachers like to remain in power. They like to be the one the student turns to every step of the way. Similarly, tutors must like remaining in power and being the ones that the student turns to. Guess what? They know how to write well. They know exactly how to help students get an A on a paper.

However, though it might seem as a shock to many, school is not the place to come to accumulate "A"s and feel superior and accomplished. At least that’s my opinion, especially when it comes to writing. School, a classroom, a tutoring session is the place for learning. For improving. If a doctorate student in Medical school learned how to operate on a person and get an A on a paper written about that operation is not necessarily the best future doctor. Do you see where I'm going with this? 

One of my students recently proclaimed to me during a tutoring session: "this is exactly what I needed. I needed someone to help me think out loud and organize my ideas." Hey, I couldn't agree more! She is a brilliant and intelligent person on her own, English may be her second language but she knows exactly how to think critically about a subject and develop her ideas. She just needs some guidance! I've worked with her for about 3 months now and I can say confidently that she has truly matured as a writer. When she's given an essay prompt, she knows how to organize her thoughts and how to develop them. It is not my place to assume that this is entirely because of my hard work but I suspect the fact that we're meeting less and less is because she needs my help less and less, bam: proof that she is improving as a writer. She says she will need my help next semester when she takes another writing class but somehow I doubt that. Perhaps she will need the occasional feedback and the eyes of another to read her work and that is something that I, too, need when I'm trying to produce my best work. And this is where I will have to make sure the kind of feedback I give her are merely questions I ask of her like: "what did you mean here when you mentioned this idea?" or "Can you tell me a bit more about this particular example? It's a big vague." or "What is your main point in this body paragraph?" These questions are supposed to help her understand that as a reader, I cannot exactly verify her points and need her to clarify.

This brings me back to when I was in high school and I would ask my father or sister to "read over" my work and all they can do is obsessively cross out sentences and write their own. "It sounds better like this" is what they would say. I'm sure they had their best intentions in mind but I felt like it was no longer my paper or my writing. It felt foreign. And separate. So I would do the only logical thing and cross out their sentences, replace them with mine and submit the essay as it was. I didn't score that high on those papers necessarily but somehow it felt better. I guess I didn't have a writing center tutor then, which reminds me, writing centers should be a thing in high school too! 

Thus, the writing center tutoring should only involve a tutor helping a tutee organize his or her thoughts and give feedback by asking questions along the writing process. Most tutors know this after years of working at the writing center, so why do we have so many unsatisfied students? In my opinion, it is because most tutors know what to do but they are not motivated to do it. Tutoring is one of the lowest paying jobs! When someone wants to make some quick money, he or she tutors but I don’t see many people who dream of being a writing center tutor or writing consultant or writing specialist as an aspiration or “end goal”. Perhaps this is where writing center scholarship should be directed.

  

Journey of Writing Center Tutoring

One of my first jobs as an educator was a part-time position at a community college writing center. I remember exactly the day I saw the job notice posted on the Campus Career Center board.

"Looking for tutors at the LaGuardia Community College...work one-on-one with students on every aspect of the writing process…tutors provide writing assistance…outlining, grammar, style.” 

I felt like it was speaking to me. As I have mentioned in my previous post, I have always been passionate about writing and here was a job where I can get paid for tutoring someone to write. 

Now, I may have loved writing, but I didn’t necessarily feel that I am an extraordinary writer but something spoke to me in that job post that I wrote down the email address and sent my resume by the end of the day. Less than a week later, I was contacted to come in for an in-person interview. I was ecstatic. And nervous. 

I can just close my eyes now and relive the entire process: finding the address online, taking the 7 train to Queens, reminiscing on my way there about taking this same train multiple times in the past as I attended a private school in Queens in Middle School, getting off right after Queensboro Plaza instead of two stations later like before, looking at everything for the first time, following the rush of students who were [probably] on their way to where I was going (LaGuardia Community College), getting there and not at all sure how to find Building “E”, where does it say what building it is? Giving up, asking around, [oh, it was right in front of me all along], entering the school, being able to get in just by showing my CCNY (City College of New York) ID as it’s part of the same CUNY system, feeling pretty cool about that, asking a couple of people on my way there to make sure I am in the right place, the building that will lead me to the Writing Center, finding a very nice café/lounge place right before reaching the Writing Center, making a note of getting some coffee after the interview, and finally finding the doors to the Writing Center. 

The first area that was to be seen was packed with students, sitting on the chairs, paper in hand, some of them were scribbling something on their papers, mostly looking nervous and restless, and a woman wearing a worried expression sitting behind a desk, speaking to a landline telephone. As soon as I entered and she saw me and gave me a clipboard. I noticed that she must think I am a student as it seemed to be the “sign-in sheet”. She was talking on the phone so I felt like I should wait for her to be done and then tell her that I’m not a student. She noticed that I wanted to say something so she brought down the phone, held it to her chest and waited for me to speak. “Oh I’m here for the tutoring job interview with Mr. Eisenstadt?” Before she could respond, I heard a very friendly voice behind me, “she’s with me!” I turned around to see a tall man with a noticeably big mustache, with a knit vest, smiling at me. “You must be Mahla!” I was relieved; “yes, hi.” He held out his hand to shake mine and turned around and said “Follow me”. 

As I followed him to his office, I presumed, I first passed a room with a huge table, kind of like a conference room but not really, and maybe one or two people who were eating, I also passed small “rooms” I want to say but they were more similar to cubicles as they were open rooms with no doors, white boards in each, a table, and two to three students sitting at the table and speaking. I wonder if tutoring sessions were being conducted in these rooms. I followed Bert, as he insisted on anyone meeting him to call him that, to his office. It was a very small room, smaller than the first room I passed with the big table. The first thing I noticed in his room was the stack of papers and books behind the desk, on the desk and under the desk. There were some plants that looked half-dead, he went behind his desk to sit down and I sat on the chair in front of the desk. Bert took out a paper from one of the stack of papers and studied it carefully, at this point, I knew that this was my resume.

I won’t go into detail about what was said in my interview, but I do want to point out the very smart psychological “test” that Bert took. After speaking for a bit about why I want to be a tutor at LGCC and why I think students sometimes have difficulty writing, Bert gave me a “scenerio” question. I believe he uses this scenerio question in all of his interviews to this day so I won’t give the details of the scenerio but what he did want to test is the humility of a candidate. When does a tutor decide that he or she just doesn’t know the answer to a question, or how to help a student, and when or whether he or she will ask someone about it?! Will the tutor decide that I’m not qualified to make a call about whether this student should fail or not and will he or she eventually ask for help? In my answer, after making different “attempts” to help the student, I suggested that I would ask Bert himself or other supervisors (Linda, I later found out was the name of the woman wearing the worried expression at the front desk). 

I could immediately tell that this answer clearly pleased Bert. He mentioned that yes, when you just try different methods and it doesn’t work out, you have to ask for help. You don’t even have to ask him or other supervisors, sometimes just asking another peer tutor might do the job. I started working at the LaGuardia Writing Center shortly after my interview, the following week I believe. This was exactly 8 years ago, April 2008. As I became more acquainted with the Writing Center, I fell more and more in love with Writing Center Tutoring and more so with the culture at the LaGuardia Writing Center. Bert Eisenstadt, to this day, is the Writing Center Director there. He is one of the best in the business. It is not just his interviewing skills either. Other than being an exceptional professor in his regular courses, he is also a brilliant leader. At my time at LGCC Writing Center, Bert held bi-weekly paid training sessions for all the tutors, especially newer ones in not only Grammar, Writing techniques, the assignments that are given to students, but also he taught tutors how to tutor. 

Now, during my time at LGCC WC, I learned more and more that tutoring is not just a skill, but it’s an art. And just like any other form of art, practice makes perfect, but training is also a great tool. Bert held many workshops at the WC throughout the year. At times, he would close up the WC completely for an hour or two to hold these training sessions. The tutors got paid for attending these workshops and learned how to do their jobs well in the process. Not only was this helpful training for the tutors, but it also gave a chance for tutors to come together to interact with each other in a friendly learning environment. Bert even provided lunch, at times, in these training sessions, which truly fostered a team-building environment. 

Until I was living in New York, I worked at the WC on and off for 6 years. Let me just say this: that is the longest I have worked in one place, ever. My life pulled me to different locations throughout my life and I sometimes either got too busy or was not physically around to tutor at LGCC WC. However, something always pulled me back there and every time I went back, I was accepted and embraced with open arms. I always felt welcomed. In fact, Bert was not only an amazing boss to me but to me, he was also an adviser, mentor, and advocate. He helped me get an adjunct position as an Instructor at LGCC by recommending me to the chair at the English Department. To this day, Bert is the first person I turn to when I need professional guidance. He is truly an inspiration and I continue to aspire to be more like him. In fact, my passion is to pursue a PhD in Composition and Rhetoric and become a Writing Center Director and perhaps continue his legacy on the West Coast.

Thank you for everything Bert. I hope you get to read this. :)

Many Blessings,
Meela (Ginger)