Blog # 13

A Critique of Thomas Newkirk’s “The First Five Minutes: Setting the Agenda in a Writing Conference”
by Molly D. Kenner

Thomas Newkirk explains in his essay “The First Five Minutes: Setting the Agenda in a Writing Conference that the teacher must set an agenda that is a “meeting of the minds” of both student and teacher in the beginning of a writing conference. He says one or two important issues in the paper need to be the focal points of the conference. Newkirk states that the time spent with the student working on her paper is short and if no direction is established quickly the meeting can be a waste of time for the student and teacher alike.

The author provides three case studies. Each student’s paper did not have a clear focus and each teacher’s task was to find out from the student what the main point of the paper was. Newkirk showed how instructors fall into traps that make “conferences misfire badly.” An example of this was in the case of “…Like a Mack Truck.” The instructor dominates the session talking “twice as much” as the student. The instructor did not make good use of the first five minutes and ended up with an unsuccessful conference.

In the case “It Just Didn’t Make Sense” the instructor makes a better and faster assessment of the needs of the student. The teacher asks questions that are understood by the student and allow her to examine herself for the answers and think her way through to a logical conclusion. Newkirk reminds us to be careful not to talk to much; to use the start of a session to agree on where the focus will be for the student’s paper; that the focus must be narrowed down to no more than two main issues; the teacher should not have the agenda for the paper pre-set; the teacher should be a “model” that the student can learn from.