Call for Proposals

Planting, Nurturing, Pruning, Thriving

SSWCA & BWP 2024
A Conference for Peer Tutors, Program Directors, Teacher Leaders, and School Administrators

March 15-16, 2024

University of Massachusetts Boston & Virtually

Call for Proposals

The Secondary School Writing Centers Association is thrilled to announce our twelfth annual conference for secondary school writing and learning centers, directors, and administrators, and because this year’s conference is in partnership with the Boston Writing Project, we also welcome others who have a stake in writing instruction and writing practices more generally. A hybrid format will be offered for greater access, with sessions offered through Whova for virtual attendees. Conference presentations are intended to examine tutoring practices, draw upon writing and peer tutoring research and theory, and discuss innovative solutions. Our conference aims to build scholarship in the field, promote effective practice, and build community among those engaged with writing centers, peer tutoring, and the National Writing Project (NWP). 

We invite you to consider the many connotations of the words in this year’s conference theme: Planting, Nurturing, Pruning, and Thriving. Most simply, pause to consider what the growth of your center and your self means. What seeds of thought or skill have you planted when working with individual students, building your center, or starting new writing instruction? How have you nurtured others in their writing, in their confidence? How have you taken the time to nurture yourself or the concept of your center? When have you needed to prune initiatives, staff, or maybe even the center itself to best support new growth? How have you thrived in this work? As we acknowledge the academic, emotional, and social obstacles in our schools and world, we challenge you to reflect on what it means to engage in a cyclical process of growth. We hope that you will consider epiphanies and innovations for your center/program or for you as an individual learner/writer/instructor.  Given these scenarios, in what ways can you offer ideas, insights, or strategies that show how your center, school, or community has engaged in Planting, Nurturing, Pruning, and Thriving? (See below for guiding questions to help build your proposal.)

We invite novice and experienced tutors (middle school, high school, and higher-ed), directors (and director-hopefuls), administrators, and writing project teacher leaders to submit proposals to present at SSWCA & BWP 2024. No matter the topic, your proposal should be grounded in sound research and theory*, rather than just your experience.  The most successful presentations are interactive (rather than lecture), ask participants to engage, and include creative visual components. Consider conferences or presentations you have experienced. What engages you as an audience member? Include those types of engagement in your presentation. Please make sure your presentation will fit within the allocated time frame.  (See below for time frames allowed.)

Please submit your proposal no later than midnight EST on Friday, November 10, 2023. This was changed from the previous date of November 3rd.

Conference Session Formats

Presentations will take place in-person, and, to provide more equitable access for those who cannot travel, virtually.

This year’s conference presentation formats include:

1. Workshop (1 hour, 15 minutes; 1-5 presenters): Session leaders guide participants through examining an essential question or a challenge in an interactive workshop-style format. Successful workshops involve activities wherein participants create a plan or a product to bring back to and implement in their schools. 

2. Insight Presentation (20-25 minutes; 1-3 presenters): Presenters deliver a session that offers a clear insight on a specific topic or offers an approach to addressing a question or challenge encountered by your center or in your writing instruction. Presentations will be paired with another with a similar focus to offer audience members varying viewpoints on a topic as part of a longer, 75-minute session

3. Panel Presentation (1 hour, 15 minutes; 2-5 presenters): A group of presenters collaborates to offer various perspectives on the same general topic or different approaches to addressing a question or challenge. Successful panels engage the audience in collaborative exercises and provide time for small-group and whole-group discussions at various points throughout the presentation. You are encouraged to collaborate with colleagues from other schools!

4. Roundtable or Special Interest Group (SIG) (1 hour, 15 minutes; 1-3 presenters): Session leaders facilitate a moderated discussion on a writing or learning center, or writing instruction topic. This less-structured option is geared towards the busy teacher leader or director who is interested in leading a session but prefers to be more of a conversation facilitator than a presenter; however, we welcome tutor leaders to propose in this format as well.


PROPOSAL SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS 

  • A title that clearly reflects the content of your presentation
  • The format your presentation will take (Workshop, Insight, Panel, or Roundtable)
  • If your presentation is more suited for virtual or in-person
  • The general topic of your presentation
  • A summary of the content of your presentation (200 words)
  • A description of the research* upon which your presentation is based and of how you will incorporate the research into your presentation.  (100-200 words)
  • A detailed outline of how time will be allocated in your presentation
  • An abstract for the conference program (50 words)

*Note: Sound research and theory is defined as published articles or larger texts. Our recommendation for empirical research is within the last 15 years; however, foundational texts and those framing conceptual discussions can be outside of this time frame. This might include texts read in tutor-training courses, texts read by NWP teacher leaders, articles published in The Journal of Peer Tutoring in Secondary Schools, WLN, Writing Center Journal, Praxis, The Peer Review, English Journal, The Journal of Teaching Writing, Teaching/Writing: The Journal of Writing Teacher Education, or other authoritative works. For writing project topics, see nwp.org for additional resources.


Guiding Questions

NOTE: You are encouraged, but not required, to include the conference theme of Planting, Nurturing, Pruning, Thriving  in your proposal. Consider the many connotations of  the words planting, nurturing, pruning, thriving and how they relate to peer tutoring, writing center, or writing project work:

Planting:
Originating
Sowing
Setting
Beginning
Initiating 
Nurturing:
Helping
Developing
Watching Over
Expanding
Advancing
Progressing
Pruning:
Removing
Encouraging New Growth
Protecting
Maximizing
Invigorating
Stimulating
Redeveloping
Refining
Thriving:
Prospering
Progressing
Spreading
Balancing
Bearing Fruit

When choosing a focus, we invite you to consider the following questions and have designated several for specific groups; however, these designations and prompts are not limiting. You are welcome to propose ideas beyond what is suggested below. 


Guiding Questions

  • What seeds of thought or skill have you planted when working with individual students, when building your center, or starting new writing instruction? What grew out of those seeds?
  • Who are your program/center leaders, and how do you train them to lead so that they are balanced in their own well-being and can thrive in that position? How do you foster leadership qualities among tutors and allow for new leaders to emerge?
  • How have you nurtured the social-emotional needs of yourself, of the students you work with, of your center? 
  • What is the value of asking tutors and teachers to nurture writing in their own professional practices? How have you encouraged this at your school?
  • What resources or guiding principles do you turn to in order to improve the writing instruction you offer to your community? How often do you review/retrain using those resources?
  • All centers have a mission or vision.  How was that created? How do you prune that mission to provide for the best growth of your center? How does having a mission statement help your center thrive? 
  • When were times you needed to prune initiatives,  staff, or maybe even the center itself to best support new growth? How did you manage that?
  • As you think about your next steps (graduating, opening a new writing center, transitioning to online or a learning center, publishing, working as a teacher leader, etc.), what cycle of growth might you expect? 
  • How do you nurture all types of learners so that everyone who enters your center can thrive? What does that training look like?
  • How do you initiate connections with outside partners in your larger school or community? How do you decide when to end a partnership? 
  • What expectations have you had to prune for a session or yourself in order to best support the student’s or your growth moving forward? How did you manage that?
  • Considering the negative and positive influence of AI writing technology, how have you encouraged writers in a cycle of growth and helped them find their own voice? 
  • How have you planted the seeds of social justice and equality in your center and your school?
  • How do you encourage others or yourself to engage in the full writing cycle, including pruning or removing parts? 
  • (For all-subject tutoring centers) What strategies do you use to help students across content areas? How do you ensure that the pairings between tutor and student allow both to thrive?
  • (For directors) When it comes to writing program/center administration, what knowledge have you gained that you wish you knew years ago? How did you learn it? How might you translate that for others in similar roles?
  • (For university tutors) What skills and abilities did writing or learning center work at the secondary level  nurture in you and help you as you transitioned to post-secondary life? 
  • (For Writing Project Teacher Leaders) What innovative writing instruction methods should the SSWCA community incorporate into the work enacted by their tutors/directors?
  • (For Writing Project Teacher Leaders) How might writing be utilized as a reflective tool for nurturing growth? What are the benefits to teachers/tutors/directors seeing themselves as writers? What activities or structures might introduce these ideas to individuals who do not view themselves as writers?

Proposal Submission Guidelines & Instructions

AVAILABLE RESOURCES: For more information about how to write a proposal, to learn more about how to incorporate research into your proposal, to review our proposal evaluation rubric, and to see examples of effective proposals from past years, visit https://sswca.org/conference/support-for-conference-proposals/

DEADLINE: Please submit your proposal no later than midnight EST on Friday, November 10, 2023. (This was changed from the previous date of November 3rd.) We will notify you of the status of your proposal via the email address you provide by Monday, December 11, 2023. You will be asked to confirm your acceptance by officially registering for SSWCA 2022 by Friday, January 26, 2024.

IMPORTANT: 

  • Submitting a proposal is an acknowledgement that you are willing and able to present on both March 15th and 16th, 2024 either in-person in Boston, MA or virtually according to your assigned time slot. You also acknowledge that anyone under 18 years old has permission from a parent/guardian to participate.
  • In order to ensure a fair and unbiased proposal review process, please omit any identifying information (names of presenters, schools, and/or centers) from your proposal. 

TO SUBMIT A PROPOSAL: 

CONTACT: Please email the conference planning committee chair, Stacey Hahn, at conference@sswca.org with any questions about presentations.