Colleen Cecil is serving her second term as one of SSWCA’s two Tutor Representatives and is a third-year tutor in the Herndon Writing Center in Herndon, VA. Colleen presented on building community within the writing center at CAPTA 2016 and on outreach and advertising at CAPTA 2017. This post is a reflection on the CAPTA 2017 Tutor Leader Roundtable, which she planned and co-facilitated with Laura Tutko.
Prior to the conference on December 8, 2017, I had attended two other CAPTA conferences in my years at the Herndon Writing Center. The first year I was simply an attendee, while the next I took on the role of presenter and tutor representative for the CAPTA board. As I have found out through these three experiences, there is no one conference that will ever be the same. Usually it’s because of that one session. That one session in a day packed full of activity and inspirational new ideas to make the writing center community stronger, that changes your mindset completely. In 2017, it had to be the Tutor Leader Roundtable.
In the month or so leading up to the conference, I was in the process of refining the three presentations that I would give that Friday. Two of my presentations were with the other student representative for CAPTA, Laura Tutko. Although, I had never met her face to face prior to our presentations, we were able to smoothly pull together two presentations. While I knew that we had put a lot of work into the planning of the Tutor Leader Roundtable, I was apprehensive of how the 45-minute session would go. Not knowing how responsive the audience would be was one of my main worries. I came to find out that I shouldn’t have even stressed for a second about that.
As I have been in the writing center for three years now and a tutor representative for two, I have heard many conversations about writing centers, but none of these conversations can compare to the energy I felt every minute that I was in that room. The Capital Area Peer Tutoring Association, now the Secondary School Writing Centers Association, has always been invested in generating a community among writing centers. In this room, for the first time ever at a CAPTA conference, there was a true chance for the board members as well as simply other tutors to hear what all was going on in different schools from the perspective of the students.
Laura and I had a list of ten questions that we had prepared to get the conversation going. With all the passionate responses, enthusiastic commentary, and intrigued questions that filled the room, Laura and I only got through seven. Right from the get-go, I could tell that this session was going to be completely different from any I had ever witnessed or led. I heard so much feedback from schools ranging from how each school runs their centers on a day to day basis to the difficulties in gaining support and funding for their respective writing centers from administration. Every single person in the room had a story to tell and something to add to the ever-growing conversation. I left that room with my head full of new ideas to implement and a network of people to work with.