In an effort to build community among secondary school writing centers and to provide more opportunities for directors to collaborate, SSWCA is pleased to announce our Digital Roundtable Series. Each month, SSWCA member schools are invited to join us for an informal discussion via GoogleHangouts. Each month’s topic and guiding questions will be announced in the month leading up to the roundtable.
On Wednesday, March 14, Kate Hutton (SSWCA President) and Joe Golimowski (Capital Area Regional Representative) hosted a Digital Roundtable for New Centers and Directors. Much of our conversation revolved around the day-to-day, emotional, and professional labor directors engage with. Kate Hutton of the Herndon Writing Center (VA), Joe Golimowski of the Kettle Run Writing Center (VA), Trisha Callihan of the Eagle Writing Center at Osbourn High School (VA), and John Rearick of the Brooklyn Poly Prep Writing Center (NY), participated in this month’s roundtable.
The following notes were generated from our conversation.
How did you come to Writing Center work?
- Three out of four participants founded their school’s writing centers
- Served as an undergraduate tutor and founded their center when they began teaching
- A colleague started our writing center, and after the first year, was asked to join her in the interest of sustainability
- Was tasked with finding a way to support struggling writers in the school, so decided a writing center was the way to go
How do you train your tutors? What resources have been most helpful?
- SSWCA Toolkit (included in SSWCA Membership)
- Tutor Training:
- The Bedford Guide to Tutoring Writing (Ryan and Zimmerelli)
- Participants agreed that this is one of the most accessible tutor training texts!
- ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors (Bruce and Rafoth)
- A Tutor’s Guide: Helping Writers One to One (Rafoth)
- Tutoring Writing: A Practical Guide for Conferences (McAndrew)
- “The Idea of a Writing Center” (North)
- “Collaborative Learning and the ‘Conversation of Mankind’” (Brufee)
- The Bedford Guide to Tutoring Writing (Ryan and Zimmerelli)
- Implementing A Writing Center:
- For Directors:
- Peripheral Visions for Writing Centers (Grutsch McKinney)
- The Working Lives of New Writing Center Directors (Caswell, Grutsch McKinney, and Jackson)
- We wish there was a similar text called “The Working Lives of Secondary School Writing Center Directors.”
- Tutor Training Activities:
- Tutor Observations
- Fishbowl Tutoring
- Connect with a local university
- Challenging scenarios
- Bring in your high school papers and have students tutor the them/the teacher
- Remember: Tutor training is as much about building tutors’ capacity to tutor as it is about building a team.
- Question: Are there good video resources to show students what a good session looks like?
What kind of physical resources does a successful writing center have?
- Dedicated space (A conference room in a library, a computer lab, a classroom, etc.)
- Small tables for pairs to sit at so that tutors and clients have privacy during their sessions.
- A sign-in desk
- A computer cart or desktop computers so that clients can access their digital files during a tutoring session
- A printer for those who prefer to work with a print document (or for those students who are finishing their writing last-minute)
- Digital check-in forms
- Decorations to make the space warm and welcoming
- Positive posters
- Speakers to play ambient background music
- Twinkle lights
- Plants
- Flexible seating (none of us actually have this, but we wish we did)
How do you perform outreach (Note: for more on this, join us for our April Roundtable!)
- Work with teachers with whom you already have a positive relationship first
- Targeting younger grades when you’re implementing your center is a great idea, as they’ll have access to the WC their whole high school/middle school career
- Add a bit about the Writing Center to freshman or library orientation
- As much as possible, outreach should be tutor-led
- Classroom visits to share about the writing center or to demo what a session looks like
- Offer writing-related events to help encourage students to come find your writing center
- Invite faculty to lead specific trainings (college essays, English as a Second language, Special Education, etc)
What big dreams do you have for your writing center or for the field of writing centers?
- Have experienced tutors write letters to future tutors
- A summer “bootcamp” for tutor training
- Social activities for writing center tutors
- “Writing Center Cribs” a la “MTV Cribs” (a video series giving people tours of different writing centers)