April Digital Roundtable Recap: Outreach and Legitimizing Writing Center Work

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 Thursday, April 16, Trisha Callihan (SSWCA Vice President) and Seth Czarnecki (Northeast Regional Representative) hosted a Digital Roundtable about Outreach and Legitimizing Writing Center Work. Much of our conversation revolved around outreach to staff and students. Kate Hutton of the Herndon Writing Center (VA), Trisha Callihan of the Eagle Writing Center at Osbourn High School (VA), and Seth Czarnecki of the Algonquin Writing Center (MA), and Paul Probst of the Algonquin Writing Center (MA), participated in this month’s roundtable.

The following notes were generated from our conversation.

  1. What are the top two methods your center uses to help your school community to understand the work that goes on in your center?
    1. School Board presentations
    2. Outreach to students to help understand how it can help them
      1. Creating a welcoming and friendly space, showing a commercial at the beginning of every year, posting meme posters, actively participating on Twitter
    3. Outreach to staff
      1. Kate tried to increase promotions with them because of the overturning within her school and because of the PBL assignments increasing across the school.
      2. How do you train staff to be prepared for the PBL expectations?
        1. Kate noted that she was currently living in this experience. Their numbers were substantially lower than in years past because teachers are using more projects in my classroom.
        2. Need to increase genre study and reaching out to staff to collect their assignments.
        3. Tutors present at department meetings to share what they have to assist students.
        4. Tutors are a great authentic audience.
      3. How else have you reached out to staff?
        1. New staff orientation
        2. Present professional development using writing center format
        3. Talk with curriculum leads
        4. Workshops created by tutors for teachers
        5. Tutors as liaisons as well
        6. How can we get more students to be talking about the positive side effects of their experiences in the center?
          1. What actually appears authentic as well?
          2. Tutors also send emails to teachers to explain the progress of the center.
          3. Tutors generally send emails to the students they tutored and request that they complete a follow-up survey
            1. “Is there anything else you’d like us to know?” Students will add really great feedback about their experience.
        7. Tutors presenting information to students in classes will inadvertently be also presenting to staff
          1. Tutors are only available during lunches, but they do classroom visits with a script at the beginning of the year. If teachers request it, they can come back to describe the resources again.
    4. Who are the top three stakeholders who need to know about your work (student body, teachers, administration, etc.)?
    5. What are the means by which you communicate with them  (social media, face-to-face, events, presentations, other organizations/groups, etc.)?
  1. How can we use our narratives and the data we collect to communicate to the school community our writing center work?
    1. Comparing the tutors demographic compared to the tutees’ demographic, and Kate found that there are not many general education students do not use the center. Instead, AP or ESOL students are using it the most often. This gave her a picture about who is engaged in the school to begin having conversations with administration.
    2. Acuity scheduling (monthly payment)
      1. What kind of information would we want to collect from surveys/scheduling databases to look at later? How much is too much?
      2. Perhaps we could be using data to share with others about the effectiveness is about. Where do we find this information? Do we even have numbers for SSWCA?
    3. Conversations about writing in general
      1. Getting rid of standardized tests in social studies for more PBL
      2. Workshops may be the future to show that students that writing is more than a 5 paragraph essay (abstracts, resumes, etc.)
      3. Ask the teachers what kinds of workshops they would want to see the writing center create.
      4. Need to house authentic writing and events to encourage students to write.
  2. What are some other obstacles you’ve encountered with communication? possible solutions?
    1. As a director or tutor, how have you addressed differences in expectations between writers and tutors, faculty and your center, etc.?
    2. As a director or tutor, how has your writing center initiated or developed outreach for your online schools/writing centers (versus traditional schools/writing centers)?
    3. As a director or tutor, how has your writing center raised funding for outreach? How are your funds allocated for the different types of activities/outreach?
  3. Texts/resources that have really helped develop your program’s outreach

Takeaways and Further Reading:

  1. Stephen North, “The Idea of the Writing Center”
  2. Cynthia Dean, “Revising and Rewriting Roles: Exploring the Challenges of Peer Tutors in a High School Writing Center”
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