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 2018-2019 Digital Roundtable Series. Each month, SSWC directors and tutor leaders 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 Tuesday, October 2, Kate Hutton (SSWCA President) 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), Sarah Flanagan of the Fossil Ridge Writing Center (TX), Alison Johnson of the St. Stephens Writing Center (FL), Camille Platt of the Chattanooga Christian Learning Commons Writing Center (TN), John Rearick of the Brooklyn Poly Prep Writing Center (NY), and Marcia Wingerd of the GRACE Writing Center (NC) participated in this month’s roundtable.
The following notes were generated from our conversation.
How do you train your tutors?
- Some expressed that it would be ideal to have a course dedicated to tutor training and/or to house our centers. It ensures that tutors are trained consistently and it increases buy-in for tutors.
- For those who don’t have a class, tutors are trained at regular intervals throughout the year.
Where is your center located? What is your space like? When are you open?
- Most of our centers are located close to the cafeteria or to the library, which makes it easy for students to access our spaces during down time.
- Libraries and writing centers make great partners.
- Those of us who are not ideally-located have had to get creative about encouraging students to visit the center.
- Most centers are open during lunch time. Some reported being open only during school, while others are open during their school’s elective block or after school.
Does your center have a budget? If so, how do you use it?
- While many of us began without a budget, most directors reported having a budget of $500-$1000 per year to be used in a variety of ways, including:
- Purchasing furniture
- Purchasing promotional materials
- Purchasing SSWCA and other professional organization memberships and covering conference attendance fees
How do you promote your center?
- Promotional t-shirts for tutors and staff are a great way to publicize the center. (Sites like CustomInk.com are great)
- Help students to see the center as a friendly welcoming space by offering incentives like pizza parties, coffee, tea, etc.
- Host fun writing-related events, such as a National Day on Writing Celebration
- Purchase promotional materials including:
- Stickers (stickeryou.com allows you to create inexpensive custom stickers).
- Sample:
- Buttons (SSWCA has used purebuttons.com)
- Pens
- Lanyards for tutors
- Offer workshops to encourage students who are intimidated by one-on-one tutoring to use the center. As much as possible and in keeping with a peer-tutoring model, try to offer tutor-led workshops.
- We had a conversation about branding as well: having a logo is a good way to publicize your center, but some centers may have to work more closely with their school’s PR teams to design their logos.
How do we peacefully co-exist with other departments without stepping on anyone else’s toes?
- Supportive administration is key
- Emphasize partnerships and collaboration as much as possible
- Again: libraries make great friends!
What are we most hopeful about for our centers this year?
- We’re excited for students to see the benefit of time and revision and writing as a process.
- Moving past politics and getting a dedicated space for our centers!
- Being familiar with and comfortable with running our centers and our new roles
- Focusing on record keeping and being able to share data with all teachers.
- Letting the tutors take charge more than they have in the past.