Provo High School – Utah
The Provo High School Writing Center, founded in the 2022-2023 school year, opened its doors February 2nd to students. The PWC is a student-led, teacher-directed writing center that is open to students of all grades (9-12) at a suburban high school in Provo, Utah. The PWC is currently open during second lunch on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and next year will be open during all lunches and during third period every other day (out of four class periods per day). There are currently 16 tutors. Rachel Cutler, English teacher, is the director.
The PWC offers one-on-one tutoring during lunch, and it also offers whole-class support for teachers and students during third period, where tutors can mentor students one-on-one at any stage of the writing process. The priority of the PWC is to be a collaborative learning environment, where students can come to talk through ideas, feel heard, make mistakes, and build foundations for success and scholarly exploration. The student tutors strive to develop a judgment-free environment of inclusion, integrity, and excellence.
The Provo High Writing Center started in part from a long-held desire among teachers at Provo High to establish a writing center. As Rachel Cutler joined the Provo High faculty at the start of the 2022-2023 school year, a partnership also developed between the Provo High Writing Center and Brigham Young University, a neighboring college with their own Research and Writing Center. English Teaching undergraduate students, together with Dr. Amber Jensen, a professor in the English Teaching department, and Tyler Gardner, the director of BYU’s Research and Writing Center, partnered with Rachel Cutler to develop training materials, leadership, scaffolding, and other resources for the Provo Writing Center. Together, they started SSWCUP, the Secondary School Writing Center University Partnership model, and are continuing to partner to promote the development of Writing Centers throughout the state of Utah.
As this is the Provo Writing Center’s first year, the SSWCA Travel Grant was invaluable for teacher-director development and networking. Not only did it lend credibility to the Writing Center in the eyes of administrators, but it also validated the efforts of the student tutors as they struggled to get the PWC off the ground within the first few months. Although the students were not able to attend this year, it motivated them to continue their progress and development so they could attend the SSWCA Conference in future years. The conference itself allowed the teacher-director to network with more experienced directors, see the different stages of Writing Center development, and develop ideas for their own fledgling center. Seeing established and successful writing centers across the country was a huge boost to morale, as this is one of only 3 fledgling Writing Centers throughout the state of Utah.
Bishop Conaty – Our Lady of Loretto High School – California
Welcome to the Wildcat Learning Center at Bishop Conaty – Our Lady of Loretto High School! I took over this year as the director and I overhauled the peer tutoring formation program. We have student tutors that are members of the National Honors Society and National Hispanic Honors Society. We are primarily open on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:35 – 4:00 PM. We offer tutoring in all subjects. Next year, we will move towards a different model because in addition to NHS and NHHS, we are officially adding the National English Honors Society. NEHS will do tutoring on Monday and Wednesday from 3 – 4 PM and will specifically aid with writing. I’m excited to be making this switch because I’m also an English teacher, so writing is truly near and dear to my heart.
Currently, our sessions happen in the library, but starting in August when we return to school, the library is getting a makeover and is becoming an actual learning center! This is very exciting for us and all the tutors can’t wait to see what their new space will look like.
We were a recipient of the Jensen-Hutton Grant for Emerging Centers this academic year and I was so honored that we won one. With some of the funds, I was able to attend the Spring conference. I was personally very excited that I was able to attend Writing at the Center virtually because I have attended so many conferences this year, that attending in person was not going to be able to happen. One of the biggest takeaways that I took from the conference was how collaboration is always key when starting up and continuing to run a high school writing center. Without collaboration, there cannot be growth. The rest of our funds are being used to purchase copies of “The Everyday Writer” to help our tutors and students with MLA citation questions as well as to provide additional resources to help our struggling students.
Saline High School – Michigan
Founded in 2017, the Saline High School (SHS) Writing Center, located in southeast Michigan, is a student-run, teacher-directed secondary school writing center. Our center is open during all five class periods during all three trimesters with roughly five consultants in each hour. Madelyn Clark and Jen Denzin are the founders and co-directors of the writing center.
In 2018, four Saline students and the co-directors attended the SSWCA Conference. Unfortunately, due to Covid-19, the hope of making this a yearly trip was not possible. This year, however, with the help of the SSWCA Travel Grant, eight student consultants and our two co-directors were able to make a four-day trip to Arlington, Virginia to attend the conference once again. Not only was this trip a great bonding experience for this group of students, but it also sparked inspiration for future collaborations and community-building opportunities to improve our center.
This year’s conference theme, Writing at the Center, perfectly describes our group’s main takeaways. After attending numerous presentations on the importance of writing in building community, our center was motivated to strengthen and create new connections with writing communities near ours. For example, in a couple of weeks, the SHS Writing Center will be hosting students, teachers, and administrators from Hamtramck High School to help them create their own writing center. In addition, the Saline Area Senior Center Writers will be joining us for our third multigenerational write-off of the year. These collaborations, galvanized by the SSWCA conference, will allow Saline consultants to bond with and learn from more diverse populations through writing.
Alongside new outreach opportunities, another insight we gained from the SSWCA conference was the need for consultant bonding; a more tight-knit group of tutors leads to trust and improved communication, ultimately allowing the center to run more smoothly and collaboratively. One activity our center has already put into place is a Red Pen Party to welcome our new consultants. This event allowed returning consultants and new consultants to meet each other before the start of the next school year when they will be working together on a daily basis. We had lots of fun with this get-together and plan to continue doing this in years to come.
Looking forward, to celebrate our hard work at the end of the school year, our center plans to host a Literary Magazine launch party. Throughout the year, students, both tutors and tutees, have submitted poems, creative narratives, nonfiction, and other pieces of writing to fit our Masquerade theme. Inspired by some of the presentations we saw at the SSWCA conference, our center is excited to host an end-of-the-year party to celebrate this work. This event will allow our consultants to share their writing with other students, parents, and our senior center writing friends, cultivating a safe space to connect over writing.
In sum, the SSWCA conference this year was a priceless experience for our center. With the help of the SSWCA Travel Grant, we were not only able to connect with other writers and centers at the conference, but we also took home countless ideas on how to spread, share, and enjoy our love for writing.
Algonquin High School – Massachusetts
There are so many wonderful things that happen because of this conference. The first is that a group of tutors come together in new ways, just by traveling together. They sit with and meet new people, they play, and they even write together. This year’s conference was a treat. Thinking about all the ways writing centers and its tutors and directors accompany writers and each other, the Algonquin Writing Center (AWC) is recommitting its effort to accompany all kinds of writers with all their various writings. The conference challenged us to consider what it means to be inclusive and the steps we can take to keep writing of all kinds at the center of our work. The SSWCA conference never disappoints, and it is a true source of nourishment of keeping the hard but joyous writing center work not only alive, but well.