On Tuesday, April 23, Katie Sutcliffe (SSWCA Southeast Regional Representative) hosted a Digital Roundtable called “Beyond the English Department: Activating your Writing Center in Other Disciplines.” Our conversation revolved around challenges and barriers to collaborating with other academic departments and opportunities for connecting, expanding and inviting others into the Writing Center fold.
The following notes were generated from our conversation:
Center Status: Where are you in your writing/learning center development? (new center, existing/established center, center transitioning to all-subjects?)
- Most of us are writing centers now, though a few are expanded centers that also tutor non-writing skills. Some have brand new centers, while others have been established and operating for many years.
Appointment Reality: What types of appointments do you regularly see? Are they primarily from the English department? What goals/dreams do you have for expansion? What are the challenges you are facing?
- Goals/dreams we discussed:
- Many hope to see their client numbers show more representation from more subjects beyond English students
- Hopes of WC feeling like a natural part of the culture
- We noted that schools in general can feel very siloed in subjects and have vision of more interdisciplinary work
- One aptly commented that they wish the perception of “English teachers teach writing and everyone else collects writing” would evolve
- Goals of addressing AI conversations alongside our colleagues in other departments (rather than having them think of it as “just an English department problem”)
Outreach & Forging Connections: What writing/communications-oriented tasks do you know/suspect happen in other discipline areas at your school? What are strategies for connecting with/encouraging other teachers to use your center as part of their process?
- How do we learn about what is happening in other departments, writing-wise or writing-adjacent?
- GoogleForm to ask what kind of writing is happening, what they need
- Barrier: teachers worry about needing to become a writing teacher, or about the time commitment
- One shared that at their school, a paper that was itself cross-curricular (both History and English) ended up being the door that got the history department engaged/interested and now the History department uses the Writing Center more than any other department!
- Idea for students being liaisons to specific departments or courses – one participant heard about a school doing this at the SSWCA Boston conference and is interested in starting this.
- Liaisons project used for an all-subjects center
- This article by Amber Jensen is really helpful in thinking through the WAC liaison idea: Empowering Student Writing Tutors as WAC Liaisons in Secondary Schools
Beyond the one-on-one Session: What ideas do you have for activating other teachers/students? How can you go beyond the one-on-one session?
- One shared ideas for workshops that bring audiences in beyond just those interested in tutoring (eg “Upper School 101” is a once a month workshop for 9th graders during their study hall period where teachers and tutors can facilitate learning about studying, organization, preparing for exams, etc.
- One participant shared appeal to students, not just teachers (Banned Books Week, National Poetry Month)
- Another participant shared about push-in tutoring (tutors go to the teacher’s classroom) as very successful; logistics of getting this to work if tutors have to be pulled from class can be tricky but doable with some pre-planning. Another has implemented “Rent-a-Fellow,” which was an idea adapted from SSWCA 2023 conference where tutors are requested by teachers to assist in their classrooms.
Promotion on Social Media:
- Helpful to have a team of tutors or point person who is running it
- Check school’s rules about what students are allowed to do
Physical Location of the Writing Center:
- We discussed the idea of the writing center being physically located outside of the “English wing”
Where does AI fit in? Participants wondered how AI can or should be addressed via the Writing Center
- Might tutors be able to help students navigate it as a tool, but how to use it critically, ethically, etc.
- Could AI be a way to gather teachers from all subject areas together (with support from the writing center) to collaborate? Encourage teachers to reflect on what is the purpose of this writing assignment, this writing task/situation, etc. (many non-English teachers may not have thought through things in that way before)
Resources from WAC (Writing Across the Curriculum) Clearinghouse:
- https://wac.colostate.edu/repository/teaching/intro/
- https://wac.colostate.edu/repository/teaching/intro/include/
Further Resources Shared
Description of the above image: Sample Graphic (that we pair with candy/stickers) for teachers to encourage them to use our learning center and library throughout the school year
Description of the above image: Sample bookmark from a 9th Grade Workshop led by tutors