SSWCA is a national network of secondary school writing centers directed by an elected Executive Board made up of writing center directors and tutors whose mission is to build community among, promote advocacy for, and support development of secondary school writing and learning centers.
SSWCA began in 2010 as a small and informal regional network of Secondary School Writing Centers (SSWCs) and Peer Tutoring Centers concentrated in the greater Washington, D.C., metropolitan area. After organizing three Secondary School Writing Center Conferences in 2011, 2012, and 2013 via this informal network with the support of the University of Maryland and George Mason University, six directors in the greater Washington, DC, area formally founded the Capital Area Peer Tutoring Association (CAPTA) as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization in 2014 with twelve member schools; a more detailed history of our organization was published on the Connecting Writing Centers Across Borders blog in April 2017.
Since then, we have hosted an annual Secondary School Writing Center conference and rebranded as SSWCA when we expanded to the national level. Our membership has grown to include over 70 secondary schools around the country. In November 2018, SSWCA welcomed 475 secondary school tutors, directors, and administrators from 60 institutions from 14 states. In 2020, due to COVID-19, our conference shifted to virtual; we hosted 11 virtual presentations with a total of 170 participants. In 2021, our virtual conference welcomed over 670 participants, making it our largest conference to date. In 2022, 500 attendees interacted during our two day synchronous online conference with follow-up asynchronous content.
If you have questions about SSWCA or secondary school writing centers, please email admin@sswca.org or fill out our contact form below.
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