Volume 29, Number 9 Promoting the exchange of voices and ideas in one-to-one teaching of writing May, 2005
...FROM THE EDITOR...
This month’s issue of WLN includes articles likely to be immediately useful in many of our writing centers. Richard Carr describes their writing center’s program that partners with a student service for rural students at his univer-sity—a group who feel uncomfortable coming to a writing center. Steven Corbett summarizes for those of us who missed the recent CCCC confer-ence the writing center sessions he at-tended, and Lisa Whalen offers ex-amples of how writing tutors can appropriately represent their tutoring work on their resumes.
The first of two Tutors’ Column is a multiple-authored essay by a group of tutors who collaborated to share their approaches when tutoring ESL stu-dents, and another tutor, Laura Lawfer, introduces us to her writing fellow pro-gram. Finally, Howard Tinberg shares with us the letter he writes to his new tutors.
You’ll notice that the conference calendar (p. 16) doesn’t contain infor-mation about any of the regional con-ferences for 2005-2006. Please send me your conference information for the calendar soon so that possible partici-pants can plan ahead.
• Muriel Harris, editor
...INSIDE...
Bridging the Rural-Urban Gap: The University of Alaska Writing Tutor in Rural Student Services
• Richard Carr 1
Report from the 4Cs: Familiar Faces and a Few Surprises
• Steven J. Corbett 6
Putting Your Writing Center Experience to Work
• Lisa Whalen 9
Tutors’ Columns: “ESL-ing”
• Matthew Adams, Jason
Breneman, Tracee Litchfield,
Judy McDaniel,
Steve Mosca, Kathleen
Scheaffer, Megan Schlicht,
| Mary Jo Sci, and Verhine | Eric | 11 |
| “Writing Fellows: An Innovative Approach to Tutoring” | ||
| • Laura Lawfer | 12 | |
An Open Letter to New Peer Tutors
• Howard Tinberg 14
Conference Calendar 16
University of Alaska Fairbanks Writ-ing Center outreach links our center to Rural Student Services (RSS), a pro-gram originally designed to address the needs of Alaska Native1 students and now targeted for all rural students at-tending UAF. Eight hours each week we provide an on-site tutor for students connected to RSS. Kay Thomas, long-time academic advisor, articulates the purpose of the program by evoking the reality of the state: “Alaska has a sig-nificant rural-urban dichotomy.” Even in 2003, only 20% of the state was ac-cessible by roads, and a good portion of students labeled rural live in communi-ties accessible only by air or by sea. Since its inception in 1969 as Student Orientation Services, RSS has served as a means to bridge the rural-urban gap. Program counselors work with incom-ing students from the pre-admissions stage onwards, starting with telephone contact while students are still living in their home village. They offer students a variety of services as they apply and once they arrive: linking them with the Financial Aid Office, offering registra-tion and general academic advice, helping them feel at home. The writ-ing tutor thus joins a staff of profes-sionals dedicated to easing the transi-tion from a rural to an urban environment and, in terms of the uni-
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versity, join one sort of community to another one governed by and operating under an often unfamiliar set of rules.
The mission of the original Student Orientation Services was “to provide services to Alaska Native students whose goal was to receive a college education” (RSS, par.1). The design of the original program followed the pat-terns of academic programs for Native American students then appearing on college and university campuses na-tionwide. In changing the name, the RSS program also expanded its mis-sion to encompass all UAF students from a rural background. Yet the bulk of students who take advantage of pro-gram academic services and social of-ferings remain Alaska Natives, who currently comprise 9.6% of the UAF student population. In assessing the effectiveness of our on-site RSS tuto-rial service and exploring ways of making our work there more visibly successful, I am thinking of how well we serve our Native students.
My interest in this issue grows from an earlier frustration as a writing center administrator. As a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Minne-sota, I directed the Writing Laboratory for nearly three years. I recall the oc-casions in which Native American stu-dents were referred to us for additional assistance and our continued ineffec-tiveness in providing that help. What appeared at issue then were intercul-tural communication problems. “She’s going to fail this course if she refuses to talk,” said one exasperated tutor as-signed to direct a young Native Ameri-can woman through a tutorial freshman composition course. What did that si-lence mean? Hostility? Lack of un-derstanding? Indifference? At the time the rest of us could only share in her frustration, yet our particular fail-ure to work effectively with that stu-dent represented a larger failure of the Writing Lab to serve our Native American patrons well. We provided assistance but only on our terms.
Ron Scollon and Suzanne B.K. Scollon, both formerly associated with the Alaska Native Language Center at UAF, explore the challenge of intereth-nic communication in a video and ac-companying booklet of the same title. The Scollon project focused on com-munication issues involving English speakers (i.e. mainstream White Americans) and Athabaskans, and they are quick to advise their audience of the diversity encompassed by the term “Native”: “We cannot make generali-zations about ‘Alaska Natives’ and hope that they will be fair to many in-dividuals” (17). At least twenty dis-tinct Native languages are spoken throughout the state, representing at least twenty distinct cultural groups. Still, certain aspects of the Scollon study can serve as a window into the complexities of interethnic communi-cation generally and the strong poten-tial for miscommunication and thus misunderstanding between the English speaker and the Native student, espe-cially in official settings. The Scollons identify the basis for frequent miscom-munication: “The two groups have very different views of the purpose of talking and how their goals should be accomplished through talk” (25). The on-site writing tutor, though a lone, friendly individual, is a feature of an official setting.
As Writing Center administrators and tutors, we focus our energy so fre-quently on promoting our general abil-ity to address all writing and writer concerns that we may miss the particu-lar needs of a group or individual. Al-though my remarks here connect di-rectly to Alaska Natives and by implication to the larger Native Ameri-can community, I see that our experi-ence tutoring in RSS could extend to a full range of intercultural communica-tion dynamics. In developing this es-say, I spoke to the tutors over the past two school years—all graduate teach-ing assistants in the English Depart-ment, several students, and the already identified advisor, Kay Thomas. I sought their perspectives on RSS, the tutoring service, and the value of our work there. After all, the UAF Writing Center is an all-campus service used by faculty, staff, and students from all over the University, including Alaska Native students. Does our outreach service in RSS serve an essential purpose?
UAF has funded a full program for Alaska’s rural students, and that ex-tended support indicates the University position that Rural Student Services fulfills a distinct campus need. Did tu-tors see their clients in RSS as “special needs” students? The tutors shared similar views on the challenges posed to many Native students enrolled at UAF. Students often showed unfamil-iarity with the academic demands of college papers, and language issues that tutors frequently confronted with second language speakers of English appeared in the papers of those RSS students they tutored. Kasey, a tutor during the 2002-3 school year, com-mented on her RSS clients’ struggle with writing for the academic audi-ence: “In rural life they did not need to explain because everyone around them came from the same world.” Yet most of the tutors expressed discomfort with the term “special needs.” I spoke to Kay, herself a UAF graduate who as a student took advantage of the RSS program in its early years of operation, regarding this designation. For many rural Alaskans, according to Kay, “the concept of having community re-sources in health and education is new.” Village residents are still slow to go outside the family for assistance. Because they are not used to commu-nity resources, students are unlikely to take advantage of them on their own. And if showing a piece of writing to an outsider—a tutor—causes anxiety in most of us, at least at first, the resis-tance to doing so will likely be even stronger among Native students. “It’s not our way to ask for help,” said a stu-dent to one of the tutors as way of ex-planation for his and his friends’ reluc-tance to seek the writing advice they needed.
In my discussions with tutors I wanted especially to know what tuto-rial strategies worked with their RSS clients and why. “How was tutoring in RSS distinct from tutoring in the Writ-ing Center?” I asked. “Did you take specific approaches to tutoring to ad-dress this distinct aspect?” Tutors used these questions as a springboard for discussing their experience as RSS tu-tors, their remarks falling into three general categories. I will use these cat-egories as an organizing principle for the larger applicability of the lessons learned through our tutoring at RSS.
The Scollon study noted the differ-ences in pauses between utterances in the English speaker, who generally ex-pects a response from the other speaker in one second, and the Athabaskan, who will frequently let a longer pause occur between utterances. The Scollons also comment on the distinct manner in which the disparate groups will handle communication with an un-familiar person: “If they don’t know each other well, the English speaker will start talking to find out what the Athabaskan is like, while the Athabaskan will wait to see what the other person is like” (26-7). Seven of the eight tutors remarked on the “shy-ness” of the students they helped, and all individually noted that they waited for students to speak before moving to a new question or a different tutorial approach. For Martha, a three-year veteran in RSS, the means of address-ing that shyness lay in stressing the personal over the academic. Having grown up in Alaska and traveled though much of the state, Martha could occasionally link her experience and their background—their family or vil-lage. If the shared knowledge of people and place did not offer a way into discussion, Martha still sought to explore the personal as a potential for writing: “When we start talking about their work, I steer them toward some-thing they know.” For many students it was a revelation that their experience could form the basis or focus for aca-demic papers; they then needed assis-tance—a tutor’s assistance—in con-veying that experience to an audience unfamiliar with their world and worldview.
Listening is a logical extension of this need to be patient. The video In-terethnic Communication features Eliza Jones, an Athabaskan woman, and Ron Scollon roleplaying an en-counter between Native and main-stream individuals in an official set-ting—here a job interview—and then discussing the larger meaning of that meeting. In their review of the inter-view Scollon, evaluating his role as prospective boss, notes his failing in the conversation: “I was interrupting you. How did you feel?” Jones re-plied, “That’s what happens all the time . . . [English speakers] say what they want to say, not hear what you want to say.” The graduate students who volunteer to tutor in RSS presum-ably have a sensitivity to their clients that an office interviewer might not, and certainly the tutors remarked on “listening” as a key to their success. Said Ashley, a 2002-3 tutor, “Most stu-dents [in RSS] seemed shy and uncer-tain, and thus I was always careful to be patient with whatever they said or asked.” In discussing that slowness to speak, Kasey remarked, “I tried not to be aggressive when helping them. I smiled at them and tried to make them feel comfortable. . . . I listened to their frustrations.”
Scollon indicates “how people dis-play or show themselves to others” as another key point of difference be-tween English-speaking and Native cultures. In the Writing Center tutors approach our student-clients cheerfully and confidently, asking questions about the writing need and, possibly, related background details : “Why are you interested in this topic?,” “What are you trying to say to your readers?” Eliza Jones notes that in her culture, “You don’t ask questions. . . . . When Natives meet, they don’t start talking right away. [You] sit down, be quiet, start talking naturally after you’ve been around each other for a while.” RSS advisors had told Ashley and Kasey that they would need to spend time get-ting to know the students, talking and eating with them, before the students would be comfortable bringing their writing to a tutor. Kasey recalled stu-dent laughter at her first effort to eat dried King salmon at a program gath-ering, but she saw the event and that moment as an icebreaker on both sides. Inessa, who tutored both writing and math for two years, remarked on the informal social environment as a factor in her feeling less businesslike in RSS and thus more approachable. In this more relaxed environment Inessa felt able to develop a deeper connection with students as she tutored them mul-tiple times.
3. Encourage
All of the tutors showed reluctance in claiming that their tutoring style dif-fered significantly between their work in the Writing Center and at RSS, yet just as most remarked on the “shyness” of their RSS patrons, most also ac-knowledged that their RSS clients of-ten needed more direct encouragement. Martha spoke about a woman writing a paper for English 111, an argument about “how parents don’t give their children the proper training in eti-quette.” Faced with a draft that was “a series of unsupported assertions,” Martha urged the student to mine her own experience: “I steered her toward using examples from her own child-hood and her own village to back up what she was saying.” Other tutors re-marked on the need to “encourage [stu-dents] on a personal as well as an aca-demic level,” but Martha expressed most succinctly the challenge inherent in tutoring insecure writers of any stamp and one means of meeting that challenge: “I think sometimes we overlook the value and learning poten-tial offered by familiar topics. They can start in the village (or hometown) and springboard into the world.”
Kay Thomas identified a serious challenge the program must face, one impacting the use of all RSS services: “Some say ‘There shouldn’t be an RSS,’ and these remarks come from within the Native community.” The paradox here, as Kay points out, is that at the same time that Alaska and other places in the nation have seen a resur-gence in the tribal sovereignty move-ment, many Native students express a desire for a contemporary identity. In-coming students resist the “special needs” designation, just as the tutors did. For many Native students at UAF, bridging the rural-urban dichotomy en-tails struggling to reconcile the con-flicting pulls of their wish to assimilate and their need to maintain a culturally distinct identity.
That desire for a contemporary iden-tity leads me back to the question that guided my exploration: Does our out-reach service in RSS serve an essential purpose? Do outreach or satellite tu-toring programs achieve something distinct and necessary to the mission of a writing center? In our case we have plenty of Alaska Native students who take advantage of the many resources in the Writing Center—tutors, comput-ers, reference texts, study space. My discussions with the tutors, with Kay Thomas, and with students showed me the value of the tutorial service pro-vided in RSS by the UAF Writing Cen-ter. “I couldn’t have gotten through school without [the RSS writing tu-tor],” a UAF graduate now living in Nome told me over the phone. Our outreach recognizes the reality that stu-dents from all over need and benefit from writing support, and for some, finding that support in the on-site tutor is the key. Students who spend time in RSS can see the tutors helping their friends, they can hear from their friends about the valuable writing guidance those friends have received, and they can try the services them-selves. In so doing, they can learn more about their power to communi-cate and the benefits of tapping com-munity resources. Berda Willson, longtime resident of Nome, wrote of her struggles to obtain a degree and the larger importance of her achievement: “I hope that by fulfilling [my dream] I can motivate others to continue with their educational goals in rural Alaska. I feel that education is the answer for Alaska Natives to meet the challenges of living in two worlds” (113). With writing an essential for all academic and professional success, RSS tutors can play a vital role in guiding their students toward fulfilling their dreams.
I would like to close with another ap-plicable lesson from this experience, one that can apply to writing tutors anywhere who move away from the central Writing Center to apply their skills in a satellite or outreach program dedicated to meeting the writing needs of any specially defined group. At UAF the Writing Center beckons any campus writer, and many heed the call. We collaborate with writers on devel-opmental English paragraphs, literary research papers, biology lab reports, business memos, and doctoral disserta-tions, and though we adapt our strate-gies to each writer and writing need, those who use our Center accept that it is our world as they seek our advice. An outreach program tutor enters an-other world—in RSS, a village substi-tute, a home away from home—and may discover that their usual tutoring strategies and conversational ap-proaches need modification. We have entered their space. Outreach tutoring can thus translate into a greater empa-thy for students—in RSS, in the Writ-ing Center, in their classroom, and be-yond—as tutors bridge their own gaps. Eva Saulitis, a former graduate student, remarked near the end of her fourth and final semester as an RSS writing tutor: “It really is like going into a vil-lage.” By that final term, Eva had be-come that “relaxed, comfortable, fa-miliar individual” that Kay Thomas identified as a successful tutor. Having accepted her as part of their commu-nity, students brought their papers to her, sought her advice, and submitted more thoughtful, polished writing to their instructors all over campus.
Richard Carr University of Alaska Fairbanks Fairbanks, Alaska
1 ‘Alaska Native’ is a regional distinction within the Native American group.
Rural Student Services. “Historical Background.” Rural Students home page. University of Alaska Fairbanks. 3 Apr. 2004 <http:// www.uaf.edu/Rurales/history. html>.
Scollon, Ron, and Eliza Jones, perf. Interethnic Communication. Prod. Irene Reed, Alaska Native Lan-guage Center. Videocassette. U of
Alaska Fairbanks, 1980.
- - -and Suzanne B.K. Scollon. Inter-ethnic Communication. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Language Center, 1980.
Thomas, Kay. Personal interview. 12 July 2004.
- - - . Personal interview. 22 Sept. 2003.
Willson, Berda. “Higher Education in Northwest Alaska: A Dream Realized.” Authentic Alaska: Voices of Its Native Writers. Ed. Susan B. Andrews and John Creed. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1988. 109-13.
The International Writing Centers Assocation’s Web site now includes a way to pay your membership dues and subscribe to the IWCA journals. Visit <http://www.iwcamembers.org>, Memberships and subscriptions can be paid by charge card, and you can indicate on the Web site if you need an invoice. Once you register an existing membership or become a new subscriber, you’ll get e-mail reminders when you need to renew.
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Report from the 4Cs: Familiar faces and a few
For all of my fellow readers who may not have had the opportunity to make it to San Francisco for the 56th annual Conference on College Compo-sition and Communication (March 16-19, 2005), this report is for you. And if you did attend the conference, I hope this is a chance to hear about sessions you may have missed, or a somewhat accurate reminder of ones you saw and heard. As the title “Opening the Golden Gates: Access, Affirmative Action, and Student Success” might suggest, the conference attracted many writing center professionals. With so many big names in composition and rhetoric sometimes giving presenta-tions at the same time, it was quite a task just planning which ones to visit at any given time. My three days (I had to skip Saturday) of scrambling from session to session were filled with excitement, humor, and a few surprises.
My first stop was the Pre-Cs work-shop “The Writing Center: Gateway to Diversity.” This was a massive 46-member workshop that lasted all day. Each 90-minute concurrent session featured two or three roundtables. In the first roundtable Beth Burmester, Beth Godbee, Tanya Cochran, Anthea Andrade, and Corey Green from Geor-gia State University presented analyses of how dialogue and conversation, and logos and images signify writing cen-ters. Burmester talked about the differ-ent names historically given to writing centers, and why her center chose “The Writing Studio” in order to highlight the idea of community, performance, and art. Cochran, drawing on Michael Pemberton’s “The Prison, the Hospital, and the Madhouse” discussed the metaphors we live by in writing cen-ters. And Andrade illustrated the im-portance of scrutinizing our visual logos by showing photographs and asking participants to comment.
In the roundtable I participated in, we blended scholarship and personal experience to illustrate why centers are so important to returning students, and vice versa. From the beginning, Teagan Decker invited an open discus-sion from the audience involving both the challenges the world of academia poses for returning students, such as family and job obligations, perfor-mance and writing anxiety, as well as the resources returning students bring like maturity and lived experience. The conversational nature of the roundtable allowed for an open (sometimes quite confessional) exploration of what it means to, in my case, face the chal-lenges of a returning student, or in Jenny Halpin and Decker’s case, to see the ups and downs of working with and learning from returning students, some of whom come from disenfranchised or alternative backgrounds. Halpin talked about her experience, as a traditional student/tutor working with more ma-ture students. She talked of having the patience and listening skills requisite to working with returning students who often use narrative accounts as they struggle to try and position themselves in academic discourse (and amongst sometimes much younger peers). In a surprising, provocative testimonial, un-beknownst to both my colleagues (though they knew full well the subject matter), I punctuated the alternative tone of our presentation when I began, “I am a PhD student, the principle in-vestigator in an ongoing Human Sub-jects Division approved research study on peer tutor training, a classroom composition instructor, and the found-ing director of a writing center. But nine years ago, I was a high school drop-out sitting in jail for distribution of marijuana.” With this last line I watched the eyes in the room, includ-ing my fellow presenters, grow large and intently focused as I continued to relate my personal transition from the subterranean world I knew to the aca-demic one I now inhabit. I talked about anxieties, but also teachers who were patient enough to dispel them at least enough for me to continue through, teachers who gave me the skills and knowledge I needed to continue on.
The second day of the conference provided, perhaps, the most memo-rable presentations, ones that I feel honored to represent here. Harvey Kail, Kory Ching, and Neil Lerner’s panel offered some compelling looks back at writing center history and ge-nealogy. Kail offered his intimations of training under Kenneth Bruffee at the Brooklyn College Summer Institute. Kail provided an entertaining, and sur-prising, illustration of what it was like to work one-to-one with one of writing center’s biggest names via a survey of fourteen of the original participants, and his own personal testimony. Kail related how directive Bruffee was while tutoring, how Bruffee made them write three paragraph essays with a proposition and two reasons. Kail confesses, “We hated it,” and how Bruffee was “not interested in our own voices.” Kail went on to relate how Bruffee’s insistence that the partici-pants write “highly structured” de-scriptive outlines, descriptions of the functions of essay parts, and reviews of peer reviews left he and his fellow par-ticipants “muttering under our breaths” and left Kail asking “who does this guy think he is?” For Kail, Bruffee’s idea of “consensus” seemed to mean every-body had to concede to what he said.
But Kail also went on to talk of how important the Institute was to his, and his fellows,” development as teachers/ learners. He talked about how he and his fellows were “taking big risks as writers and readers” but finding the risks rewarding. The Institute provided bearings, the “language to think, talk in our discourse community,” and how Bruffee’s theory of collaborative learn-ing “reoriented our worlds.” Kail said, “We were playing the roles of students as we were students ourselves,” learn-ing to be “students as active partici-pants in their own educations.”
A fellow member of the Institute, John Trimbur, synchronistically joined the discussion about half way through and, upon invitation, proceeded to add his own recollections. The dialogue of words that flew through the air in it-self, was worth the trip. Trimbur dis-cussed their treatment of the five para-graph essay, how it decontextualized student writing, and how he saw stu-dents reacting to it before his experi-ence with the Institute, before he “knew how to teach writing.” Trimbur talked about learning the false distinc-tion between what students were being asked to write about in the classroom versus the genres of the real world. He said that he “learned more about life in groups,” and how the Institute “gave me more patience” in dealing with his own and other’s writing processes. Kail chimed in with his belief that the Institute placed participants in Vygotsky’s zones of proximal devel-opment in which Bruffee provided “tasks harder than we could do on our own.” Trimbur concluded by intimat-ing how Bruffee pressured the partici-pants to rethink what authority is, how to be a peer with students, the “divesti-ture of authority.” Trimbur said, “Ken put so much pressure on us. [He was] a very strong teacher. [It] doesn’t look like that, but it worked that way.” And Kail concluded by speaking also of au-thority and intimacy: how these concepts are not always easy to coordinate, how despite some failures the participants explored “how to build community, and how to be a member of the community,” how a “student culture” is constructed by a community of peers.
Next, Kory Ching discussed the connection between collaborative learning and literary societies in writing groups. Drawing primarily on the work of Anne Ruggles Gere, Ching related how far back formal peer response really goes, at least to A.A. Lord in 1880.
Finally, Neal Lerner discussed how writing labs/centers developed in an-swer to periodic surges in incoming student populations. Lerner explained how in the 20s and 30s mass waves of incoming college students urged pleas for more personal instruction, which also brought along logistical chal-lenges. By the 30s, Lerner reported, writing labs had cropped up to help re-lieve the burden of overloaded teach-ers. Lerner related how in the late 60s and into the 70s more waves of incom-ing students, due to open admissions, demanded still more focus on student-centered approaches advocated by such teacher/scholars as Peter Elbow and Donald Murray. Lerner concluded by juxtaposing Stephen North’s 1984 call for writing center independence with the idea of writing center theory and practice melding with classroom com-position practices, calling for class-rooms as “experimental sites” that combine performative happenings with critical understanding.
The next presentation showcased the impressive non-profit community tu-toring program David Eggers founded. Eggers presented his San Francisco-based project as a “bridge between the community and kids who need atten-tion with their writing.” Chuckles filled the room as Eggers talked about the Pirate Supply Store that acts as a curious, creative front for the free community drop-in tutoring center.
Eggers and his associates, Ninive Clements Calegari, and a tutor named Aaron, outlined the rather broad scope of the work their project offers the community: tutoring diverse student populations one-to-one; field trips (in-cluding story telling, and making their own books); sending tutors into class-rooms to assist and guide students in their projects; workshops that provide individualized attention; special events (see their website at <www. 826valencia.org>); and, of course, “affordably-priced pirate supplies.” Eggers related how, with over 600 vol-unteer tutors, they are now sending tu-tors into schools and classrooms, and establishing satellites in New York City and Seattle. He also talked of stu-dent publications and his project’s link to McSweeney Publishers. Students have a chance to publish their work, quarterly, in collections with titles like Talking Back: What Students Wish Their Teachers Knew. Aaron gave some logistical details involving the project. Since August of 2004, 285 projects have been initiated or com-pleted involving: college entrance preparation; poetry; playwritings; el-ementary, middle, and high school out-reach programs. Two specific projects Aaron pointed to included an outreach program to a middle school in which all 6th through 8th-grade classes had in-class tutors (which resulted in double-high API test scores), and a newspaper in which the “students decide what the news is.”
Conclusively, Eggers poignantly de-scribed his own motives for the project, and the idea of “creative ver-sus practical” in writing. As a well-known, prolific author of works in-cluding A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, and contributions to The New Yorker, Eggers intimated his strong belief that students need to be interested and excited about writing and the writing process. He discussed how teachers all too often “set the no-tion of what an expository paper is” paralyzing students “before they even get started.” He said “they [students] freeze up” and say “so screw it.” In contrast, he said, “the first couple of drafts, I let them go crazy, no punctua-tion, getting blood on the paper.” He believes in putting students through the publishing process, writing six to seven drafts back and forth. Eggers said he tells them you “gotta find a way to make it interesting to you.” Eggers wrapped up by talking of his old idea that “writers need to be selfish with their writing,” and how the “huge bridge of understanding between stu-dents and tutors” is a testament to how he views writing now.
In the first of two important panels the next day, Melissa Ianetta, Susan Pagnac, and Leigh Ryan, offered re-search and theory on issues of compo-sition teachers trained in writing cen-ters, and critical thinking. Ianetta’s presentation showcased a national and local study involving TAs trained in writing centers before they teach in composition classrooms, aiming to go beyond what Ianetta described as the usual testimonial-based accounts of the benefits. In a 13-question survey dis-tributed to 25 writing programs across the country, Ianetta found that teach-ers, writing center directors, and writ-ing program administrators reached an overwhelming positive consensus in their responses to center-trained teach-ers. The answers to the 13 questions from respondents suggested what, spe-cifically, center-trained teachers were better prepared for, including being better prepared to teach, to discuss writing, to grade student essays, to of-fer more useful feedback to student writers, and to understand the writing process. Ianetta concluded by urging all writing professionals to at least try out, and to exploit this valuable resource for teacher training.
Pagnac offered a nice counterpoint to Ianetta’s research. Pagnac intimated her own perceptions of the transition from tutoring one-to-one to teaching in the classroom as problematic. Pagnac voiced how she was lured into an au-thoritative Freirean banking style of teaching. She said she “slipped into lecturing as easy as slipping into a Lazy-Boy chair,” boring her students and boring herself. She felt that this was the identity she was creating for herself. Then she realized, by closely watching the model of a fellow teacher she admired, that there were alterna-tives to lecturing. She began to learn that she could balance one-to-one as-pects of teaching with “taking care of business” in the writing classroom. She concluded by suggesting that future teachers sometimes need more than tu-toring experience for the multiple pedagogical situations that arise in the classroom.
Finally, Ryan reported on her discus-sions with an economics professor who teaches critical thinking along with subject matter in a very student-centered fashion. Ryan related how he took his students’ blue book exams, redistributed them amongst the class, and then had the students write five-page critical essays on their peers’ ex-ams. In addition, Ryan claimed that through his dialogic teaching style, he helped students come to their own un-derstandings; participate in the critiqu-ing process; develop their own per-spectives and understandings of complex problems, develop indepen-dence; share experience and research, and learn “new lines of inquiry.” Ryan went on to say that these faculty mem-ber used open-ended questions and played on the idea of the devil’s advo-cate to push critical thinking. She quoted him as saying, “a teaching moment may steal the moment from the student.”
In another panel Deborah Depiero and Daiva Markelis discussed center location and advertising. Depiero ar-gued “space does matter” and “you need the right space for the right tutor-ing.” Depiero illustrated how her cen-ter went from an isolated campus loca-tion to a much more central one in the center of campus. Her new center was fresh and clean, with new carpet, paint, furniture, and carefully chosen art hung on the walls. But Depiero also re-lated how in their new location her tu-tors felt a sense of dislocation, a loss of independence, and a longing for their old space. Depiero talked about how things are gradually changing now, though, as new tutors come in and the older tutors are adjusting and adapting to their new surroundings. Depiero concluded by suggesting that the “cross-pollination” that occurs when centers take on central locales can be very important, but to be wary of the period of adjustment that such a move will inevitably entail.
Markelis talked about another type of move involving considerations of center image. She played show-and-tell as she illustrated the public relations considerations her center made while trying to come up with a visual logo. She began by claiming that “students are immersed in a popular culture that privileges the visual.” She went on to talk of the importance of “priming” in advertising, that people don’t necessar-ily remember explicit details but im-plicit memory triggers. This is why, Markelis suggested, advertisers use sex so much in advertising. Markelis went on to show a series of visual logos they had tried at their center with varying success. The first one was of Mae West peeking seductively from her wide-brimmed hat and uttering “Why don’t you come up and see us some time?” Markelis said that while the faculty and instructors loved it, when she polled a group of 14 students, only 3 knew who she was. “They wondered who this old lady was,” Markelis joked. After discussing three other cre-ative, but ultimately unsupportable logos, Markelis described the most successful flyer. The winner was a simple picture of a puppy. Markelis claimed that everyone could relate somehow to the puppy and that dogs are more appealing to consumers than cats, and even sex. Markelis concluded by urging the importance of scrutiniz-ing our visual logos so that we send out the right image and message about our centers.
Looking back, the presentations we saw and heard in San Francisco were both memorable and eye-opening. We heard testimony from revered center scholars and practitioners that demystified certain presumptions of what it means to tutor, teach, and learn. Who would have thought that Kenneth Bruffee was somewhat of an authoritarian, highly directive teacher, or that there was a time when John Trimbur didn’t know how to teach writing? Or how much fun tutoring programs can be if we pay attention to image and creativity, as in Eggers’ Pirate Supply Storefront to his community tutoring program. Or how in a discipline such as economics, student-centered teaching methods can be employed with style. I left for Seattle full of ideas and ready and willing to apply what we learned. I hope these remembrances offer some useful suggestions to fellow readers as well.
Steven J. Corbett University of Washington Seattle, WA
Many students and professionals, as they prepare to enter or change posi-tions in the workforce, find themselves at a loss as to how to put their skills, qualities, and work experience into concise written formats such as re-sumes and cover letters. Often, the most promising job opportunities ap-pear suddenly and from unexpected sources, so we feel rushed to create or modify and submit our resumes before hiring deadlines expire. In doing so, we slap “writing tutor” under the past work experience section of our re-sumes and leave it at that. Unfortu-nately, in leaving our resumes that way, we do ourselves a great disser-vice. What many of us who do writing center work, particularly student tutors, don’t think about intentionally enough is the range of skills we develop, the personal qualities we foster, and the applicable experience we gain as a re-sult of our participation in writing cen-ter work. The broad range of relevant skills writing center work provides are the same skills employers seek, no matter what the profession.
When thinking about writing center experiences and how they might apply to other careers, we tend, too often, to think only of the obvious: editing, publishing, proofreading, marketing, teaching. But when examined in some detail, what we learn as writing center tutors and professionals provides a wealth of experience for nearly any profession. From law enforcement and the legal profession to politics, cus-tomer service, technology, and man-agement, employers are looking for employees who can work indepen-dently, communicate clearly, think critically, and assess social and profes-sional situations and respond appropri-ately. Whether we are readily aware of it or not, these are all things we, as writing center tutors and professionals, do on a regular basis. The key to get-ting what we have to offer on our re-sumes and into the interview process in ways that best demonstrate what an as-set we will be to potential employers is placing less emphasis on our duties and what we do, and focusing more on the skills and qualities we develop as a result of our tutoring experience. In other words, we need to focus on what we learn from writing center work and how it relates to the job we seek. What follows is a partial list of suggestions for how those involved in writing cen-ter work might present their experi-ences on a resume.
Communication
Interpersonal
Group/Mass
• Promoting the writing center in several different media
documents and to provide feedback on student writing
The tricky part about putting these experiences into words when it’s time to apply for a specific job is that it can be tough, on a moment’s notice, to re-member exactly what we learned and how we learned it. Therefore, I offer a few suggestions for how to make the process easier:
likely to ask in an interview. Have in mind, or even in your notes, a list of specific examples you can mention in the interview that demonstrate the skills and qualities you list on your resume. For example, if you are applying for a position as an EMT, firefighter, police officer, or manager, and you list the ability to effectively diffuse emotionally charged situations and communicate with reluctant participants, be prepared to talk about a particular tutoring situation in which you helped a writer who resented being sent to the writing center to see the benefits of receiving tutoring.
Writing center work is, of course,
worthwhile and gratifying in and of it
self, but we sell ourselves short if we
don’t keep in mind how it benefits not
only our tutees’ present and future pro
fessional lives, but also our own.
Lisa Whalen Concordia University St. Paul, MN whalen@csp.edu
(continued from page 13) Harcourt-Brace Guide to Peer Tutoring. Ed. Toni-Lee Capossela. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1998. 127-138.
McAndrew, Donald A., and Thomas J. Reigstad. Tutoring Writing: A Practical Guide for Conferences. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook Publish-ers, 2001.
Spear, Karen. Sharing Writing: Peer Response Groups in English Classes. Portsmouth: Boynton/Cook Publishers, 1988.
’
Oh no. Not again. I see her name on the schedule, lay my head on my hands, and pray that she won’t show up. I don’t want to tutor her because, every time I talk to her, I feel like nothing is getting through. She contin-ues to insist that I fix her writing prob-lems for her. What can I do to help her learn? I don’t want to tutor someone who seems to refuse to progress.
At the risk of sounding callous, we confess that this is the way some of us thought when tutoring ESL students, who probably did not realize that they were producing this effect. We some-times confused an L2 writer’s insecu-rity with an unwillingness to learn. We felt as though ESL students came to us so that we would write their papers for them. We told ourselves that our thirty-minute writing tutorials were too short to allow us to help ESL learners im-prove their writing. Their problems were huge, and we did not enjoy work-ing with them. But L2 students kept showing up on our doorstep, and we could respond in one of two ways. We could dread each ESL visit and suffer through every appointment, or we could design an approach to the prob-lem. Facing the problem was not easy but was more tolerable than failing to help L2 students progress. So, we de-cided to move beyond our negative perceptions of “ESL-ing.”
As we began working in earnest with L2 students, we noticed that many are shy in manner and uncertain about En-glish. They struggle with sentence structure, punctuation, and verb conju-gation. Their meaning may be fairly clear, but the idioms, common speech, cultural differences, and translation of
words interfere with its expression. We found that showing an interest—asking them about their native tongue, the meanings of their words, how to spell them, or how sentences are structured in their language—is the best way to reach these students. For instance, a young Vietnamese man who frequents our Center has told us that verb tenses and plural nouns are contextual, and articles absent, in his native dialect. He developed confidence in his ability to communicate by talking to us about Vietnamese conventions, and, along the way, he came to a better under-standing of English grammar. It seems that ESL learners need confidence in their abilities to understand assign-ments, content, and English writing conventions.
Sometimes, though, confidence and grammar are not huge issues for L2 writers; instead, phrasing and transla-tion stand out as major problems. ESL learners might be unaware of cultural idioms, confused about what phrases are usable in our society, and misin-formed about our culture—and their writing reflects those things. Such stu-dents sometimes tell us that they write in their native languages with the in-tent of translating into English after the fact. Most of us empathize. Having been students in foreign language classes, several of us have experi-mented with this method of approach-ing coursework, and we know from ex-perience that it just doesn’t work. But when we tried to explain our reserva-tions about after-the-fact translation to ESL writers, we sometimes made them feel dumb for trying it. At that point, some of them began to resist our help, and they put up their guard.
So, we asked ourselves: How could we best approach wary L2 students, those who were afraid of asking for help or of being viewed as dumb? We discovered that it’s important to put ESL students at ease while letting them know they are going to be responsible for writing their own papers, i.e., put-ting their own ideas into words. One way we do this is by inviting students to participate in a long-term tutoring relationship with us. We try to remem-ber, “No one can learn to write in half an hour. If we are to offer encourage-ment and information, that means we need to ask the student to come back to see us over and over again.” The record shows that scheduling multiple, sometimes many, sessions with an ESL writer is probably the only way to achieve lasting L2 success.
Okay, let’s say that an ESL learner has agreed to participate in long-term tutoring with us, has a paper due a week from Friday, and has written a draft for us to review. We devote the early session to a general reading of the paper and discussion of the student’s goals. We check the student’s written argument or explanation for logic and forcefulness. The student’s grammar might not be touched until a subsequent session, and we keep in mind that the task of going line by line through grammatical errors is some-times arduous. After making some ini-tial suggestions for improving an es-say, we ask L2 writers to go ahead and incorporate the corrections so as to keep the paper from becoming too muddled with further suggestions. This allows L2 students to digest one set of suggestions at each session.
Another thing we do is to encourage our long-term ESL tutees to write about their own cultures. After all, L2 students who have just moved to America often find it difficult to ad-just. Take the example of a young woman from Pakistan who regularly visits our Center. She moved to America with courage to learn but little training in English. After writing some failed papers, she came to us discour-aged and bitter. We engaged her in a long-term tutoring relationship and pushed her to compose a paper about her homeland. She returned with a pa-per detailing the dance customs of her country. Although filled with gram-matical and spelling errors, the paper was informative and fun to read. The best part was that she was happy and enthusiastic about describing her culture’s dance rituals. This woman, who once came to the Center rushed and disinterested in her papers, has changed her negative attitude toward English. She found that, by writing about a subject she knows, she could have fun and her papers would turn out better.
Besides encouraging ESL learners to write about what they know, we tutors also tried the tactic of “acting igno-rant” of what they are trying to say. This tactic is faithful to the goal of helping L2 students learn the conven-tions that make English understandable to a wide audience of readers. Telling an ESL writer, “I don’t understand the point of this part of your paper; please explain it to me,” makes that student confront the problem verbally, talk through the confusion, in order to move on. We found that getting ESL writers to talk as much as possible is always good. The more they talk, the better sense we have of what they are trying to say, and the greater facility they gain with the language. For ESL students who find the process difficult due to a lack of basic verbal skills, this tactic encourages them to talk with us about their papers for a while and makes them explain clearly what they are trying to relate. In this way, we get L2 learners to connect mental ideas with the spoken English word and then transfer their best verbal efforts onto the page. This is not always an easy way to go, as we might have to “force” students to face their insecurities and failings multiple times, but it helps them connect thoughts, words, and writing, and learn that the cost of doing so isn’t as high as they may have imagined.
We have discovered, then, that work-ing with L2 learners requires some strategic understanding on our part. First, we practice patience. We realize that no magic pill exists to help some-one learn a new language. We express an interest in the native tongue of our ESL students. We don’t chide them for making literal translations of idiomatic phrases. Instead, we put them at ease, and urge them to participate in long term tutoring by offering to assist them with their next assignment. We stress their potential for improvement, and remind them that true progress will come only after multiple sessions. Then, we schedule time with them early enough to work through the writ-ing cycle in such a way that there is some advancement for them to notice. We do our best to see that L2 students clearly understand their assignments. Then, we work through the assignment with them verbally, showing encour-agement when ideas are properly com-municated and gentle correction where required. We avoid overwhelming ESL writers, limiting our suggestions to a manageable number per session. We recommend that they improve their pa-pers by writing about what they know. When they bring an essay draft, we ask them to read it aloud. Verbalization makes it easier to point out phrases that simply don’t sound right. And finally, if there just isn’t enough time to make solid gains, we refuse to give up. Using these techniques has helped us to change ESL writing sessions from be-ing awkward and unproductive to pleasant and constructive.
Matthew Adams, Jason Breneman,
Tracee Litchfield, Judy McDaniel,
Steve Mosca, Kathleen Scheaffer,
Megan Schlicht, Mary Jo Sci, and
Eric Verhine
Armstrong Atlantic State University
Savannah, GA
When I began my first tutoring ses-sion, I was more than a little scared. You see, as a writing fellow at Penn State Berks, tutors work a little differ-ently than Writing Center tutors. I was used to working with one student at a time as writing center tutors do, but our writing fellows work during regu-lar class time with groups of three or four students, encouraging the students to give one another suggestions for their papers. Writing center tutors ask the writer questions and encourage the writer to give feedback; in that situa-tion, the tutor and writer often talk the same amount of time. In our writing groups, though, the people who talk the most are the group members them-selves, formulating suggestions and giving ideas to improve the writer’s paper. Our goal is to improve upon the writing skills of each student by having them work with one another and to help them learn how to revise papers. Being a classroom-based Writing Fel-low tutor has been a learning experi-ence for me, and I want to explain the process in hopes that other tutors will implement this helpful strategy in their tutoring sessions.
For the first two weeks of class this fall, all eleven newly selected writing fellows, including me, met to learn the job and function of the writing fellows. In these classes, we read articles about peer tutoring and discussed what kinds of questions we would ask the students to get them to participate in our discus-sion. We even enacted two practice writing group situations. In the first situation, our professor played the part of the writing fellow to help us under-stand what kinds of questions we could ask to facilitate group discussion. In the second situation, our professor stood back, interjecting thoughts when she felt we needed direction but basi-cally letting us take the reins while one person was acting as writing fellow and the others as discussion group members. From this training, we went into the classroom, learning as we worked directly with the students.
As a writing fellow, I work with de-velopmental writing students, using the strategies we learned during our train-ing. The process for our group work is as follows: The writer reads his or her paper to the group while the group fol-lows along, marking problem areas or sections that could use improvement. When the writer has finished, each group member takes a turn pointing out a specific sentence or idea that re-ally supported the writer’s argument or added to the paper, then pointing to a specific idea that could be improved.
The key job of the writing fellow is to facilitate conversation. For example, many developmental English students are unwilling to critique another’s pa-per, so the writing fellow needs to en-courage the students to talk to each other. In one case, when asked to point out something he really liked in an-other student’s piece, one of my group members said, “I liked the whole thing.” I pressed a little, asking if there was something in particular that he re-ally thought was effective, and he changed his statement to, “The intro-duction was good.” This still didn’t re-ally help the writer, so I asked what he thought was “good” about the intro-duction. This question and answer ac-tually developed into a real conversa-tion—the student I asked about the in-troduction elaborated on his comment. He began to ask the writer questions about the rest of her piece and how it related to the introduction, and all the group members began to have a con-versation about the piece without my direction.
Another part of the writing fellow’s job is to try to encourage the group to concentrate on “higher-order concerns” as they respond to each other’s papers. As defined by Donald McAndrew and Thomas Reigstad, authors of Tutoring Writing, higher-order concerns are ideas, arguments, and clarity of the pa-per. “Lower-order concerns” are de-fined as surface issues such as spelling or awkward-sounding sentences (56). According to Karen Spear, students sometimes focus on lower-order con-cerns because these concerns are safer than higher-order concerns. Therefore, a writing fellow must ask questions about certain paragraphs or sections of the paper, drawing the group members’ attention away from the surface errors and into the deeper issues, such as or-ganization and supporting arguments. In my group Lyle, in particular, always focuses on word repetition when giv-ing comments because he feels safe avoiding bigger issues. I try to draw Lyle out by asking him questions about a paragraph, such as “Do you think this paragraph supports Abbie’s main argu-ment?” When he answers, I press him to tell me how or to describe the spe-cific focus of the paragraph. I have also asked him, “Is the organization of this paper effective? If not, how would you change it? If so, why is it effec-tive?” I find that, at times, it is difficult to get him to speak on these topics, but through gentle encouragement (and now that he has come to trust the group), he opens up more. As a result, Lyle has discovered that he can offer valuable suggestions to his group members.
Like a writing center tutor, the writing fellow is not the teacher or editor.
writing fellows have to resist simply tak-ing students’ papers and editing them, re-wording awkward sentences, correcting grammatical errors, and taking over own-ership of the papers. Writing fellows help the group give each other suggestions and, even then, the suggestions given by the group do not need to be accepted by the writer.
Being a writing fellow is a “two-way street,” as Kenneth Bruffee points out in his article “Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conver-sation of Mankind.’” He says that stu-dents’ writing improves with the tutors’ help and tutors’ work improves as a result of the action of tutoring itself. This is com-pletely true—while I hope the students are learning from each other and me, I know I’m learning from them at the same time. My group members have taught me that not everyone thinks alike, but that each person’s ideas have value. They have taught me about topics from being an EMT who deals with death on a daily basis to being a caddy at a golf course. When we read John Updike’s short story, “A & P,” I was astounded at the depth at which my students approached the reading. They came into that session saying, “I have no idea what this story is about,” but left much more confident and with ideas about how to make changes to their papers. Through conversation, my group has helped one another formulate ideas to improve their writing, and I have learned that all ideas are valuable to the writing process.
Our peer groups have helped developmental writing students expand on ideas and improve their writing skills while also helping the tutor have a more open mind to differences in writers’ skills. For these reasons, writing center directors and tutors might consider trying this kind of classroom-based group tutoring.
Laura Lawfer Penn State Berks Reading, PA
Works Cited
Bruffee, Kenneth. “Peer Tutoring and the ‘Conversation of Mankind.’” The
(continued on page 10)
What do we tell peer tutors as they begin their work in our writing centers? What tone do we wish to set? What foundational principles do we want to impart? The letter that follows is my attempt to capture the essentials that make up the culture of my college’s Writing Lab. If you were to write such a letter yourselves, you might see it as an introduction for a tutor training manual or simply as a means of wel-coming new tutors to your center or lab. But such a letter does more than merely welcome folks aboard. It gives you an opportunity to articulate clearly some key principles and practices that underline writing center work, such as the need to trust the writer (and be trusted by the writer) and the need to read a paper through holistically before we separate it into its parts.
(The following letter was drafted during the 2004 Summer Institute for Writing Center Directors and Professionals at Clark University in Worcester, MA I’d like to thank Nancy Johnson Squair and Janet Swenson, who, as members of my writing group, offered supportive and collegial advice throughout the drafting process.)
Thank you for agreeing to join the Writing Lab staff. I believe that you will find the work truly enjoyable and empowering, for even as you enable others by assisting them with their writing, you stand to gain in big ways yourselves: You are likely to acquire greater confidence in your work and in yourself generally, develop a vocabu-lary with which to talk about writing and thereby become more able to im-prove your own writing as well as that of others, and know that your actions may have made a positive difference in the life of another.
The Writing Lab serves all writers, from novice to experienced, from na-tive speakers of English to second lan-guage users. We assist writers regard-less of the form or purpose of the writing. We serve both the college and the larger community which the col-lege itself serves.
Aside from welcoming you, I wanted to use this letter to outline some basic principles that underlie the work that you will be doing in the Writing Lab. I like to distinguish these principles from actual tutoring practice, which I’ll talk about shortly. In a nutshell, these principles support, and perhaps, generate, the acceptable tutoring prac-tice that I hope you will by and large follow (recognizing, however, that ev-ery tutoring session is distinctly differ-ent from another). Here then is a list of fundamental principles:
• Writers, as serious communicators, respect the effort of the reader to respond to the written work.
I know that many of these principles appear terribly abstract (you might say, I’m a tutor; let’s get to the writing al-ready). But in listing these principles I wanted to assure you that this Writing Lab has certain integrity. It has a de-tectable wholeness and coherence, with each of its parts (that’s you and me) working together for a common pur-pose. We work in an open and frank environment, in which concerns can be shared safely and productively. In ad-dition, I want to impress upon you that the Writing Lab must maintain a cul-ture of respect if it is to carry out its mission.
I also want to assure you that you will not be asked to “tutor by the script” in the Writing Lab. You will not be asked, in other words, to follow one set of practices for all tutoring situations. Rather, I expect you to ad-just to each situation and to be sensi-tive to the intentions (as you discern them) of the writer. Nevertheless, the many tutors who have worked in the Lab have found it useful to follow cer-tain practices in helping writers. What follows is a list of such practices. We will spend a good deal of time talking about, and reflecting upon, these prac-tices, so please don’t worry if they seem rather overwhelming early on.
• Reading the instructions thoroughly, interpreting and reviewing the assignment, and asking students to explain what the assignment calls for and what they want to get out of the tutoring session
Under certain circumstances, you may as a tutor feel tempted to respond to a paper as you read it (or as the writer reads it), rather than waiting un-til the end before responding. I have found it very useful to withhold ex-pressing judgments until I’ve read the entire work. Why? Some writers need time and space to discover their mean-ing; indeed, some writers intentionally withhold from the reader what their in-tentions are. Expressing premature judgment runs the risk of damaging the trust that I mention above and that forms the cornerstone of the tutor/writ-ing relationship. Hear the writer out.
I know that as a peer tutor you may feel conflicted about your position. Are you a student, with much to learn
| about writing? Or are you somehow | right questions in order to evaluate a |
| separate from the students who come | piece of work and to point the writer in |
| to seek your help, having achieved an | the proper direction for improvement. |
| expertise when evaluating writing? I | But tutors sometimes need to be led by |
| have no doubt that you have much to | their hearts as well (we know language |
| offer student writers based on your ex- | can lead us in that way). I guess what |
| perience and insights. And certainly I | I’m trying to say is this: tutoring |
| would want you to appear confident | brings all of you into play, heart and |
| when student writers come to seek | head. And it leads you to trust, and be |
| your help. But I also want to assure | trusted by, others. In a time when too |
| you that on no occasion am I expecting | much distrust defines our world, this |
| you to know everything about tutoring | work, this vocation (as we used to call |
| or about assessing writing, nor do I | it—a calling and a dedication of a self |
| want you to send writers the message | to task), represents one way to repair |
| that you have all knowledge at your | the world. In Judaic tradition—the tra |
| command—because in fact none of us | dition in which I was raised—we call |
| does. If, during certain tutoring ses | this effort (in Hebrew) “tikkun olam,” |
| sions, you are unable to answer a | to heal the world. I wish you all the |
| writer’s questions or if you are having | best on this journey of discovery and |
| difficulty assessing a piece of writing, | renewal. |
| please be honest with the writer and | |
| feel free to seek the help of others in | Gratefully, |
| the Lab or consult the various hand- | Howard Tinberg |
| books available in the Lab’s library. | Bristol Community College |
| There is no shame admitting the limits | Fall River, MA |
| of one’s knowledge. In fact, the truly | |
| knowledgeable are the first to ac | |
| knowledge their own limitations (if I | |
| sound like a teacher here, forgive me, | |
| but I really believe it). | |
| The Value of Your Work I’d like to suggest that your work in | IWCA Summer |
| the Writing Lab will have remarkable value both for yourself and for others. | Institute for Writing |
| I’ve tutored in the Lab for over a de- | Center Directors |
| cade now. I can say without hesitation that I have found the experience | and Professionals |
| among the most rewarding that I’ve | |
| had professionally. Why? I believe | As of April 15 there were still |
| that the relationship between writer | some slots left for the IWCA |
| and tutor is profoundly meaningful. If | Summer Institute for Writing |
| you think about it, what could be more | Center Directors and Profession- |
| powerfully generous than the act of | als. If you would like more infor |
| one person listening to and reading at | mation, visit the Web site: <http:// |
| tentively (without distraction, without | www.writing.ku.edu/SI05/>. |
| multi-tasking) the writing of another— | |
| someone whom the tutor is likely not | |
| to know? What could be more poi | |
| gnant than a tutor feeling moved (in | |
| some cases, almost to tears—it’s hap | |
| pened to me) by the words of another? | |
| I know that in staff meetings and in | |
| workshops, you are likely to hear a lot | |
| about reading critically, asking the |
June 16-19, 2005: European Writing Centers Association,October 19-23, 2005: International Writing Centers in Halkidiki, Greece. Association, in Minneapolis, MN. Contact: Conference Web site: <http:// Contact: Frankie Condon, e-mail: fvcondon ewca.sabanciuniv.edu/ewca2005/>. @stcloudstate.edu. Conference Web site: <http:// writingcenters.org/2005/index.html>.
Please note the change of date for the European originally scheduled for June 10-12, 2005. The conference date Writing Centers Association conference. It was has been changed to June 16-19.
| The East Central Writing Centers Association | University and to Scott Peters of Purdue University. The out |
| (ECWCA) announced its annual awards on March 30. | standing tutor award is given for innovative and quality tutor- |
| Selected for oustanding tutor was Korinne Milks for | ing, and the oustanding leader award is based on overall ex- |
| Central Michigan University. The outstanding leader | cellence in performance in various administrative functions. |
| award went to Meghan Monroe also of Central Michigan | Award recipients receive a certificate, a cash reward, and a |
| waiver to the upcoming ECWCA conference. |
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Muriel Harris, editor Department of English Purdue University 500 Oval Drive West Lafayette, IN 47907-2038
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