Writing Centers are fairly recent in the world of academia, but are quickly transforming how we think about writing. I work at the writing center at my college as a tutor, but I am more than a "tutor". Tutorials at a writing center don't consist of silent proofreading, lists of criticisms, nor lectures on format. Rather, tutorials are conversations. We rid ourselves of the power dynamic between tutor and tutee and fill our hour appointment with self-reflection and collaboration.
Though our education system leans towards the idea of natural writers and standardized creativity, this simply is not a reality. Writing is a valued skill that people believe is only graced upon the few. Many people see writers as artists who can perfectly paint the ideas in their mind using words. Students often approach paper writing with learned helplessness, devalued from years of an education system that never taught writing. Most of the time, professors encourage students to "fix their paper", but without any direction of how to fix their writing process. Writing centers inherently combat these ideas, emphasizing the amount of work that goes into becoming a strong writer and a creative process that is rooted in the individual. The often repeated phrase is "Here at the writing center we do not care about the paper. We care about the writer. And, it is by happy coincidence that in improving the writer, the paper improves too."
The act of writing is not always passionate fervor and self-expression, but sometimes calculated and mathematical. When we look at the writing process itself--even when written in spontaneous inspiration--it follows a type of structure, almost formulaic. And, like math, writing too requires a mastery of the formula and all its applications.
My job here is to analyze the tutees and their use of that formula. How do they present their argument? How do their sentences relate to their claim? How do their sentences relate to each other? How do their ideas not only develop but also coexist? How much deeper can they go? And from there, I encourage the process of writing. With a Socratic edge that is terribly annoying to most of the students who come in, we never tell but always ask. Our questions should deepen their reflections on their own writing and bring them to their own answers. Sometimes I don't even read the paper at all, but engage in discussion purely in theory to help them come to know their writing better.
In return for driving students insane and earning below minimum wage, my own writing has improved drastically. For over 8 hours a week, I read and analyze other people's writing and talk with them about their ideas. In turn, when I look at my own writing I can have my own tutorial. I can be both author and audience, engaging in my own private discussion to reflect critically and systematically on my work.
The picture above is hanging in the center where I work and I think it emphasizes what we do at the writing center. Writing sucks; difficult and full of obstacles, it often appears chaotic and infinitely free-spirited. But, when you look closely and collaborate, you find that there's a schema that uniformly ebbs and flows throughout all writing.
Here's a picture of tired me at work:
And my other work space that I work at on Sunday nights with multicultural students. (which is a post for another day!)
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