Keeping the Flame

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Keeping the Flame

I don’t know what the energy levels are like where you are but, from where I sit at a computer tucked in the back of the WC, things feel like pell-mell frenzy meets the very last ions of the battery reserves. If we’re anything like our cellphones—and, given how much those devices have become extensions of our body, I’d say the similitude can’t be denied—exclamation points have replaced the more regular percentages indicating how much power is left. This occurs at five percent on mine and is immediately followed by a “battery critically low” alert.

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Sentence by Sentence, Bird by Bird: Composition Pedagogy by Anne Lamott

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Sentence by Sentence, Bird by Bird: Composition Pedagogy by Anne Lamott

Today marks the exact middle of the month immortalized as the cruelest by T.S. Eliot—at least within the world(s) of Anglophone letters. While UT-Austin’s undergraduate population may disagree with everything else Eliot wrote, the ever-increasing hustle and bustle of the UWC (University Writing Center) suggests they’d likely agree with “The Waste Land’s” opening line. 

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Electronic Publication and the Academic Knowledge Industry

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Electronic Publication and the Academic Knowledge Industry

Recently the Modern Language Association published a statement on electronic publication which says in part that “[E]lectronically published journal articles, monographs, and long-form scholarship are viable and credible modes of scholarly publication.” I’m pleased that one of the most important scholarly associations in the humanities recognizes the legitimacy of digitally-published scholarship, and I agree that digitally-published academic work is not simply ‘credible’ but ‘viable.’ That said, I’d suggest that the concept of viability should be expanded as academic scholarship migrates away from paper.

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Hello, Goodbye: Axis Welcomes A New Blog Editor

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Hello, Goodbye: Axis Welcomes A New Blog Editor

Today is a sad occasion for us, the Managing Editors of Praxis, because we are losing a friend and colleague, Hannah Alpert-Abrams, to the exigencies of academic life. Hannah is leaving Axis to pursue research in the digital humanities. While we are excited for her and will follow her progress carefully as she explores new areas both physical and intellectual, we are sorry to lose the first blog editor of Axis and the woman whose editorial direction and professional ability has been a fundamental aspect of Praxis’ migration from our previous platform. In many ways, Hannah has been the public face of Praxis on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Axis itself, and she has represented us extremely well.

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Navigating disability disclosure in the Writing Center: The other side of the table

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Navigating disability disclosure in the Writing Center: The other side of the table

Lately, I have been writing eagerly on the subject of writing centers and disability disclosure. An important topic, for certain, but much of what I am researching and writing deals with sessions in which it is the tutee/writer who has a disability and therefore must navigate disclosure. In thinking about this, I am asking myself: What does disclosure in writing centers currently look like for a tutee with a disability? What should it look like? How does how we handle disability disclosure inform our practices—and how should our practices inform how we handle disability disclosure?

And yet, dealing with disclosure in the writing center is an everyday occurrence for me—only in the opposite direction. This is because 100% of my sessions happen with a person with a disability—but that person is me. 

________________

Kerri Rinaldi is a faculty writing center consultant at Drexel University. Her research interests include self-initiated writing practices and the framing of disability in writing center theory and practice

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Axis @ South Central Writing Center Association

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Axis @ South Central Writing Center Association

We're so excited to be hosting the SCWCA conference this weekend here in Austin, which is guaranteed to start a whole lot of exciting conversations. We'd like to keep those conversations going online at Axis. Send us an e-mail (praxisuwc@gmail.com) if you're interested in writing short post-conference reflections, reactions, questions, or ideas. 

See you all today!

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The Accommodation Process: Disability in the Writing Center

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The Accommodation Process: Disability in the Writing Center

When I first began working in the Writing Center, I was pretty astonished at the “types” of consultations that begin to appear over and over again: the brainstorming consultation, the revision consultation, the personal statement or application consultation, the ELL consultation, and finally the disability consultation. Every type seems to have its own unique mood and methodology, and now I find myself stepping into the rhythm of each writing project with a sense that I’ve heard this melody before. This is perhaps because I myself, like all other writing center consultants, have also experienced the writing process over and over again at each of its stages. But I also have experienced a different process, separate from writing, which is nonetheless deeply ingrained into my own writing center rhythms. My process is the process of requesting disability accommodation, not for my clients, but for myself. “Hello,” I say, “welcome to the writing center. Usually we go ahead and ask you where you would like to sit. But I do things a little differently. I am hard of hearing, and I need a more quiet space so that I can hear you and help you. Would you mind following me?” The students are always very accepting – they smile, they say, “that’s okay,” and they usually take the trouble to speak up when asked. I’ve never had trouble with this step in the process— each student I’ve worked with so far has been as eager to help me as they were eager to be helped.

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Disability Advocacy at the Writing Center

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Disability Advocacy at the Writing Center

This semester, the UWC has introduced a series of workshops designed to help consultants better address the needs of UT’s diverse student body. I attended the first workshop, the disABILITY Advocate Program administered by Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD).  

SSD is currently housed in UT’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement rather than in an academic or medical division. This residency reflects a growing trend in accommodation services—the determination to understand disability through a minority model. This newer model contrasts older medical perspectives, which considered disability a problem that needed a cure, or even slightly more recent social models that encourage changes in environment to make spaces more accessible. In disability advocacy today, the question is no longer just how to make classrooms, campuses and centers accessible. Instead, experts focus on accommodation and INCLUSION, practices that welcome all forms of diversity by fostering what SSD calls “meaningful participation and a sense of belonging” for each student.   

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Interview: Dr. Susan "George" Schorn

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Interview: Dr. Susan "George" Schorn

This week, we interviewed Dr. Susan "George" Schorn. Dr. Schorn is the Senior Program Coordinator and Curriculum Specialist for Writing at the Center for Skills and Experience Flags at UT Austin, where she works with faculty across campus to strengthen undergraduate writing instruction. She is also a writer, martial artist, self-defense advocate, and author of the book "Smile at Strangers and Other Lessons in the Art of Living Fearlessly."

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Axis Returns: Spring 2015

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Axis Returns: Spring 2015

Today in the academy we are writing lesson plans and finalizing syllabi, writing e-mails to students and finishing novels and bracing ourselves for the start of the spring semester, which at UT Austin begins tomorrow.

Today in the United States, we honor the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the civil rights movement, and we think seriously about their legacy. In what ways is the current moment a continuation of slavery and colonialism, of civil war and civil rights? In what ways have we broken with that history, and to what ends

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Writing Consultant/Fellow Expertise: Particle, Wave, and Field

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Writing Consultant/Fellow Expertise: Particle, Wave, and Field

I am just finishing the semester with ENG 408B: Tutoring Student Writers. In that class, I try to not only provide students with sound theoretical footing and practical experience but also engagement with real discussions within the field. Early on, when we were working to get a handle on the broad-stroke roles and practices of writing center consultants, I asked them to read Trimbur’s “Peer Tutoring: A Contradiction in Terms?” paired with Brooks’ “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work” because, together, these pieces provoke questions about writing consultant authority, which I played against nondirectivity and Socratic dialogue. These have been consistently provocative and engaging conversations with these concepts and sources because there is no simple or single right answer.

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Disrupting Authority: Reflections on co-authoring

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Disrupting Authority: Reflections on co-authoring

Our work in “Disrupting Authority: Writing Mentors and Code-Meshing Pedagogy” describes the idea behind—and the plans for—combining a course-embedded writing tutors program and code-meshing pedagogy at our small, private Historically Black College (HBCU) in order to challenge language hegemony in the writing classroom. The article was the first time either of us had attempted co-authoring. Writing in the plural “we” felt a little strange, especially at first. We wrote most of the paper side-by-side in Cecilia’s office, alternately talking or typing. Because identity (and identity in language) is such an important part of our topic, we wanted to discuss our experiences in co-authoring in a way that let our individual voices be heard. We thought a chat might do the trick. 

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Guest Post: After Writing Fellows Become Reading Fellows

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Guest Post: After Writing Fellows Become Reading Fellows

In our article, “When Writing Fellows Become Reading Fellows:  Creative Strategies for Critical Reading and Writing in a Course-Based Tutoring Program,” we discuss methods for engaging First Year Writing students in critical reading and writing practices through a series of small group session plans we called pivot points. Reflecting upon this work pushed us to develop new ways to engage students, led to two regional conference presentations, and ultimately, the writing of this piece.

As we were writing, we found ourselves thinking about ways to sustain the collaborative and reflective aspects of our fellows' work. For Melissa, this meant continuing to use the momentum from the five fellows (all graduating seniors) from the fall 2013 semester into the summer and fall 2014 semesters. For Ricky, this meant applying fellows' practices during his own transition to a graduate program in information management and systems.

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Guest Post: Introducing the new special double issue of Praxis!

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pairs of people looking at computers

[Accompanying image by Jay Farris]

By Scott Whiddon, Rusty Carpenter, and Kevin Dvorak, the co-editors of the Praxis Special Double Issue on Course-Embedded Writing Support Programs in Writing Centers, which was released today.

Our collective story started as a conversation: three directors talking about the work of their centers, their tutors, and developments on their respective campuses. Like the work that takes place in many of our writing centers, we began to see the intersections and gaps of our work and the potential for our programs to make meaningful impacts on our campuses.  

Through this early conversation, we saw that we were at three distinct yet related places in our own conversations on our own campuses: a campus where course-embedded tutoring is a central part of the culture of the writing center, a campus that is piloting a course-embedded program, and a campus that could benefit a great deal from course-embedded work. The conversations continued and grew into pilots, studies, and continued conversation, converging through conversations via email and meetings at conferences, and then diverging productively when we implemented the programs on our campuses. Through this process, we realized there was so much more to be said and we set out to include more voices, along with our own, in the conversation. Thus, we proposed a guest-edited special issue of Praxis: A Writing Center Journal, and what an honor and joy it has been to be part of this chapter in the journal’s history!

Each of us came to the project with shared questions: How do we define “course-embedded peer-to-peer writing support programs?”  How do we best prepare such staffers for collaboration and creativity? How do we justify such programs to our administrators -- as well as to faculty? And, perhaps most importantly: how have such programs developed since On Location was published in 2005? We were incredibly impressed with the response to our call, the quality of proposals we received, and the quality of articles published in this issue. This issue includes case studies as well as theoretical queries. It includes a range of locations: community colleges, small liberal arts schools, regional comprehensives, and research institutions -- with contributions from top-flight graduate students as well as seasoned professionals.

What’s perhaps most exciting, though, is this: like writing center work at large, this story is far from complete. Through reading the set of essays contained in this special (double) issue of Praxis, we encourage others to weave their own narratives, looking for the intersections like we did, and adding to it in productive ways that further the conversation. We hope you enjoy both the issue and the blog contributions here from select contributors over the next few weeks.  

 

Praxis: Statement after the Ferguson Grand Jury Verdict

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Praxis: Statement after the Ferguson Grand Jury Verdict

This week, as the national conversation about systemic racial violence continues, we think about what it means for our institution and for our work.

At his 2005 keynote address at the IWCA/NCPTW conference, Victor Villanueva earned a standing ovation for his call for increased attention to race in the writing center. Within weeks, as Laura Greenfield and Karen Rowan report in Writing Centers and the New Racism, the conversation was reduced to silence. 

Racism, write Greenfield and Rowan, is shaped by silence. As Villanueva remarked, "if we no longer speak of 'racism,' racism gets ignored." There are many appropriate responses to the events in Ferguson and Staten Island, but silence, we think, is not one of them.

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Case Study: Teaching What You (Don't) Know

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Case Study: Teaching What You (Don't) Know

The Scenario:  Antoine came in to the writing center with a scholarly essay on cinema. He needed to write a two page summary of the article's main points, and was having trouble organizing his thoughts.

Bourdieu! I cried. Barthes! I'd be happy to help. 

One hour later, Kendra came into the writing center with a 350-word abstract the she was submitting to an undergraduate conference in biochemistry. She wanted help with concision and flow.

Reagent? I asked. RNA sequence? I leaned back in dismay.

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