“What’s in a Name?”: Consultancy, Culture, and the “Tutor Jar”

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“What’s in a Name?”: Consultancy, Culture, and the “Tutor Jar”

Are we tutors or consultants? Upon choosing one (consultant) over the other (tutor), our center has also dealt with the challenge of making that change permanent, a difficult task considering how engrained tutor had been in the lexicon of our writing center culture. When making any drastic change in culture, policy, or behavior, writing center administrators need to provide support strategies that can help staff members make that change effectively rather than simply issuing a mandate and expecting staff members to comply.

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Part Two: Leaders are Readers (and Writers)

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Part Two: Leaders are Readers (and Writers)

Leaders—at least when they’re peer tutors—are also writers, and writing assignments are important ways to encourage reflection. Asking students to reflect on the relationship between peer tutoring scholarship and leadership will allow tutors to consider how leadership skills complement their work as peer tutors and, just as importantly, identify the times leadership doesn’t seem to fit with or describe their work.

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Part One: Peer Tutoring as Leadership Development

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Part One: Peer Tutoring as Leadership Development

It’s easy to understand why we reject the leadership label when it comes to the work of peer tutors. Traditional notions of leadership related to authority, power, and control seem antithetical to the collaborative work of the writing center. A leader achieving an outcome doesn’t seem quite the right model for the recursive, process-based work of writing. We hear leadership and imagine the stick figure on top of the mountain.

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Student Empowerment: Developing A Learner’s Writer-Identity

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Student Empowerment: Developing A Learner’s Writer-Identity

Unfortunately, many students become hindered in their process by the expectations of writing. A common question that learners lead with is, “Can you check my grammar?” The imposed importance of grammar throughout all education levels can hold a student back in their writing. As sharing with peers, a tutor, or instructor allows for freedom and strength of identity, giving a student more credit for their innate abilities with language allows the same empowerment.

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The Positive Effects of Requiring Writing Center Visits in Developmental Writing

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The Positive Effects of Requiring Writing Center Visits in Developmental Writing

The required Writing Center appointments introduced students to the Center’s location, familiarized them with the software, and helped them build rapport with the staff. The visits themselves helped the students learn necessary skills like time management, responsibility, preparedness, and collaboration. The end result is that the students performed better in the class and learned how to think about their writing, catch mistakes, and apply the necessary skills to plan, organize, develop, and produce better writing.

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Part Two: A Community of Practice—At a Military Academy? Fostering the Synergetic Spirit for Writing Center Work with Undergraduate Consultants

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Part Two: A Community of Practice—At a Military Academy? Fostering the Synergetic Spirit for Writing Center Work with Undergraduate Consultants

Challenging the status quo, questioning traditions, crosstalk— none of these things seem natural at a military academy. And yet, most, if not all of the Cadet Writing Fellows I have worked with over the years, have developed the confidence and skills in collaboration needed to question and produce their own scholarship.

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Part One: A Community of Practice—At a Military Academy?

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Part One: A Community of Practice—At a Military Academy?

For the past three years, I have served as the Senior Postgraduate Writing Fellow in the Mounger Writing Program, a subsection of the West Point Writing Program at the U.S. Military Academy. I joined the ranks, so to speak, of this writing center under the assumption that I would be entering a particular kind of Pratt-esque “contact zone” (or a combat zone) in the most traditional sense of it—one where the program tried to “militarize” writing and consulting in a formulaic, un-embodied way, and then the Cadet Writing Fellows would follow suit.

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Grand View University on Group Appointments Part IV: Third Space and Tutor Authority

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Grand View University on Group Appointments Part IV: Third Space and Tutor Authority

In the group setting, then, we find it important to not shy away from tutors’ positions of authority, but to use those in productive ways. As tutors are also students themselves, they are more relatable to the students in the group appointments. Thus, the students are more open to listening and opening up to the tutor because they are not teachers, but they still have valuable experiences and knowledge to share.

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Grand View University on Group Appointments Part III: Managing Relationships & Interaction

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Grand View University on Group Appointments Part III: Managing Relationships & Interaction

Within the Writing Center, a relationship between tutor and writer can develop into a deeper connection of learning, sharing, and communication. Within the group tutoring sessions at Grand View, establishing this relationship between tutor and writer early on is integral to creating a successful long-term working environment for both parties.

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Grand View University on Group Appointments Part II: Practicalities and Logistics

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Grand View University on Group Appointments Part II: Practicalities and Logistics

Managing time in a group appointment is a bit different than managing time in a one-on-one appointment. In a group appointment you have to make sure that you have time to answer all the writer’s questions, and not just focus on one. As a tutor, it becomes especially important to set clear time limits. On a practical level, this may mean splitting the time evenly between each writer while still working to make the group appointment feel cohesive.

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Grand View University on Group Appointments Part I: Foundations

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Grand View University on Group Appointments Part I: Foundations

The idea that the writers who visit the writing center must already be literate in academic discourse is an absurd assumption, but it admittedly one many tutors have before they begin tutoring. Yet with the ever-changing, increasingly diverse students that are attending college in today’s age, we must consider what their needs are and how best to equip them with those needed skills. This is why Grand View’s group Writing Center appointment-as-class-credit model came about in the first place.

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Taking Long Night Online Part 5: Marketing Long Night on your Campus More Effectively

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Taking Long Night Online Part 5: Marketing Long Night on your Campus More Effectively

How have your usage patterns changed since COVID-19? Which writer communities seem particularly engaged in your remote services? Which writer communities might need more outreach? What campus partners or collaborators could help you reach reluctant participants? How could being a part of LNAP outreach help them in return?

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Revisiting "Elastic English"

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Revisiting "Elastic English"

In Praxis Vol. 16, no. 1, Sidney Thompson offered us a vision of “Elastic English,” drawing on traditions of mindfulness and also on insights from Transcendentalist literature to consider the power and potential for transformation in the writing consultation. Here, Thompson offers further thoughts on what writers and consultants stand to gain from the experience of consulting and from taking this approach.

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