Tag: writing center

With Writing Always at the Center (Part II): Reflections on A Dozen Years as Director

Bronwyn T. Williams, Director

Here’s the thing about writing, it is a distinctive medium not just for communicating across space and time, but for connecting human consciousness. When we write, we lay out our thoughts in a way so that someone across the world, or across centuries, can understand our perspectives, our interpretations, our desires. Writing allows us to convey not only the surfaces we can see, but the thoughts and emotions that we hold most central to our lives and identities. Though not everything we write is of equal intensity and meaning, writing is always available to us to make these essential connections. The fact that AI platforms may be able to mimic broadly some writing is beside the point. When we want, when we need, to connect our minds to the minds of others, writing will continue to be there for us, and to matter deeply.

It is this ability to connect human thought, to make meaning, that makes writing the intellectual center of life in the university. Writing that truly asks people to solve problems, create, synthesize, critique, resist, advocate, and connect is writing that makes knowledge. Because humans are meaning-making creatures, we will continue to try to figure out the world around us, and our lives within, and good, thoughtful writing, will continue to be central to that endeavor. All of this is why the University Writing Center, overlooked, underfunded, and often misunderstood, matters so much. For the past twelve years it has been my privilege to serve as director of the University Writing Center. After this spring, however, I will be stepping aside as director and, before I do, I want to take a moment to reflect on why I think the work of the University Writing Center is so important, as well thank the people with whom I have shared in this work.

The Purest Teaching On Campus

The meaningful work in the University Writing Center is grounded in the talent and commitment of its amazing consultants. Though they come here from different backgrounds, and may use a variety of approaches to teaching, it is their commitment to individual, dialogic, and collaborative teaching that has made the Writing Center such rewarding and distinctive place to work. Many writers come to the University Writing Center thinking, or worrying, that what we will do is simply correct mistakes, because far too many faculty and administrators on campus mistake surface correctness for strong writing. Yet, when writers get here, what they find are collaborative conversations with our consultants where they work together to find out what it is the writers truly want to say in their own words, and in the most engaging and persuasive way possible. The approach we use, where we take our time, start with the writer’s concerns first, ask questions, — and don’t grade — makes this some of the purest teaching on campus. When writers leave after an appointment, they leave not only with new strategies for writing, but often with a greater sense of confidence as writers and students. We see these changes in writers’ identities reflected in our exit surveys and hear it in comments as people leave. People who know me have heard me talk about these ideas and experiences before, yet it is the changes in confidence, perceptions of agency, and in true learning that writers find here, that have meant so much to me over the past twelve years.

The other aspect of the work here that I appreciated in our consultants has been the ethos, the disposition they worked hard to take into each appointment. What they did, in appointment after appointment with writers from every college and discipline, and with most kinds of writing on campus, was listen carefully, and respond with respect and care. In short, they treated each writer as a writer, and not simply as a draft to be corrected. They also never lost sight of the fact that writing is deeply connected to issues of identity and power and to teach in a recognition of and response to issues of social justice. It has meant so much to me to work in a setting where the teaching is grounded in theories and practices of hospitality, reciprocity, inclusiveness, and equity. We learned from writers and they learned from us. Too much of education is based in rigid standards and punitive assessments and we have worked not only to provide a different model for teaching and learning here, but to to try to use it when we can as a model for change in the University (And I just published an article about those efforts, if you’re interested). Teaching is an ethical and political project and I’m glad to have been part of what we have been doing here over the years to work to build on student knowledge and for intellectual exploration and knowledge building.

When I started thinking about this blog post I started thinking through some of the numbers that marked the past twelve years. There have been more than 55,000 appointments, more than 150 consultants and staff members who have worked here, more than 120,000 views of our online resources and videos, hundreds of workshops on writing issues, 15 dissertation writing retreats – and this is blog post number 425. Yet what those number really represent to me, what really makes me smile, is all the words, the ideas, the connections, that were started and sustained, because of work through the University Writing Center. It has been impressive, and often moving, to watch and I respect all the work the consultants and the writers have done together

A Place of Collaborative Accomplishments

There are programs and changes that have taken place in the last twelve years that I have helped facilitate and in which I do take some pride. We connected to graduate students, both in appointments and in workshops and dissertation writing retreats in new ways and greatly increased our presence in support of graduate student writing. We started an office down at the Health Sciences Campus and did both tutoring and workshops over the years. We created online resources from Writing FAQs, to videos and to handouts, to oral histories, for UofL writers but available to any writers looking for help. We helped design and move into a new space on the first floor of Ekstrom Library, to a larger, more flexible space that made us much more visible to the University community. And we did our best to try to find ways, despite increasingly shrinking funding, to nurture and support writing on campus and in our community through our writing groups, events such as International Mother Language Day and Open Mic Nights, and our community partnerships with the Western Branch Library and with Family Scholar House. We did our best to try to be a center for all writers

Our Old University Writing Center Space on the Third Floor of Ektrom Library

All those accomplishments I frame with “we” because all the work that has taken place at the University Writing Center has been a collaborative project. It has been my deep good fortune to work with people who committed themselves to this collaborative vision of work, both with writers and with each other. So many people over the years came up with new ideas or showed me new ways to do things. They kept my thinking fresh, challenging it when it needed challenging. And, just as important as anything, they kept their sense of humor and warmth. It made this a fun place to work.

I can’t list all the people who have worked here by name, but know that I am grateful to all of you, learned from all of you. But it is important to thank individually the permanent staff I’ve worked with. At the front desk and running the office, Robin Blackett, Amber Yocum, and Maddy Decker were the calm, friendly, and resourceful people at the front desk who set the tone for everyone who walked through our doors and reassured both anxious writers and weary staff. Also, I have worked with three associate directors, but that title is so misleading. I have enjoyed the great opportunity to have true working partnerships with these good and wise friends, Adam Robinson, Cassie Book, and Annmarie Steffes. All three of them provided the stability and professionalism to keep everything running. There was much more than that, however. They were always coming up with new and important ideas – and kept me from coming up with bad ones – and they were instrumental in shaping the positive and constructive emotional ethos among the consultants on staff. I once said we were co-pilots in all things Writing Center and it has always been true. I owe you all more than I can say.

Moving On and Changing Lives

In my years as director, people often have asked me how work was going. I would tell them that, even though I might be wearying of wading through administrative budget cuts and assorted other drudge, I still looked forward to coming to work each day. When I looked around me in the Writing Center, I would tell them, I see a group of people with a strong sense of community, doing the kind of teaching, learning, and caring that I wish were the model for the whole university. I will miss all of that when the next year comes around. I will miss working with the new group of consultants in the fall. I will miss the moment of a student writer stopping in my office to say that, in her mind, the writing center would be standing next to her when she received her diploma at graduation.

Still, it is healthy for institutions to have different people with different ideas and approaches in charge and the University Writing Center is positioned to have exciting times ahead under the leadership of Tim Johnson and Annmarie Steffes. As for me, I will be continuing to teach and to research and write about students’ experiences of the pandemic, climate change education, and participatory community writing projects. I’ll be around.

At the start of each academic year, when I talk to the new group of writing consultants at our orientation, I tell them about the writers who come to the University Writing Center, often anxious and uncertain, but leave both learning about writing, and feeling a stronger sense of agency and confidence. “Quite often,” I say, “We do change lives.” Certainly my time in the University Writing Center has changed mine. Thank you all.

Listening to Learn: Tutoring Unfamiliar Writing Genres

Olalekan Adepoju, Assistant Director for Graduate Student Writing

“The job of writing centers is to produce better writers, not better writing.” This assertion by Stephen North is, surely, a familiar maxim to most writing center practitioners. But, has anyone also considered how writers can help writing centers produce better tutors? I believe the goal of every tutor is to develop their tutoring skill using every available means; that is why I think, as consultants, by listening to learn from writers, especially those writing in genres we are unfamiliar with, we have the unique opportunity develop our tutoring skills.

Listening is paramount to the tutorial work we do in the writing center. Generally, the tutor tends to listen to several things during tutoring session: you passively listening to your inner thoughts about the draft and, more importantly, listening to the writer’s comments or questions. Moreover, writing center scholars and practitioners admit that listening is essential to achieving an efficient tutoring in the writing center. They submit that listening is not only a means of developing a tutor’s understanding of the current session but also a means for working from, with, and across differences, becoming increasingly aware of those differences rather than flattening or ignoring them. This submission means that listening is a tool for making tutors become better at their tutoring craft. Hence, tutors interested in advancing their craft must be open and willing to listen to learn (from the writers) specific ways to develop their level of awareness.

In listening to learn, we move beyond attempting to adjust our knowledge of the generic needs of writers, especially when dealing with unfamiliar writing genre, to learning to become more aware of this unfamiliar writing genre in efforts to achieve a successful tutoring session. Listening to learn does not entail knowing (or pretending to know) about the subject matter. Rather, listening to learn helps the tutor to achieve meaningful awareness of subject matter necessary for some sense of comfort during the session. Such subject matter awareness would, for instance, help to clear up certain confusions; move past genre-specific jargons and develop interpretive questions, thereby ensuring that the goals of the tutoring session are efficiently met.

In my work with science writers, for example, I continue to practice the ‘listen-to-learn’ approach because I want to be more aware of the means to navigate the seemingly unfamiliar writing genre. From these writers, I have learned ways to not only guide them effectively during their session but also become a better tutor for future work with scientific or related writing genre. For instance, one of the science writers I work with always provides an overview of their essay using visual aids such as diagrams. My sense is that the writer assumes I’m not a specialist in science-related concepts and describing their work in abstract terms might confuse me, and indirectly lead to a tutoring breakdown. So, to make me aware of the subject matter of their writing project, the writer explained concepts to me with the aid of diagrams. While they do not expect me to become knowledgeable of the topic, by listening to the writer’s explanatory context, this subject-matter awareness afforded me a good level of confidence to meaningfully engage the writer and their writing. Additionally, beyond subject-matter awareness, tutors can also become better tutors by being learning to be interculturally aware, especially when working with multilingual writers. Intercultural awareness helps the tutor become more sensitive to processes, situated contexts, and particular situations that influence what and how a writer writes.

Ultimately, while our goal as writing tutors is to utilize every available strategy to help writers hone their writing ability and become better writers, we should not disregard how writers can make us better tutors. As we prioritize listening to learn about the subject matter of the writer’s writing project or non-writing related information the writer willingly shares with us, we generally become more aware of the best means to approach these seemingly unfamiliar genres of writing.

Silence in Writing Center Sessions

Emily Cousins, Consultant emily-c

I’ve always known that silence can be beneficial in various ways during writing center sessions. It recently dawned on me, though, that silence often requires a conscious effort to create, and that perhaps I could be doing more to actively create productive silences during meetings with writers.

My desire to incorporate more silence into my writing center sessions is largely based on the role silence plays in facilitating my own writing and thinking process. When I receive feedback on something I’ve written, I need time to comprehend verbal feedback and to process my own thoughts. I also need time to think of the words I want to use to articulate my responses. This is why I’m grateful whenever I work with people who, when giving feedback, allow for moments of silence throughout the discussion.

When I have my tutoring hat on while working at the Writing Center, I sometimes forget that the writers I work with may feel the same way about silence as I do. I always try to be ready with the next question or the next suggestion, to keep the trains of thought all moving smoothly forward without much pause. I tell myself that by doing this we’re getting the most out of the allotted 50-minute time frame. But I think it’s worth asking: am I not giving us enough time to nurture certain conditions that might fuel productive, reflective, creative thinking?

One strategy tutors use is to have writers brainstorm and/or write on their own; the tutor might walk to another room and come back after 5-10 minutes or more, depending on the context. This is one way to allow for quiet time for writers to work, and can be an effective way to incorporate silence into a session. However, this is not quite the kind of silence I have in mind. The silence I want to use more during my sessions is a mutually shared, collaborative sort of silence, during which both the tutor and writer are still sitting together side by side, thinking. Sometimes the silence might be broken to exchange an idea or two. I’m thinking of a type of silence that is the opposite of empty and/or uncomfortable – the anti-awkward silence.

The “awkward silence” is an interesting concept I learned about as I became more familiar with social conventions in American culture. Growing up in Japan, I always felt that silence was the default way to exist in the world, a way to convey respect and mindfulness. It was difficult moving to the U.S. where presence often seems to be measured by how much one speaks. There appears to be a widespread aversion to silence in social situations, which is perhaps linked to the phenomenon of “small talk.” So, while I personally appreciate moments of collaborative silence when discussing my own writing with people, I understand that some writers might find silence uncomfortable. So, as tutors, we should be attentive to cues that might suggest whether or not a writer might really benefit from silence during sessions.

I sometimes initiate collaborative silences by asking the writer, “can I take a moment to write this down?” Sometimes I will stop myself from thinking of the next thing to say. It has been surprising how many times writers will then break the silence with a new idea or insightful comment they may not have offered had we not taken a moment to pause. Whenever this happens, I remind myself of how valuable and productive silences can be.

Possibilities in the Writing Center

Megan Bardolph

Last semester in the Writing Center, I worked with a student from Nigeria who wanted help with his honors composition class assignments. He set up appointments to meet with me once a week for two or three months. Together we worked on revising two of his essays to prepare for his portfolio. The experience was wonderful on many levels, as I was also teaching a section of honors composition that semester. Oddly, I felt that our sessions gave me the opportunity to really listen to the students I was teaching in my own class. Our conversations were also productive for me as a scholar and thinker. They made me realize and appreciate the complexities of identifying as an instructor, a graduate student, and a writing center consultant.

During our last session of the semester, the student thanked me for my help. I asked if I would see him again in the Writing Center, to which he sadly replied “probably not.” As a pre-medicine biology major, he most likely would not need to write another paper for quite some time.

So I was surprised to see the other day that he had made multiple appointments to meet with me over the next few weeks. On Friday, we had our first session. He announced that he had submitted one of the papers we had worked on to a conference and it had been accepted for presentation. We now have a new project to work on. He told me that one of his goals for the spring semester is to continue working on his writing, as he sees the analytical and critical thinking skills he acquired in first-year English as useful to his studies in the natural sciences. We began to talk about research opportunities afforded by Writing Center work, and discussed potential areas of inquiry that both of us would like to pursue based on our sessions. Our relationship has moved beyond just consultant-client; it’s now closer to mentor-mentee. At some point I may even consider him a colleague. I am continually astonished by how much I learn from him (and from all of my clients, really).

There are a few different implications that I want to draw out based on this experience. Firstly, if you are a student who actually enjoys or enjoyed your first year writing course, know that you are not alone, and that there are opportunities to continue the types of writing and thinking you performed in that course without changing your major to English. It may be useful to seek out a mentor through the writing center, or through a faculty member or graduate student in the English department.

Secondly, if you are a writing center consultant or graduate student, I cannot highlight enough how important I think it is to view the Writing Center as a site of potential research – and this absolutely includes collaborative research with clients. In my experience, the conversations I have had with clients sometimes lead to greater moments of insight into writing, teaching, collaborating, and mentorship than the conversations I have with others in my same position.

Finally, if you are an instructor of writing, or of any subject for that matter, there is great value in listening to what the students want out of their education. The student I have been working with wants to find a way to balance his enthusiasm for writing with a major that does not provide many opportunities for the kinds of composing he would like to pursue. I think this shows there may be a need for providing additional spaces for students to take up this interest. The Writing Center is an excellent place for such work to continue.