Senior Leadership Opportunities
in The Writing Center
Senior Leadership Opportunities in The Writing Center |
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Mission Statement of the Writing Center: The Writing Center seeks to provide a nonjudgmental atmosphere where students are comfortable asking their peers for assistance with the writing process: brainstorming, outlining, developing a thesis, strengthening a conclusion as well as the overall effectiveness of a paper's argument. We believe that writers of all abilities can benefit from individual conferences about their writing. Our well trained tutors have consistently excelled in their English classes and have a genuine interest in helping people who need some writing advice. We welcome students to bring papers from any discipline. Moreover, we encourage ESL students to visit the center. Stop by the second floor of the library and see if we can help you. Click on Schedule to see our hours.
Senior Leadership Positions: Mr. Sullivan and Mrs. Hernick have welcomed a group of seniors to the writing center each year. The Writing Center requires senior tutors to be constant role models. Subsequently, Senior Tutors are responsible for making all of their shifts and to make arrangements when the odd circumstance prevents them from covering their schedule time slot. Senior Tutors also maintain a high degree of trust while working in the writing center. Fellow students trust their advice, and faculty place trust in the tutors to know how to help tutor a paper instead of simply rewriting a student paper.
The Application Process for becoming a senior tutor is a personal interview with Mr. Sullivan and Mrs. Hernick. An open letter explaining a candidate's strengths as well as his or her challenges is also required. In the past, rising seniors with strong and natural interpersonal skills who needed to work a little on polishing their writing skills benefited from working in the center. Likewise, seniors with excellent writing skills who were shy and inexperienced with working with spontaneous interpersonal scenarios learned a great deal by the end of their senior year. Ask Mr. Sullivan and Mrs. Hernick if you have any questions about this application process.
Habits of a Senior Tutor (Leader):
Goals for the 2005-2006 year: We plan to use technology skills to capture our Senior Leadership culture. The tutors are currently working to make an I-Movie product that will explain their experience. Coming soon to a Suffield laptop near you!
Here is an I-Movie from several years ago.
Polly Catanese explains the phases of a tutoring conference
Some Senior Leadership essays from the class of 2004:
| Kristen Matchett | Theresa Lamontagne | top of page |
As a head tutor I have had the responsibility of monitoring the writing center
throughout the entire study hall period one night a week. Because of the amount
of time that I have spent working in the center, I have had the opportunity
to offer tutoring sessions to many students. Although these sessions can be
extremely helpful to both the tutee and the tutor, they can lead to certain
challenges for the tutor. One night an international student came to me with
a history paper that was well written and carefully proofread; however, her
teacher had informed her that it needed some work. As a leader I knew that she
was depending on me to help her attain the grade she desired for that paper.
As we began reading through the paper sentence by sentence, I noticed the same
types of grammatical errors over and over. The student, I realized, had a well
thought out thesis with a sufficient amount of support, but lacked the correct
wording, punctuation, and natural flow of the English language. The challenge
that I faced was to offer corrective criticism, but at the same time to make
sure that she did not become frustrated with herself and her writing. I had
to keep in mind that part of being a leader is remaining patient with myself
and other people involved, in this case my international tutee.
In response to the challenge that I faced, we continued to read through the
paper sentence by sentence, however I introduced basic grammatical rules as
they turned up. By doing this, the student was able to recognize almost all
of her own mistakes. We also reviewed specific comments made by her teacher,
and talked about his expectations of her paper. Although the tutee experienced
periods of frustration with her second language, she was finally able to leave
the writing center with a sense of accomplishment in the things we had completed.
The decisions that I made during this tutoring session served to make it a
successful one. My rationale for introducing certain grammatical rules and letting
her pick up her own mistakes is that it allowed her to gain an understanding
of the material and to have pride in her work. Had I continued to pinpoint each
individual mistake, frustration would have quickly set in. Also, looking at
her teacher’s corrections served a variety of purposes. It kept us on
track with where we were going with the paper. It also reminded us of the areas
that especially needed work. Finally, it kept our final goal in sight. It was
necessary to continue working until the student was satisfied with her work
because otherwise she would not have felt confident in handing in her paper.
By the end of the tutoring session, the student and I had read through basically the entire paper and discussed the important corrections. After my help she was able to turn in her paper and hopefully get the grade that she wanted, while also learning a lot about English grammar and punctuation. The student was satisfied with the final draft of her history paper, and I was satisfied with the work that we had completed.
Throughout this tutoring session I learned the important lesson of patience,
and its importance in situations like this. I also became aware of proper interactions
with other people, and how to be sensitive to the feelings of others. Looking
back on my tutoring session with this foreign student, there was only one problem
that I can see: the length of the session. The suggested time for each tutoring
session is twenty minutes to half an hour, but we worked for at least an hour
on her history paper. After that first half hour, however, was around the time
that we both began to get a little frustrated and impatient. It probably would
have been more beneficial to send her to finish making her own corrections using
the grammar rules I had supplied her, and then have her come back later so we
could read through the final draft together. Although this tutoring session
became a bit difficult towards the end, we accomplished a lot of work in the
time that we spent, and she successfully was able to understand and follow through
on the expectations that the teacher demanded.
As a Head Writing Center Tutor, I have been faced with many challenges. The
challenge that stands out the most occurred in the winter term. A student came
to the Writing Center with the idea that the Writing Center writes papers for
the students instead of helping the students. As it goes, the student had not
even read the book, nor did the student bring the book or paper topic. The lack
of planning and thinking on this student’s part surprised me so I took
a leap and asked if the student even remembered the paper topic. He did not
and then continued to ask me if I had read the book, thinking that I would form
a thesis and would write the paper for him. I truthfully had not and then told
him that the only way the Writing Center could help him was if he at least got
the book and the paper topic. Fortunately, he had taken notes in class so I
told him to bring those as well. With that, I sent him back to his dorm to gather
his materials. I figured that if he had taken solid notes then he might have
had a chance to form a thesis to answer the writing assignment.
When he returned, I explained to him that the purpose of the Writing Center
is to not write the paper for the student, but to help assist and teach the
student how to right proper papers. I emphasized the importance of being prepared
with the proper materials, book and topic included, and also the importance
of planning ahead. (The paper was due the next morning during A period. It was
9:30 PM on Thursday night). After my minor preaching session, (it lasted all
of one minute), I had the student review his notes and the assignment. We spent
about 10 minutes thinking of a thesis from the notes he had taken in class,
and by 10 he had formed a thesis and had come up with three supporting details
that would be his body paragraphs.
I feel that the student expected to come to the Writing Center, completely unprepared, with the intentions that he would not have to do any work. Unfortunately, I think he was shocked when I sent him back to his dorm to get his notes and book. I also feel that we accomplished a few things. First of all, the student realized what the Writing Center was for and its function. Second, we were able to formulate a thesis and topics for the body paragraph so the student was much farther ahead with his paper after our session. Lastly, the student learned the importance of planning ahead and actually reading the assignments. Looking back, there is nothing that I would have done differently. I know some tutors may have sent him back and told him to read the book, but I felt that we could accomplish something- even if it was small. In the end, we accomplished a lot more than what I expected to and I would not have done anything differently. I learned from this experience and had to practice my patience, and the student learned about planning ahead. It was a win-win situation.
David McConaghay/May 20, 2004
Leadership Challenges
Spending the past year as a Writing Center Tutor has provided many opportunities
to help my friends with their writing. The fact that most of the people who
I worked with were friends of mine created some interesting dilemmas as well.
I found that the quick fix of wanting me to write the paper for them was a constant
temptation. It was challenging to find a way to make them see that they could
do just as well on their own.
I spent a lot of time on many different assignments with one particular individual.
He is a good writer and generally has good ideas, but he often tries to do too
much. He will use random vocabulary for no reason, and make his papers complicated
and unclear. I spent a lot of time helping him to simplify his work. I worked
with him on expressing his idea in the simplest way possible. At first, I tried
giving him example sentences, but this proved to be ineffective because he would
proceed to write down exactly what I had said, and not learn anything from it.
There had to be a better way. I resorted to asking simple, straightforward questions about his paper. “What
is the point of this paragraph?” “What are you trying to say here?” These sort of questions forced him to thoroughly think it over, and most of
the time the answer he gave out loud was exactly what I had him write down.
The result was a clearly expressed idea, which led to a more coherent paper.
Writing comes very naturally to me, so sometimes I find that I have trouble
explaining how to fix something that seems obvious to me. With most of my customers,
simplifying the language and sentence structure was an incredibly affective
strategy. This was an easy enough point to get across, and I think it gave people
gained confidence from realizing that writing really is not all that hard.
I am a much better teacher now than I was at the beginning of the year. Simply
from experience, I have a much better feel for how to nudge people in the right
direction. Sometimes people were too anxious for me to tell them exactly what
to do and solve all their problems for them. It was often a delicate process
to make suggestions and provide insight without taking total control of the
project. I made sure to keep in mind that I am simply a tour guide, pointing
out important landmarks on the road to a clearly expressed concept.
I feel that in the last year I have helped many people improve their writing
and their ability to revise their writing. This is a great feeling and I am
better for the experience. The challenges that I faced and overcame provided
good lessons for me to reflect on in my own writing as well as other situations
where I am in a position to help. This summer I am coaching a 10-year-old boys
soccer team, and I know I will often think of my experiences in the Writing
Center when I am struggling with teaching these kids the game. This has been
a valuable experience for me. Much more so than any class I ever had where we
talked about leadership. You cannot replace the actual experience with anticipatory
conversation.