Tutor Handbooks: Heuristic Texts for Negotiating Difference in a Globalized World

I would like to begin this article by telling a true story. When I was a graduate student earning my doctoral degree, I worked in a writing center on a midsized and predominantly white university campus. Every week I attended and sometimes facilitated the writing center’s tutor education workshop. At one of these meetings, an undergraduate tutor from a Euro- American background said that one of the things she liked about working at the writing center was that if she had a question about grammar during a conference with a client, she could simply lean over to the next table and ask another tutor for advice. In response to this statement, an African-American tutor said that she would never ask another tutor for grammar help because she felt that doing so would undermine her authority and lead clients to question her competence in Standard American English. At this point a bilingual Asian-American tutor said that clients often doubted her ability to tutor based solely on her appearance. For many of her American clients she was too foreign, while for many of her international clients she was not American enough. This discussion was a revelation for many of the Euro-American tutors, since it had never occurred to them that one’s physical appearance could bring his or her linguistic competence into question. All of the tutors learned a great deal from this remarkable discussion, and the theory and practice of the writing center shifted in ways that more fully accounted for the experiences of tutors from diverse backgrounds. I tell this story for two reasons.University Writing Cente

Attitudes of mothers and fathers of schizophrenic patients.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Revising Trimbur's Dichotomy: Tutors and Client's Sharing Knowledge, Sharing Power

In the twenty-five years since John Trimbur’s 1987 article, “Peer Tutoring: A Contradiction in Terms?” was published, writing center personnel have found it necessary to emphasize the dichotomy in the term “peer tutor.” Trimbur’s influential article has continually appeared in the literature used to train tutors and introduce them to writing center theory. For example, The Harcourt Brace Guide to Peer Tutoring (1998) and The Longman Guide to Writing Center Theory and Praxis (2008) both include Trimbur’s article. It is also cited in three essays collected in The St. Martin’s Sourcebook for Writing Tutors: Cynthia Haynes-Burton’s “‘Thirty-something’ Students: Concerning Transitions in the Writing Center,” originally published in 1990, Jay Jacoby’s “‘The Use of Force’: Medical Ethics and Center Practice,” and Julie Bokser’s “Peer Tutoring and Gorgias: Acknowledging Aggression in the Writing Center,” originally published in 2001. Each of the articles within The St. Martin’s Sourcebook takes Trimbur’s assertion of the peer-tutor dichotomy as fundamentally true. Training, then, has focused on the task of switching deftly between peer and tutor during a session because it is believed that tutors cannot inhabit both roles simultaneously. Trimbur points out that many tutors feel a loyalty to both the institution that has awarded them the label of “writing expert” as well as to their own peers who share their concerns as students (290-291). Beginning tutors especially will feel pressure from both sides, wanting to please the institution (by passing down knowledge) and their clients (by being co-learners). His solution is to help tutors learn to negotiate conflicting social allegiances through a sequential training module. Toward the end of his article, he worries that “the conception of tutoring as an apprenticeship treats students as extensions of our profession and can reinforce their dependence on faculty authority ” (295). To avoid this situation, Trimbur advocates a developmental tutor training program that would begin by emphasizing the tutor’s role as co-learner in order to de-emphasize the tutor’s belief in the traditional academic paradigm of passing down knowledge from expert to novice.University Writing Cente

From A Service-Learning to A Social-Change Model

Tutor education courses that prepare students to serve as peer writing consultants often include service learning; a typical servicelearning tutor education course involves sending students to tutor in local schools, usually in underserved neighborhoods. Existing writing center scholarship on service learning tends to overlook the limitations of this model. This article advances a radically different approach for tutor education where the course acts as an incubator for social change on campus. Informed by the principles advanced by the critical service learning movement, the course described here invites students to design and implement campus-based community building projects. Ultimately, this article demonstrates that a course focused on community building, rather than tutoring theory and strategies, can effectively prepare students to serve as peer writing consultants while imparting a heightened awareness of social inequities and a deep investment in the campus community.University Writing Cente

Write Free or Die: Vol. 04, No. 01

Department Writing Goals, Outcomes, and Plans, Page 1-2 Upcoming Events, Page 1 Persistence v Genius, Page 2 Writing Committee Members, Page 2 Dangling Modifier, Page 3-4 Ask Matt, Page 5-6 Grammar Box, Page 7 Past Perfect, Page

Write Free or Die: Vol. 04, No. 01

Department Writing Goals, Outcomes, and Plans, Page 1-2 Upcoming Events, Page 1 Persistence v Genius, Page 2 Writing Committee Members, Page 2 Dangling Modifier, Page 3-4 Ask Matt, Page 5-6 Grammar Box, Page 7 Past Perfect, Page

Write Free or Die: Vol. 04, No. 02

Avoiding Introductory Courses, Page 1-2 Upcoming Events, Page 1 Writing Committee Members, Page 2 Dangling Modifier, Page 3-4 Ask Matt, Page 5 Grammar Box, Page 6 Past Perfect, Page