Mindful Tutors, Embodied Writers: Positioning Mindfulness Meditation as a Writing Strategy to Optimize Cognitive Load and Potentialize Writing Center Tutors' Supportive Roles
In this article, I examine the potential that mindfulness meditation
has to re-frame and expand the affective, supportive roles of
writing center tutors. I argue that those of us working in writing
centers can fully potentialize a tutor’s affective, supportive role and
optimize a student’s cognitive load by incorporating mindfulness
meditation as a stress-reducing strategy into writing center
practices. Using Cognitive Load Theory as a lens, I establish how
we might expand our understanding of the available mental space
that tutors and tutees have to work, write, and learn in writing
center sessions. Because mindfulness meditation has numerous
cognitive benefits, I position that practice as a writing and stressreducing
strategy that both tutors and tutees can use during and
after their writing center sessions.University Writing Cente
