Mercy Reading and Writing Center

Introduction:

This has been one of the most challenging yet utterly rewarding years I have ever had. Imagining and then creating the Mercy Reading and Writing Center has been a wonderful experience overall, and I am very proud of what we’ve done so far, and am even more excited to how we can build upon the base we’ve established.

Reflections:

When I say I have my dream job, I mean it. I have never been this excited to go to work every day, nor this personally and professionally fulfilled by my work. I am passionate about teaching reading and writing, passionate about our students in general, passionate about the benefits on conferencing with students individually, and passionate about LALAC (Language and Literacy Across the Curriculum). I feel like all of my schooling is finally worth something, and I know how lucky I am to be in this position, lucky to be able to use the best of my talents and education in an innovative environment.

I’ve been re-reading my professional blog entries from the past year, and am including the text of the first one (May 2006)

" Today is the first day of the rest of your life." I remember writing that on the white board on my first day of teaching, ever, and oddly enough, a number of students (they were high school freshmen then, now they are college sophomores and juniors) still remember it. Even though it is a trite saying, it still makes me happy that they know it, and maybe even sometimes think about it.

I like beginnings because they are so exhilarating. That probably also explains why I am always trying something new (this spring, SCUBA, this summer, running a half marathon) and also why I am addicted to travel (Slovenia or Turkey, Slovenia or Turkey): days open up, wide with the unknown, fraught with things that will work or not work, busses that will come or not come, and you move through it all, studying the chaos that will become a part of the stories you tell.

So, we begin this reading and writing center, this website, and we try to piece this together ex nihilo, out of nothing. Call it a blank slate, a room waiting for redesign, a template without content. Call upon friends, the guidebooks, the bits and pieces of experience that are threaded together like so much lint from the screen of the clothes dryer. Call yourself to make sure you are still there.

And then head out the door, because this is the first day of the rest of your life.

It has been nearly a year since I wrote that, and I am still feeling that sense of newness and exhilaration. While in many ways creating the MRWC was creating something new on a blank slate, it wasn’t an entirely blanks slate, and so one of the things that I know now that I didn’t know then is that so much of program building is public relations and, to a lesser extent, politics. Since I had been working at Mercy in a staff/administrative capacity, and since the room that houses the MRWC has been known as something else for as long as anyone can remember, I had a lot of things to break down and disassemble, while simultaneously tying to build up and assemble. Some people knew I had a background in teaching and was working as staff while finishing my MA degree, but many did not (including students), so from the beginning of the year I was faced with the challenge of not only building credibility for the MRWC but for myself as well. One of the best pieces of advice I received at the IWCA Summer Institute, and have since read it in several books on starting writing centers, is that faculty will generally fall into three groups: one group who will be on your team from the outset, one group who are in the middle and could be persuaded, and one group who no matter what you do you won’t ever reach. The advice was to focus on the first two groups and not worry about the third, and that single piece of advice has been most helpful. So, by initially working with the departments who were so excited they scheduled me into their classes for August in May (Social Studies and Religion), word quickly spread and as of March, I do feel like I have the support of almost everyone in the first two groups, and the number of people in the third group are very small.

The two things we at the MRWC are most proud of are the number of individual conferences we have had with students and the number of in-class workshops we have been invited to give. I was a bit concerned with how the block schedule might potentially limit the number of students who would have time to see us, and while I do think it is restrictive, between the lunch, collaboration and after school times, the online conferences, and the in-class sessions, we have been able to work with every Mercy student several times over (and some even more than that). The senior workshops for their application essays were really fun, and I predict that they will continue to grow in popularity. One students has received two handwritten notes from admissions officers at schools she’s been accepted to, each of them indicating how much they enjoyed reading her personal statement. Overall, I think the students are benefiting from the individualized support and I hope that it is translating into improved reading and writing in each of their classes. From the feedback we are getting from teachers, it appears to be.

Something else which we have found really productive is meeting with the parents in various situations. The parent night we offered on reading was successful, and the meetings we have had with individual parents have been very positive as well. In addition, working with the parents on the homework committee reinforced the need for us to help “teach” the parents as well as the students. We have also enjoyed working with faculty one-one-one, whether that has been researching new curriculum (i.e. texts) they could use in their classes or disseminating new activities whenever we have come across them. To this end, staying current in the field through reading journals is enormously useful. Every week we get an email from NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) which has annotated links to the articles of the week, as well as to classroom activities of the week. We are also on several email list-servs in which teachers of reading and writing share advice and strategies, and since teaching is really about sharing, not about reinventing the wheel, it is very helpful to get ideas from people all over the country, and then share them with my colleagues here.

Wow!  We have been back to school for 8 days now, and with the new block schedule for everyone, and the new Reading/Writing Center for me, it has been just . . .crazy.  But in a good way.

With the block schedule, our students are scheduled into classes all day long. Vvery few have any "breaks" and even then, they are assigned to the Library with the option of migrating to a subject specific study center.  When we were envisioning the MRWC, one of the obstacles was to figure out how to really be able to work with students if they were not going to be free to drop in to get help, like they would in a traditional writing center. I thought if they can't come to us, why can't we come to them?  So, the idea was to collaborate with teachers across the campus to create workshops that could take place in their classes. 

And that's exactly what has been happening since school started.  In the past few days, I've done workshops on reflection essays for Religion III and IV, on "3-2-1" notetaking for Religion I-IV, on triple entry journals and found poetry for Religion IV, understanding research based argument papers for U.S. History, and organizing notecards and creating outlines for U.S. History.  I've also thrown in mini-workshops on reading strategies like "PPP" and annotating. 

    I didn't get a chance to write last night because I had to pack for Turkey (my flight leaves in 5 hours- craziness!!!), and I am not going to have much of a chance to write about today unless I do it right now, so here are some quick thoughts.

    Yesterday we had a really fabulous session on "Play" in the Writing Center.  We split into groups and went from station to station playing various improv-esque games that can be used to do everything from building community to tutor training.  Michele showed us how some of her tutors use "cootie catchers" as stress relievers or sort of a Main 8 Ball for use during tutoring sessions.  Scott had us take fortune cookies and write down the fortune, then pass it around, each of us rewriting one word at a time, until the final fortune had little resemblance to the original one.

    The thing about these activities, and why I don't think it matters how utilitarian they are or are not, is that it brings back that crazy notion that writing can be (and is)  fun!  Most of us who got into teaching writing got into it because somewhere along the line in our lives and in our educations, we discovered writing and were exhilarated by it.   When a writing class or writing center loses the possibility for fun, when it kills any chance for the writer to enjoy the process of creating and composing or even just listening to and relishing in the sounds of the words- then it becomes some sort of Platonic shadow of a Platonic shadow of what a writing class or center should be.  It is so far removed from the ideal that it becomes some grainy black and white copy made by a printer with low toner.

    And, unless we teachers/writing center people have a chance to revisit that fun and pleasure and passion that comes from writing, we forget, and when we forget, we can't pass it on to our students.  So, that workshop was really fabulous for just letting us get back to the place that inspired us to write and teach writing to begin with.

    Today (and it is only 10:20 am) we just had a session on high school/college articulation.  The Stanford Writing Center shared a video they have which shows some of the things their writing center does beyond ono-on-one tutoring.  They have community programs, like Project Write, which enables local high school students to come to Stanford one weekend day a month for an entire quarter and work on writing projects.  They also have open mic nights for their students and their students' parents.  In addition, and this is something I learned more about in my SIG, the Stanford Writing Center is training high school students in local schools to become writing tutors in their own schools.  The hope is the local schools will then be equipped to start their own student writing centers.  

    What is great about all this for me, and for Mercy's Reading and Writing Center, is that there are potentially three other high schools in our area developing writing centers, and already we could think about making a Bay Area High School Writing Center consortium- a network for us to support each other (and share information). 

    Good workshops and conferences always have this effect on me: I'm totally exhausted but also totally keyed up (in a good way).  I can't wait to go to sleep, but I also can't stop thinking about all the *stuff* I have learned in the past 36 hours.  Its like a really exceptional cup of coffee; it is the feeling of millions of tiny jumping beans having a party just beneath your skin.  It is accompanied by a sound I can only describe as "eeeeeeeee."

    So let's do a quick round up of yesterday and today with some highlights in nor particular order.

1)  Ok, it is so hot, it is officially hott, as in hot with two ts.  I love hot weather when I am on vacation or have time to sit by the pool and drink Diet Pepsi on ice in a chilled glass.  However, like I have alluded to in a previous post, working in hot weather is more of a challenge, and sitting through meetings in hot weather is probably even harder.  But, nothing would be more difficult than hosting a conference of 40 people meeting in unairconditioned rooms in 100 degree heat (not to mention under the threat of the return of California's rolling blackouts).  So, I have to give mad props (as the kids said about 5 years ago) to the co-chairs of the conference, Clyde and Michele, for really going above and beyond to rearrange sessions, book a ballroom at a air conditioned hotel at the last minute, and switch out our tea party for an ice cream social. 

2)   Last night, the Special Interest Group (SIG) devoted to secondary writing center related issues went out to Compadres for Mexican food.  Again, I take it for granted that we have such great Mexican food in California, so it is nice to be reminded that there are many parts of the country where it is not possible to get a good burrito, or maybe even any burrito at all (I don't know how I would have made it through grad school without 5 dollar burritos sized bigger than my little dog).  Anyway, more important than the food was the chance for those of us working with high school writing centers to get together and find out from each other what experiences we have shared.  Something that has come up in several sessions this week is the fact that HS WC people don't know about other HS WC people.  There are only three HS WCs that have websites, and other than meeting people at a conference (which means you have to know about the conference to begin with), there is really no way to find out that we aren't alone in our HS WC world.  So, something to think about for the future is trying to work on finding each other, somehow. 

3)   Something else I am really grateful for is the fact the Institute has carved out time in our daily schedule for us to be able to write.   I am a member of the Composition party line that believes teachers of writing should also be writers of, well, writing.  And I crave and miss and am wistful for my undergraduate days where I actually got to take classes where it was MY JOB to make time to write.  So, I want to make sure that it remains MY JOB to write, and in the meantime, it is fabulous to be around other people who feel the same. 

4)  The Institute writing time, and co-leader Scott Miller's mention of a faculty writing group at Sonoma State, made me wonder if I could run a faculty writing retreat at Mercy for one day.  I could give out prompts beforehand, or encourage people to bring something they are already working on, but either way, the point would be to create the time and space for my colleagues and I to do the things I mentioned in the above point. 

That's all for now- there is so much more but I am so so tired.

This year, the International Writing Centers Association's Summer Institute is being held at Stanford University, so I am thrilled to be able to be here (literally, here- I am in the Stanford Writing Center using one of their computers during a break between our opening meeting and dinner reception).  I love conferences and institutes because they can be like summer camp for composition nerds (or writing center geeks, or creative nonfiction-heads...whatever the subfield, there is something that happens when we all get together).  It is of course great and essential to meet new people and learn things I need to know, as well as things I need to know but didn't know I needed to know until just now.  Sometime you even get some free schwag!  I'm a big fan of the Stanford Writing Center brain shaped stress squeeze ball already.

Ok, this is oddly indicative of current society- I am in a room full of people casually chatting about writing centers and stuff, and here I am blogging about it.  Or rather, blogging about watching them talk.  So that is a big hint I need to get out of this virtual conversation with some unknown audience and back into talking with real people in real time.  For reals! as the kids would say.

I'll try to write daily about what's going on here.  Stay tuned, folks!