Mercy Reading and Writing Center

    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).