Mercy Reading and Writing Center

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.