Mercy Reading and Writing Center

Summer came to Burlingame last week when the outside temperature hovered around 90 F, and inside the MRWC, I think it was even warmer.  I love love love the old building that the MRWC is in: all the old brick, the big windows that are made up smaller, individual window panes, the view of the giant tree (is it Oak?  I should really look into that) outside, the white paint that is peeling away one millimeter are a time, the built in bookshelves.  However, coastal California doesn't have the insane heat and humidity of, say, central Kansas, so old buildings like our rarely get outfitted with air conditioning.  So, on the handful of summer days when it does actually get hot, the MRWC swelters.

Summer also means summer school!  This is my fourth summer teaching 35 or so incoming 9th graders, and we are now a week and a half in.  In addition to general reading strategies and writing conventions, I am adding a focus on information literacy.  Since so many students use writing centers to help with their research (in all its stages), I am interested to see how writing centers, perhaps in collaboration with computer science/technology departments, can work together to help our students develop their critical thinking skills and then extend them to the internet.  While that is something that I hope the MRWC will be able to move towards in the next school year, I am using my summer school kids as sort of a barometer to find out where they are at in terms of information literacy.

Something I learned today, then, is that they know how to use the search bar on a variety of search engines, but that they are not coming up with useful search terms to put in those search bars.  For example, one question they were trying to answer was "What is the size of Baja California, Mexico" and many of them typed the whole question into the search box.  Unsurprisingly, their searches yielded 1,590,000 results, and glancing at the first 10, none of them provided the information the students were looking for.  I prompted them by asking, "What is the information you need to answer this question?" and several volunteered "size." 

"Ok, so how do you measure size, especially land size?" 

"Ummm, miles?"

"Yes, miles, or square miles.  So, now that you know what information you need, what are you going to put in the search bar?"

After a few haphazard guesses, one student shouted, "Baja square miles!"

"Yes!  Exactly!  Now, try that."

The information they needed came up in the first hit (FYI, Baja is approx. 56017 square miles), so I hope they made the connection between 1) knowing what information they are looking for, 2) being able to choose search terms based on that information and 3) getting good results.

I suppose there is a crossover lesson here in terms of teaching reading.  Developed readers read with a purpose, they know what they are looking for, and they are able to single out important key words/predict what important key words might be in a given text.  Since they know what they are looking for, they know when they find it, and if they don't, they go back and either read more closely or revisit what it was they were looking for to begin with.

So, now that I have written my way through this, I suppose that the lesson for me anyway is that the so-called "habits of the mind" (it sounds so jargon-y) that my students need to have to be information literate are the same habits of the mid they need to have to be mature readers. And yet again, another reason for reading and writing to be learned (and taught) across the curriculum.

Confession: I am addicted to HGTV.  For those not in the know, HGTV is the Home and Garden cable chanel, and they have an extensive lineup of shows about home design, redecorating, repair, and so on.  Given that I don't own my own home, and at the moment don't even have my own apartment, I have to live my Martha Stewart meets Ty Pennington life through TV shows or through friends who live in parts of the country where housing is affordable.

However, in creating the MRWC, we are also looking at doing some redesign.  Redesign is different from redecorating because in redesign, you work with what you already have instead of going out and buying new things.  By moving some furniture in and out, and utilizing donations from various staff and faculty, I am hoping the MRWC will be transformed from its current utilitarian computer lab/AV storage/land of filing cabinets to something with a Writing Center ethos (which in my mind looks vaguely like the former Jahva House coffeehouse in Santa Cruz (Jahva, we miss you!). 

I have drawn a sketch of the potential new layout: 

Today I asked two of my students and one of my colleagues to answer the "What do you read/write outside of school" questions.  When I told another colleague about it, she got excited and started talking about how, in some newspapers, they ask famous people what they are reading at the moment.  That sort of reminds me of a feature in Rolling Stone (or is it Spin?) that asks musicians to list what albums they are listening to.  What is cool about the Rolling Stone section, my colleague's newspaper, and the responses on this website, is that you get to have a window into the lives people lead outside of their jobs (or school).

I am really interested in finding out more about the reading and writing lives of our students. What books do they read on their own?  Who write poems?  Journals? Stories? The same goes for faculty- I know one teacher who is a science fiction novelist on the side. Who else writes for fun?  What do the people I work with read when they aren't reading student work?

And parents!  We probably have parents who write professionally, but we don't know it.  Or maybe one mom or dad has an entire library of historical fiction, or a penchant for Jane Austen, or maybe they read extensively in several languages- who knows? 

Then, there are the reading and writing lives that most people don't think about: the reading they do for work, the emails, the instant messages, the notes they leave for their friends or family- all these little literacies that go unnoticed because they are so ingrained in our lives.

And then there are the reading and writing lives we would like to lead: when I was in grad school, I kept a list of all the things I wanted to read after I graduated.  Or, like many teachers, books we plan to read once school is over.  Or when we go on vacation, or retire.  The same goes for writing- we speak of taking time off "to write" or, if we are students,  maybe we plan our futures around the romance of writing.

Right now, I am looking at the students in the study center who are poring over the yearbooks they received today.  Three others are on the computers: two are checking email, and one is working on a Power Point.  I'm sitting here writing this.  It is the steady but imperceptible hum of literacy, but the term literacy itself almost seems to formal (or is it our perception of the word as form); it is the buzz of people communicating with and from and by texts.

It is a nice sound if you can hear it. 

So, our big announcement went out today to the faculty and staff. I've included some of the text below, because I think it outlines the basic MRWC philosophy. Or, if not outlines, suggests. One of the things I am working on is a more official philosophy to put on the site, but I think this is a good starting point.

· First, it will be a space for students from any subject area to drop in and get support
and/or feedback on any writing or reading assignment.

· Second, since the students will not have breaks in their schedule, the MRWC will also host an Online Writing Lab, which will be a web based version of the physical writing center. Many of the same resources that are available in the MRWC will also be available online, including the option for students to submit their questions and works-in- progress, via email. Feedback will be guaranteed within 24 hours (during the school week).

· Third, the MRWC will be staffed by a full time Reading and Writing Specialist, who will be available to come to any classroom to support any reading or writing assignments or projects.

· Fourth, the MRWC will be dedicated to fostering a community of literacy, which means that faculty and staff will have opportunities to share what they are reading and/or writing, and that there will be several community service projects for the students, including a peer tutor training program.

The Mercy Reading and Writing Center will be located in Room 109, in the Main Building, in the home of the former ESC.. Please note that the MRWC will not be a new reincarnation of the ESC, nor an extension of the English Department. Rather, the Mercy Reading and Writing Center will be its own autonomous program. One of the main reasons for this is our strong philosophy that reading and writing are skills that are learned in every class, not just in English classes. In order for students to excel at both reading and writing, they need to learn strategies that are specific to each academic discipline, i.e. since reading a science textbook requires a different set of skills than reading a short story, the MRWC will support reading and writing across the curriculum.

Several faculty have already expressed interest in the potential of the MRWC, and a couple are already thinking about ways we can support them in the classroom.  This makes me happy to no end. 

    "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.