The First Week

I am so excited for this semester--I just have to throw that out right now.  Nearly all of my classes are focused toward the realm of education.  I was looking at my textbook shelf earlier, and I realized that all my books could also work for the other classes, and not just the ones they're assigned for.  I especially feel like English 303 and my Teaching English Composition are going to blend together quite a bit.

But, onward to this week's readings:

“The Idea of a Writing Center”--Stephen North

This one got me all excited and frustrated just like it was supposed to.  Being an idealist at heart, I’m very prone to getting all caught up in these sorts of ideas about how things should work.  This piece stuck me because I myself am guilty of considering the writing center as a “fix-it-up shop.”  Not so much in the sense of checking grammar and punctuation, but as a sort of “I-just-need-someone-to-read-through-this-and-make-sure-everything-makes-sense shop.”  I learned differently, that a consultant is there to provide a dialogue and help the writer (not necessarily the essay) improve, when I actually went in to the Writing Center, so I didn’t get much of a rude awakening when I read this piece.

I do feel like this piece could give some rude awakenings, though, to the audience it’s intended for: the people don’t really understand what a Writing Center is for.  It is quite an aggressive piece, full of very lofty ideas.

Which brings me to...

“Revisiting ‘The Idea of a Writing Center”—Stephen North

This is quite the unusual essay! 

I have to admit, I got a bit defensive when he started out critiquing “Dead Poets’ Society”—I love that movie.  He makes a good point connecting his original essay to it, though; they’re both quite idealistic.  In the same vein as he critiques “Dead Poets’ Society,” North then goes back and critiques some of the ideas in his own original work.

He makes valid points on all of them, but I cringe at his eventual conclusion: the idea of a Writing Center only being available for students in writing classes (not to mention a university that only offers writing classes to writing majors).  I feel like he’s make a pendulum swing from a highly idealized idea of a Writing Center to one that’s not ambitious enough.  He says, “…But I no longer believe that our energies are really best applied trying to live up to—real­ize—the rather too grand “Idea” proposed in that earlier essay” (67).  I disagree—I know that that “Idea” is quite ambitious and probably impossible, but I in no way think that that’s a reason to stop trying to live up to it.  Our Writing Center does good work, and the majority of the students who come into it are non-English majors.

“Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center”—Andrea Lunsford

I get what the ideas in this essay are for the most part, but parts of it didn't quite click with me. For the most part, it explores what the relationship between the tutor and student and what the focus of the session should be.  Should it be an information dump on the student, a tutor listening to a student talk about their ideas without offering any of their own, or something in between?  This essay concludes that it should be that middle ground.  I understand and agree with that, but I feel like the author gets off-topic with her discussion of collaboration.  The examples she gives are largely examples of actual group writing, which I think is exactly the opposite of what we’re trying to do in the Writing Center.  We’re encouraging and helping students to become better at their own work.  We read through it with them, help identify areas that need improvement, and help the student improve those areas.  We are not co-writers.

So, though this essay had wonderful ideas, it left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

There's nothing to report from the actual Writing Center this week, as I haven't been there yet.  But I am very excited to start next week! :)