The presentation we gave at NCPTW in Chicago this past November. It details a series of meetings between our tutors and tutors from Minnetonka High, Windward Academy, Edison, and Glenbrook North
2. Who We Are
• Fifty year old independent school
• Nineteen year old writing center
• Eighty tutors from grades 10 to 12
• Thirty interns/directors
• Rotating Eight Period Schedule
• Tutors and director staff nearly every block
• Over seven hundred tutorials last year
• Tutor students from grades 7 through 12
• Multiple outreach programs
3. Outreach Programs and Advertising
• Academy Prep
• OWL
• Eat n’ speak
• Publicity
• Self Study –Us!
• Our Blog
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nnYo4L3X
Go
5. Benefits of our Skype Sessions
• We saw ourselves in a mirror
• We saw possibilities for our center
that we hadn’t thought of
• Invited to visit Glenbrook North
• Learned to ways of getting people to
come to the center
• Invited to publish
7. • Obstacles to Skype meetings
▫ Finding schools that are willing to meet
▫ Finding schools that have writing centers
▫ IWCA resource
▫ Finding a common time to Skype
▫ Time Zones (Mr. Brandt’s flawed understanding of
them)
▫ Special schedules at school proposed difficulty in
availability
▫ Having to get out of class early
8. • Platform
▫ Skype is free, common, and crappy
▫ The recordings of the interviews play back the best
when taken with a mac
▫ Face time
▫ Google plus Hangout
▫ Oovoo
10. Room Set Up
• Figuring out how each school would set up their
interview
▫ How many students
▫ Conference table setting or one on one
▫ Whether to use a projector screen or computer
monitor
▫ Setting up speakers and microphones depending
on connection and amount of people involved in
the interview
12. Center
• Large room with computers and work tables
• Have a center pet- large fish
• Provide tea and hot chocolate
• Center also serves as
a quiet study hall area
13. Tutoring Help
• tutors available for multiple different types of assignments: Science labs,
History research papers, English papers
• Online sign-up for appointments with a drop down menu from which
students choose what subject they need help in and have the ability to
choose tutor
• Also tutor the Middle and Elementary school
14. Tutor Identity
• Makes the tutor realize that they have to be more friendly and
outgoing
• Makes them feel empowered as leaders within the tutorial
• Better communication skills—being able to talk to strangers and
offer them advice is a challenge that makes you a better speaker
• Tutors now feel like tutoring is a privilege
• Strong sense of community among their tutors
• All their tutors seem to be very involved in other school clubs, etc.
• Really good at winning someone over in a short time
• When tutoring a senior and you are a junior it reverses the power
structure
• Important to provide a sense of security to tutee in order to gain
trust
• It is hard for a student to go in and be told they are not as smart as
the tutor—again. Not their perception of the center, but they do
realize that to accept being tutored is an act of humility
16. How tutors are chosen
• Nominated by a teacher during their freshman or sophomore year, must
maintain a B average
• Able to apply for a tutor position as juniors or seniors
17. Paraphrase from the Skype Session
(we lost the audio)
• One of the tutors had heard from the seniors
that the arc was a creepy place and not to go in
there, however, when she went in she found that
it was actually a cool hangout place
19. General Information
• Located in Minnetonka, Minnesota
• Approximately 2,800 students
• Public High School
• Located in the Minnetonka School District
▫ Recognized as a school district of excellence by the
United States Department of Education
20. Minnetonka Writing Center - Video
• Highlights:
▫ ―Students don’t know us as a volunteer group, we’re
considered a secondary resource instead of an elite
group of students‖
▫ Their center continues to grow
▫ Birth of Center: November of 2007
▫ Off the Page Events
▫ Tutors offer help to students in all subjects
―It’s not just a writing center‖
▫ Writing Center Parties
―When you know someone just gets it, it makes you feel
really confident in yourself‖
21. Tutor Identity in Minnetonka
• ―Knowing at the end of the conference, that the
student walks away confident and feeling better with
what they were struggling with[…]Knowing that
there’s a degree of progress‖-- how the tutors
measure their success
• ―Figuring out how to explain something that I do
naturally‖– Tutoring others forces one to reevaluate
their own writing process
• ―Once you become a writing coach, there is a new
self-identification with writing‖
▫ ―Writing is now a part of what you do‖
22. What motivates you to get through a
difficult tutorial?
(Actually our cat but it is still relevant to
the quirky nature of writing centers)
24. General Information on the School
• A Public High school for grades 9-12
• In Alexandria, Virginia
• Founded in 1962
• Approximately 1,767 students
25. Writing Center Identity (From their Blog)
Did you know that the Edison Writing Center...
• is staffed by PEER TUTORS who have taken an elective course in
tutoring writing, including a major research paper in writing in a
subject area?
• tutors writing from ALL SUBJECTS, not JUST English?
• is a great place to go for PREWRITING or BRAINSTORMING?
• is a STUDENT RUN organization, designed with YOU in mind?
• has SAMPLE STUDENT ESSAYS you can look at to get an idea
of what your teacher wants?
• hosts a RESOURCE LIBRARY full of books on MLA format,
researching, etc?
• has LAPTOPS and a PRINTER you can use?
• gives out FREE CANDY for each visit?
• sponsors WORKSHOPS on college essays and more?
• allows you to EAT your lunch while conferencing?
• sponsors a monthly RAFFLE where you can win a GIFT CARD for
yourself and donuts/pizza for your WHOLE CLASS?
• is in its THIRD location in THREE years?
• tutored 248 PAPERS in first quarter alone?
• is a fun place to play BANANAGRAMS? (don't know what that is?
come see us to find out!)
26. Questions and Answers from Skype Session
• How do you get people in?
• Are you leaders in your community?
• What else do you do besides tutor papers?
27. Main Themes of the Conversation
• Helping Others
▫ ―To share my power and knowledge. That’s why I
became a tutor.‖
• Best Ways to Get Practice
▫ ―But really, here’s the pool, jump in, and let’s get
started.‖
• Taking Time
▫ ―My biggest challenge as a director is to slow things
down so people can actually have a 30 minute
conversation.‖
• Creating a Presence and Getting People to Come
▫ ―I like to think of the writing center as a virus. We like
to take over in little insidious ways.‖
28. Does Tutoring Make You a Better Writer?
• Yes!
▫ Planning
▫ Brainstorm
▫ Grammar
▫ Confidence
▫ Practice what
you preach
29. What We Learned About Tutor Identity
• Assertiveness:
▫ Tutoring has changed me as a person in that it has
made me more assertive about the way that I present
certain things so when I’m tutoring you have to know
or at least pretend to know what you’re talking about
sometimes if you aren’t completely sure but you can’t
just tell the tutee, ―Oh my god, I have no idea,‖
because that’s just not helpful to them if you’re not
sure we go to get a resource from the writing center so
being a tutor has definitely made me more assertive in
the way I present things.
• Embracers of Awkwardness
▫ ―You’ve gotta own it.‖
31. General Information
• Independent Day school located in Los Angeles,
California
• College preparatory school
• Writing Center established in 2010
• Student tutors
• A place to go for writing help as well as help with
oral presentations
• Tutors have worked with Stanford University in
efforts to improve the Windward center
• Grades 7-12
• 540 total students; 172 in middle school and 368 in
upper school
32. Personal Identity
The Studio for Writing and Rhetoric is a peer-to-peer learning
environment where students can consult with each other to improve as
writers and work on digital media projects and oral
presentations. Students are encouraged to come for helping overcome
writer's block, thinking about how to revise and improve a piece of
written work, or getting help with rethinking how they approach the
writing process.
The Studio was the outgrowth of the efforts of the Writing and
Rhetoric Across the Curriculum initiative (WRAC). Since 2010,
Windward has explored best practices in the teaching of writing and
oral rhetoric. The work of the WRAC
initiative has benefitted from the
formation of university collaborations
to learn innovative research on
communication, including visits
and discussions with
Stanford University’s Hume Writing Center.
33. Quotes
• ―Thai food with Dr. Stillman, [the head of the
English Department]; who will be speaking
about thesis statements. Initiating a speaker
series theming a food and a mystery guest.‖
• ―Younger students look up to me when I tutor.
Being a tutor has empowered me to give good,
personal, advice in regards to study habits and
getting help from teachers.‖
34. Quotes Extended
• One student said that in the tutorial he tried to
―find the process that has worked in the past for
the tutee‖
• ―I notice mistakes I make easier now‖
35. What We Got Out Of Our
Skype Sessions/Tutorials
36. • We saw ourselves in a mirror (literally and
figuratively)
• It was fun to show off our center, our tutors, and
share our experiences
• Got our tutors thinking more about tutor
identity and their roles as academic leaders
• Beneficial in that it showed our tutors that not
every school has a writing center and the schools
that do, do not necessarily operate in the same
ways as us
37. Continued..
• Made us consider revising our blog
• Presented us with new ideas
▫ Writing parties (from Minnetonka)
▫ keeping a statistical analysis of traffic
▫ ways to better attract people to the writing center
• Redecorating ideas- tutorial with Glenbrook
North made us consider revisiting the idea of
having a tea stand in the writing center or a fish
38. How to create you own Skype Series
• Break Out Session Steps
1. Create an account
2. Figure out your ideal set up based on number of
students, technology available, etc.
3. Skype with us to practice!
4. Get in touch with other schools
5. Do your research on them so you are prepared to
jump right in with the hard hitting questions
6. Skype with them!
7. Reap the rewards of the sharing of new ideas and
cuddly warm fuzzy feelings
39. Thank You!
Self- Study Director Mr. Brandt
Self-Study Group Karaghen Hudson
Emily Harwell
Hannah Jaggers
Maddie Haist
Grand Wizard of Technology Sarah Cohen
Special Thanks to the Schools Who Glenbrook North HS, Chicago, IL
Took the Time to Help Us Minnetonka HS, Minnetonk, MN
Edison HS, Alexandria, VA
Windward Acad., Los Angeles, CA