...FROM THE EDITOR...

This month’s newsletter has a number of resources I hope will be useful for you: the “Resources for Writing Center Studies” (pages 12-13) and the list of the current National Writing Centers Association Executive Board (page 14). That list of board members will help as you think about whom you’d also want to see listed there. Then, you can respond to Joan Mullin’s Call for Nominations to the Board (page 10). Voting will be by a ballot included in a fall issue of the newsletter.

What you won’t find in this month’s issue is Michael Pemberton’s “Writing Center Ethics” column as he was otherwise engaged recently with the birth of the newest little Pemberton—Kara Lutz, 9 lbs., 5 oz.! Congratulations to Kara and family who are all doing fine. If Kara can spare the time during the summer, she’ll help her father write that column for the September issue.

This issue also wraps up Volume 21 of the newsletter. I look forward to gearing up again next fall when we launch into Volume 22 with the September issue. Until then, I wish us all a long, cool, relaxing, and rejuvenating summer with four-star R&R time. Take care.

• Muriel Harris, editor

What is dyslexia?

(Brachacki, Nicholson, and Fawcett 297).

The pitfalls of dyslexia do not end with one’s ability to process language, nor do they end at the elementary school level. It is a disability which hinders one’s ability to process information in general and in most cases lasts a lifetime. Dyslexia is typically first spotted when a child begins to read, because reading and recognizing the letters of the alphabet are the central activities of early schooling (Brachacki, Nicholson and Fawcett). But many dyslexic students score poorly on various aspects of standardized tests measuring competency in subjects such as math. This shows dyslexia hinders one’s ability to read, and it can affect several areas of a student’s education—and an individual’s life.

During the first year of college, students who managed to get by in high school may not know they possess the disability. Writing tutors can look for several warning signs. Many dyslexic students will have difficulty with grammar, spelling, and reading comprehension—language in general. Most writing tutors will see these problems in many essays, though. For most students their speech will resemble their writing. But a dyslexic student will many times be able to explain orally a writing assignment, and what they would like to do, but struggle when putting their ideas into clear form on the written page. A thoughtful, in-depth discussion can translate into unorganized rambling on the written page (Orton Society). The opposite is true as well. A student who may struggle to oralize thoughts may find his/her avenue of expression on the written page. The written essay many times will be not nearly the same caliber as the student demonstrated orally. In many cases transferring coherent ideas in a dyslexic’s mind to paper can prove troublesome, but strategies can be developed to help in this area.

A dyslexic student might also incur information processing difficulties in the form of following steps. Struggling to follow steps is an obvious problem for students learning to write, as writing is a very process- or step-by-steporiented task. Many students can see where they are and where they want to be, but not how to get from where they are to where they want to be. This problem is not limited to writing, but can occur when one is walking across campus. (The author tends to get lost easily.)

An additional problem with the disability is that it is often misdiagnosed and mistreated at the elementary and secondary levels. This can lead to a variety of emotional traumas. Many students are deemed “slow” by teachers, or said to be simply “not trying.” Many dyslexic students spend much of their elementary and secondary years in remedial classes or in resource rooms, or clumped with children suffering from retardation and disciplinary problems. The effect on one’s psyche is obvious—it is no wonder some dyslexic children grow up with anxiety problems. I remember being a big, shy eighth grader who spent each afternoon in the resource room of my junior high/ high school. Others in the room included retarded citizens and students who had recently returned from drug rehabilitation. Students not in this class were quick to stigmatize. These problems can lead to many troubles when students reach freshman basic composition courses. Many students will be tentative to speak in class, for fear of looking “stupid.” Many times the worst thing a tutor can do is be quick to criticize these students. The potential loss of confidence can affect their entire college career.

What To Do

When a tutor suspects a student may be dyslexic, the best thing the tutor can do is to suggest testing and refer the student to the university or college’s center for the learning disabled. Many students are reluctant to be tested or even see what is offered for the learning disabled. I know from experience that it is in the student’s best interest to both be tested and, if there is indeed a disability, to take advantage of the services offered.

Step-by-step

Many times a dyslexic simply takes longer to master things. This has nothing to do with intelligence. A tutor can carefully check each writing assignment, looking for patterns and working on one problem at a time. This breaks down the information a student is processing. Dyslexic students can thrive on this step-by-step approach. Many students can sit down and bang out a first-rate essay with little or no prewriting. In the case of dyslexic students, this is not likely. The process of writing—from brainstorm, to outline, to draft, to final product—must be emphasized and repeated using various styles. A step-by-step manner must be emphasized. If the process is mastered one step at a time, the dyslexic student will see the product take form and better understand how it was accomplished.

Write-like-you-talk

In order to write well, one must know how to speak well. Many good writers don’t always use proper English, but they know how to if they so choose. It is essential for students to see and grasp the correlation between one’s ability to speak in standard English, and to read and write. One skill leads to the others. Tutors can help dyslexic students improve their writing by noticing if the student speaks in complete sentences and encouraging the student to “write like you talk,” if they do. Grammar problems will decrease once students grasp the idea of proper sentence structure, through the verbalization of their thoughts.

Aside from improving sentence structure, discussion of an essay allows for dyslexic students to verbalize their ideas and what they are trying to do. This oral-driven atmosphere is where many dyslexics will make the most gains. Tutors can combine an oral approach to essay outlining with the typical written approach. Many dyslexic students grasp ideas and information orally better than on the written page; thus tutors should work along those lines. A tutor who works with a dyslexic student regularly should try to incorporate discussions regarding the student’s essay into their tutorial sessions. To a dyslexic the discussion of writing assignments can be a vital part of the writing process. It is in discussion that many dyslexics will organize information.

Select topics of interest to the student

Many dyslexics are very one-track minded. They find one thing and focus on it—and only on that one thing. (As a youngster I would only draw, write, and read books about hockey.) This can give a teacher headaches, but can also lead to successes and greatness in one area. Woodrow Wilson, Leonardo da Vinci, Tom Cruise, Albert Einstein,

W.B. Yeats, Gustave Flaubert, and Bruce Jenner are all dyslexics. With hard work and inner drive they overcame obstacles to achieve success (Seekins, 2). With this in mind, whenever possible, tutors should encourage dyslexic students to write on topics they know about and are interested in. Dyslexics will have a better chance to excel under these circumstances. They have more difficulty than other students focusing on areas which they are not interested in. An assignment they are interested in will lead to all-out effort and an unmistakable passion in their writing.

Complimenting to build confidence

If a tutor suspects a student might be dyslexic and sees the student suffering from a lack of confidence, it is necessary to find strong aspects of the student’s work and complement those areas. ( Works Cited on page 10)

An ounce of prevention:

• raise community awareness that, more often than not, most writing center programs are not adequately prepared to deal with crises of any kind, and

• help others initiate a proactive research, planning and implementation process for educating writing center directors and staff members about potential dangers and how to best prepare for their possible occurrence.

But, this can’t happen to us

Unless we experience dangerous or disturbing events first-hand, it is often difficult to imagine that they could invade the bucolic environs of the average writing center.

The events that converged to prompt me to think carefully about the issue of safety in and around the center was catalyzed in large part by a series of e-mail messages that appeared on WCenter during early November 1995. These messages brought the issue of safety home in a way that it had not since I watched in horror as a college football linebacker reached back and took a swing at my colleague, friend, and boss in my first writing center home. Mary Massirer’s initial message took me back a number of years to confront an event I would rather pretend had not happened and that no one in the writing center was prepared to react to in an immediate and appropriate manner. Reading the responses that message generated, however, helped me deal with the anger that I still harbored and begin to work to ensure that, if possible, events such as this do not reoccur in a writing center I work with.

Given the local and idiosyncratic reality of each writing center, it is worthwhile to consider the following series of questions—or, ones like them—before committing oneself and staff to a specific course of preventive action. (Take time to think these questions through.) :

Among the responses to Mary’s query that I found particularly useful was the following from Paula Gillespie:

Three points stand out in Paula’s reply that merit further discussion:

The moral: Know what on-campus offenses are handed over to institutional adjudication.

The third point rising from Paula’s reply is the importance of establishing specific procedures to govern client and staff activity within the writing center. While it is time-consuming to formulate, institute, and regularly review policies that, hopefully, never have to be called upon, doing so helps to provide both procedural and legal viability for the writing center in cases when action is called for. While academe is not the most litigious of communities, it does function on precedent. As with challenges to such procedural issues as tenure decisions, for instance, a basic principle in removing the possibility of successful litigation is to have a stated policy regarding an issue, follow that policy consistently, and document adherence to that policy. As with Paula’s incident, not having a stated conduct policy governing behavior in the writing center made it impossible to bar the offensive student from the writing center premises. With such a policy in place and available for public inspection, they can bar access to the writing center and its staff when needed; however, if it is to withstand challenge, such an injunction must be able to be demonstrated that it is applied consistently.

This awareness of the need for proactive and careful planning for worst-case scenarios is reflected in Katie Fischer’s reply to Paula’s message:

What to plan for? What to ask?

Starting to posit possible problem encounters in the writing center is tantamount to opening Pandora’s box. Once brought into the open, the issues never go away. Likewise, they seem to increase exponentially, revealing, if nothing else, the naiveté within which we often go about our everyday activities. A place to begin grappling with the issue of safety in and around your writing center is to engage in a process of self and program assessment. Figure 1 (page 7) provides a general (non-institutional specific) questionnaire to guide the initial process of determining how well prepared a writing center program is to handle a wide range of potential problem situations.

Additionally, many resources are readily accessible to help this process of crafting and instituting needed policies. Because campus crime statistics are required by law to be available to prospective students and other stakeholders, schools have a large stake in helping to insure that nothing untoward ever happens in the writing center. As such, such services as campus security and counseling services should willing assist in this process from the initial planning stage, through the drafting and implementing of procedures, to the training of staff to consistently and accurately follow the established procedures and policies. Likewise, the institution’s legal counsel can also be consulted during this process—in fact, many institutions, such as my own, mandate such consulting when establishing policies and procedures of this

Self and Program Assessment Questionnaire

1. My writing center has a formal strategy for dealing with “problem” students/

clients/ visitors.
Yes ____ No ____


1. My writing center staff has been formally briefed about how to conduct

2. themselves in situations where they feel uncomfortable and/or at risk.
   Yes ____ No ____
   If “Yes,” when was this briefing held last?
   
1. The writing center staff is aware of the campus policy governing acceptable

2. and unacceptable behavior among students, staff, faculty, and visitors.
   Yes ____ No ____
   
1. The writing center staff is aware of types of actions (implied and enacted) that are deemed physical, psychological, and sexual, harassment, abuse, assault, and battery.

Yes ____ No ____

1. The writing center is part of an established beat for campus security during

evening hours.
Yes ____ No ____


1. Campus and local police emergency numbers are clearly accessible near the writing center phone, or are programmed into the telephone’s speed dialing options.

Yes ___ No ____

1. Writing center staff work by themselves during times with little traffic nearby. Yes ____ No ____

1. The layout of my writing center allows for unobstructed views of its work

space.
Yes ____ No ____


2. The head of my campus security is _____________________.

3. This person knows the writing center exists. Yes ____ No ____

4. Writing center staff are familiar with safety and evacuation procedures for the building and campus in case of fire, violent weather, earthquakes, etc. Yes ____ No ____

12.The following items are housed in, or near to the writing center: First aid kit: Yes ____ No ____ Fire extinguisher: Yes ____ No ____ Flashlight: Yes ____ No ____ Radio (battery operated) Yes ____ No ____

13. Is any member of the writing center staff trained in and current with CPR

Figure 1.

nature.

The National Education Association also has a valuable resource to assist in such a process as this. Their 1989 publication, Classroom Encounters: Problems, Case Studies, Solutions, by

R. Baird Shuman, provides a daunting number and variety of actual situations endured by educators from across the country and the range of educational levels. Presented as individual cases grouped under larger problem areas, each incident is reviewed in detail and specific “best case” solutions are offered for discussion and consideration. This book has the potential for not only helping those writing center personnel on whom the task falls for creating needed policies and procedures, but for serving as a training resource for the larger group of staff impacted by these policies’ implemen- tation.

Conclusion

Finally, enough cannot be said in support of trusting in intuition and a sense of uneasiness or discomfort in any setting. Within the writing center situation, that trust must be instilled in all members of the staff, not just in the person in charge, and should be augmented by overt and continuing discussion and training. Pandora’s box of potential writing center-based nightmare material may never be shut for you; however, with a proactive process of planning, at least these scenarios can more often than not be dismissed as bad dreams capable of being handled safely, decisively, and judiciously.

Fischer, Katie. “Re: Threatening

Gillespie, Paula. “Re: Threatening

Williamsport, PA 17701. Phone: 717-326-3761, ext. 7736; fax: 717-327-4503; e-mail: [email protected]; Web

I’ve been waiting for it to happen for some years now, and it finally did. An earnest looking student walked into my Writing Center office, sat down, described his latest writing assignment (to defend a position), and then announced, “I’m going to write on the sin of homosexuality. “ I took a deep breath and then forced what I hoped was a friendly, inquisitive expression to my face. Inwardly, however, my mind raced to negotiate hosts of personal and professional issues.

First and foremost came the personal emotional responses: the uncertainties, the fears, and the doubts, as well as the countervailing frustrations and angers, which have informed my experiences as an increasingly “Out” gay graduate student on a Catholic Jesuit campus. And these feelings only intensified as this very earnest young freshman went on to describe the focus of his paper: he was writing to liberal-minded Christians, warning them away from the possibility of ever accepting homosexuality as an alternative, adequately moral lifestyle. I swallowed a little harder, thinking not only of my recent efforts as a liaison between the Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Group on campus and the Office of Student Affairs, and of our joint attempts to cultivate a more open and inclusive university climate, but also, much more vividly, of my early struggles growing up in a fundamentalist Pentecostal church which preached a vision of Christianity very similar to that of my earnest young writer. I remembered all too well the sort of ultimatum which doctrines like those of young Earnest (as I began to think of him) force upon young, generally closeted gays and lesbians: be gay or be Christian, one or

the other, but never both; a “gay Christian” is a contradiction in terms. For me, this had been lived experience, years in the closet trying frantically not to make that one ultimate choice, even unto the point of marrying my best friend and play-acting the roles of husband and step-father for four and a half years. I was 34, newly separated, and living 2,000 miles from my family and my religious roots before I finally found my way out of the closet, and better yet, found my way into a church with a Christian vision roomy enough to seat me, an Open and Affirming congregation of the United Church of Christ.

And now young Earnest was sitting here in my office, his traditional church doctrines, his scriptural passages, and his sincerity all neatly typed on the three or four pages in his lap, and I was going to have to become for him an intelligent, interested, but not overtly hostile, reader. For a few seconds, I wasn’t sure I could do it. In all my hypothetical envisioning of this Writing Center moment, I had somehow never foreseen the profound sense of panic which rushed at me from the past, from the closet whose door I thought I had unhinged in the opening. I had sat through papers on abortion, the death penalty, welfare reform—papers which had profoundly affronted my personal system of values and beliefs—but never had I felt myself, my own identity, so directly threatened— pushed back towards that old ultimatum, that suffocating closet door.

Finally, it was the sheer power of my emotional response which saved the session. Briefly, I considered ending it altogether, finding some excuse to pass the session on to a less personally invested colleague, but that very consideration restored my professional sense of self. I began to think my way through the emotions, sought to confront and localize them, and quickly found them. They were not emerging from the words of young Earnest, but rather from self doubts as old as my memories; these were voices I had been carrying since childhood—old enemies, old battles.

My smile to young Earnest became less strained. He clearly did not know of my sexual orientation, nor of my “liberal” Christian views on homosexuality, and in that irony I rediscovered my sense of humor, even entertained an instant of devilish delight imagining the look on his face, should I, like Satan masquerading as an angel of light, reveal myself to him. I did not, of course. My sense of professional ethics and mission forbade such an abuse of position. But in the newfound freedom of that moment, the old voices receded, and I found that I could listen with interest to young Earnest’s defense of God, Christianity, and traditional morality.

As he read his draft aloud, I took careful notes, forming the critical questions I wanted to ask him:

Call for Nominations for the National Writing Center Association Board

We will need to elect five at-large board members, a high school representative, and a vice president, who will normally succeed as president. Each term is for two years.

Please contact the people you nominate and be sure they are willing to run. Typically, the nomination for vice president comes from the current membership of the NWCA board.

Please send nominations (including name, institution and home addresses and phone numbers, and e-mail address) to Joan Mullin, NWCA President, Writing Center, University of Toledo, Toledo, OH 43606, or e-mail to [email protected] by July 1, 1997.

Calendar for Writing Centers Associations

niques must be developed in order to overcome.

Nov. 7-8: Midwest Writing Centers Association, in Kansas City, MO Contact:Shireen Carroll, Dept. of English, Davidson College,

April 18: Mid-Atlantic Writing Center Association, in Largo, MD Contact: Richard Profozich, Writing Dept., Prince George’s Community College, Largo, MD 20774-2199. Phone: 301322-0598; e-mail: [email protected]

Brachacki, Gregory W.Z., Roderick I. Nicolson, and Angela J. Fawcett. “Impaired Recognition of Traffic Signs in Adults with Dyslexia.” Journal of Learning Disabilities 28 (1995): 297-301.

Donawa, Wendy. “Growing Up Dyslexic: A Parent’s View.” Journal of Learning Disabilities 28 (1995): 324-328.

The last lines of this e-mail post prove especially important: writing center work is vital to the larger community. Unless, however, writing centers document what they do and how they do it, others won’t know their value. Unless we talk about how our practices help students as writers and individual learners, we won’t be able to effect change in both our immediate and larger environments. That is something that the Michigan State Writing Center has been able to do with their team of writing consultants, and their connection to the National Writing Project, to the portfolio initiative in their institution, to faculty development on campus, in the community schools and in schools from surrounding states, and in their interconnections with—and therefore support from—local business.

Those of us who attended the East Central Writing Center Association conference in Pittsburgh were stunned by the number of projects engaged in by Patty Stock, Sharon Thomas, and the Michigan writing consultants. Most of us realize we haven’t the support on campus (staff or finances) to replicate their projects; but we could garner that support if our those in charge recognized how writing center practices and philosophy mirror the teaching and learning initiatives currently forwarded by higher education: tailored instruction, efficient delivery, incorporation of technology, a holistic approach to learning. We’ve been doing it all. But few people know that.

Writing Center practices—in this case, our conferences and our connections to activities outside our centers— indicate a desire by writing center people for more exchanges, more publications, more assessments which demonstrate our centrality to educational missions (ones that match our philosophies). These calls also point to a need for more accountability of writing centers: that is, the creation of a critical mass of publications directed to those in the community outside the writing center, as well as to ourselves, which demonstrate how we have met and exceeded recent calls for improving education. How can we get support in our current environments unless we explain to others the value (there’s the economics again) of what we do?

Writing Centers undergoing program review need articles to point to, models to show colleagues, and fairly generated statistics (that we have created) against which they can be measured. So many of us are busier than ever, and yet, we need to take time to write for publication, post on WCenter, and present at conferences what it is we do so as to create a bank of research from which we can all draw. That’s one reason to look ahead to the national conference in Salt Lake City in the fall: it’s an opportunity to support and be supported by the wealth of ideas and research we have accumulated since

the last conference, to get feedback, and then to publicize or activate those ideas in order to increase community support for what we do. See you there!

Resources for Writing Center Studies

compiled by Muriel Harris and Mary Jo Turley updated May 1997

• National Writing Centers Association, $10/year membership

• Contact: Michael A. Pemberton, NWCA Treasurer Paula Gillespie, Secretary Department of English Department of English University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Marquette University 608 S. Wright St. PO Box 1881 Urbana, IL 61801 Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881 tel: 217/333-7014 tel: 414/288-3590, fax: /288-3591 e-mail: [email protected] e-mail: [email protected]
• Regional associations Regional groups include East Central WCA; South Central WCA; Michigan WCA; Southeastern WCA; Midwest WCA; Pacific Coast WCA; New England WCA; Mid-Atlantic WCA; South Carolina WCA; Rocky Mountain WCA; and CUNY WCA. (Leadership for each changes yearly. A calendar of upcoming conferences, along with contact names, appears monthly in the Writing Lab Newsletter.)

• Electronic discussion group: WCenter
  To subscribe to WCenter, do the following:
  

send to: [email protected]
(no subject line)
message: subscribe wcenter <your name>

(For further information, contact Lady Falls Brown: [email protected])

• Website: http://www2.colgate.edu/diw/NWCA.html

National Writing Centers Association
Executive Board 1996-1997

Untapped resources for training
writing lab consultants

Graduate consultants, too, can initiate their fellow workers into the lab’s milieu. Bringing concepts from their own advanced classes, these students can tap into their graduate-level courses in the theory/practice of teaching composition in order to educate their fellow consultants. For instance, graduate students who have studied theories of cognition can use those ideas for describing invention techniques which their fellow consultants can employ with clients “stuck” for ideas. Or graduate consultants who have learned about the theories of how basic writers compose can explain to their fellow workers Mina Shaughnessy’s concepts for assisting beginning writers. Obviously, using graduate consultants in this way not only lets them transfer theory to the real world of one-to-one consultations but also helps them to practice organizing a presentation, thereby increasing their morale and sense of worth. Besides, what more “peerless” source of information—the “peer” consultants, helping each other?

In what other ways can staff become a resource for training? If consultants are presenting papers at conferences, they need to gain confidence. An effective way to boost the ego is to have them deliver their conference papers to the rest of the consultants. So, consultants’ papers on helping international students or on writing-across-the-disciplines do double duty: training lab consultants and offering practice to the presenters before they “hit the boards” at their conference sessions. Speaking before their peers is, of course, much harder than giving the talk at the conference, but having received feedback from their fellow workers should dispel some of the conference goers’ fears.

Another expressed goal of training is to educate consultants about the numerous resources available to them, for probably lining the lab’s walls are textbooks (usually freebies from publishers) focusing on concerns germane to the clients’ writing. Eager staff, wanting to expand their own repertoire of skills, can present in a staff meeting the central concepts from a book; later, the presenters can create a handout on that topic. A consultant can, for instance, report on Richard Lanham’s Revising Prose, providing her fellow consultants with an overview of the textbook and suggestions for using its ideas with clients. In effect, the consultant increases her own knowledge as well as that of the rest of the staff.

Besides knowledge of resources, consultants also need to understand that labs serve a wider population than just students in English courses. To achieve this training goal, directors can turn to non-English faculty, inviting professors from diverse disciplines, such as history, business, sociology, and religious studies to a staff meeting in order to discuss the nature of writing in their own disciplines. When the history professor explains what his field considers to be proof versus what the sociology professor says her field sees as evidence, consultants learn about various discourse communities. Besides the apparent benefit of educating consultants, faculty visits also let consultants meet professors face-to-face, improving communication between them and showing consultants how they do, indeed, work side-by-side with faculty from many disciplines.

(Devet, “‘O, Admirable Consultant”’).

Such advice is often diverse but always

helpful, such as the following pearl of

wisdom about the emotional support

consultants need as they deal with cli

ents. As one departing consultant

wrote, Be patient with yourself. . . . If you are not sure about something or do not know where to find an answer, ask another consultant. Do not feel discouraged when you do not know something. One of the greatest benefits of the Writing Lab is that both clients and consultants can learn from their time there. Or the advice can be directed to a specific problem which an experienced consultant has solved: Don’t let the client force you into writing the thesis statement by staring blankly at the page for long periods of time. Remember that when you say ‘something like this,’ the client will write your suggestion down as if it’s the only correct way to do it.

Then, these pieces of advice—like time capsules to the future— can be collected into a notebook that is readily available for all consultants to read. By doing so, directors not only create continuity between groups of consultants but also evoke the special voices and views that only peer consultants as veterans of the trenches can provide.

Like dowsers with their divining rods of slippery elm, lab directors must seek out waters so necessary for ongoing training. The dowsed waters of the training sessions, conference presentations, useful textbooks, faculty visits, and advice from departing consultants should be deep reservoirs for developing the skills of consultants and for sustaining the labs themselves.

Devet, Bonnie. “National Certification for a Writing Lab.” Writing Lab

_{THEW RITING L}Newsletter 17.2 (1992): 12-13.

“‘O, Admirable Consultant’: TimeNon-profit Organization

NEWSLETTER PAID

Muriel Harris, editor _19. Department of English Purdue University 1356 Heavilon Hall West Lafayette, IN 47907-1356