(upbeat music)
(applauding)
- So, since our names didn't make it to the program,
before we start our PechaKucha,
I'd like to introduce our team from the writing center
and this is in the spirit of collaboration
both for this presentation and true to the principles
in the writing center and how we work with students.
We are four presenting.
So, Mary Cruz, a tutor, Adrian Carvey, also a tutor,
and Kirk Stone, who is the assistant director.
Okay so Mary will start us
and we will present some of the tools and methods
we use to tutor writing at the writing center.
- Good morning everybody.
So today we're doing something a little different.
We have collaborated together to talk about three elements
that are really important to us
and that is how the writing center uses groups,
live writing, and lenses to help students
become better writers and responders.
Writing is typically considered to be a solo activity.
Honestly, it's kind of sole crushing,
as you can see from the picture back there.
You kind of have to put yourself in solitary confinement
and write something you don't really want to
or completely understand or know about
and then you have to present it to be judged,
and this makes it difficult to have a positive relationship,
or even a half-decent relationship with writing.
However, it's not this way at the writing center.
We write in groups.
We have semester-long, small, writing groups
that consists of one tutor and three students
and we support each other as writers
rather than assisting for a particular class
because writing occurs in almost every single class
we're going to take.
Here's an example of our lovely groups
and in the groups we get to share our experiences and ideas
and we get to see that there's validity in our experiences.
We get to voice our opinions and see that our voices matter
and particularly that our writing voices matter.
So because the groups are semester-long,
you really get to build report and comfort with one another
and we get to experience a live and diverse audience
who's actively engaging with our ideas and our writing.
The groups, which is awesome and I love live writing,
sometimes we might disagree or challenge your ideas
and that's okay because that's part
of the college experience.
We're not always going to agree.
It's how we approach those ideas so you might wanna know
is if we get a group of people together,
how are we going to have a productive conversation
within a small writing group?
- At the writing center,
we use writing as a way to communicate.
We call this live writing.
Usually in groups that just talk,
one or two people usually dominate the conversation.
But live writing prevents this from happening.
Whenever a question about the topic
we're discussing in our groups arises,
we use live writing as a way to answer it.
When we live write, everyone in the group stops talking
and we write out our answer to the questions being posed
and we continue to write
until we fully answered the question.
Afterward, everybody shares their written responses
to each other and this allows everyone
to engage in the conversation.
But live writing is more than just an efficient way
of having a group conversation.
We use live writing because it allows us to think on paper.
It lets us explore new ideas and possibilities
that we might not have considered before.
Live writing allows students to use their own experiences
and their own opinions to engage in topics
or to gage conversations about academic topics.
Through live writing,
they see that their experiences matter.
This helps them develop a voice
and gives them confidence in their ability to write.
Live writes also helps students
become more comfortable with writing because they see
that it allows them to develop fluency and shows them
that writing doesn't have to be some kind of punishment.
To give students responses to their drafts,
we utilize something called lens responses.
- So lenses are tools we use to respond to drafts.
They are just questions that we develop
that concentrate on specific area
of writing and illuminate it.
One of them is More About, where we ask students to,
after reading a draft, to ask this question.
What do you want to hear more about?
And that opens up areas, points of gaps,
and shows where we can elaborate in writing.
Another easy one is called Overall.
We found that it's very hard for students to start writing
with agonizing over a definitive thesis statement.
It's easier for them to produce a draft
and then we can ask this question.
What do you hear me saying overall in this draft?
And then we can discuss it and come up with that statement.
A much more complex lens that we use
is called Conversation Map.
Students often use sources
by just dropping in quotes in papers.
Instead of that, we want them to see the relationships
between what people are saying about a topic
when they use sources.
We have them imagine a conversation in the same room
with the people they're using as sources,
discussing the topic and finding out relationships.
- So, to sum up, we're taught our whole lives
that writing is something you do yourself.
Almost so much that we're ashamed
for someone to see us doing it,
you know we have to go in a little room
and don't look, I'm writing.
At the writing center, we consider writing as social.
We write together and we enjoy it.
Because writing is often an assignment
that is given to you by someone else, they're collected,
they're graded, we tend to forget
that writing is a human communicating with other humans,
something we have experience with.
Imagine if we gave feedback to our friends
when we talked to them the way we give feedback to writing.
Thanks Bob for telling me about your weekend,
the run-ons were distracting,
needs development, B plus, buddy.
At the writing center, we think of writing
more as speaking and we use our live writing and our lenses
to tap into the communication expertise that we all have.
So if you get all three of these elements together,
groups and the lenses and writing in person,
you not just help people with writing assignments,
you can have egalitarian conversations
where everyone's heard and it's not just one old white dude
holding the floor.
You can have these conversations
in your meetings, in your classrooms.
If you'd like to know how to do them, let us know,
we can come to your classroom
and help teach you how to do it.
Or just come to the writing center and write with us.
Thank you.
(applauding)