{"id":9772,"date":"2018-11-26T15:23:26","date_gmt":"2018-11-26T20:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/?p=9772"},"modified":"2025-04-26T16:36:45","modified_gmt":"2025-04-26T21:36:45","slug":"a-new-collaboration-welcoming-a-high-school-writing-center-to-uw-madison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dept.writing.wisc.edu\/blog\/a-new-collaboration-welcoming-a-high-school-writing-center-to-uw-madison\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Collaboration: Welcoming a High School Writing Center to UW-Madison"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By Mike Haen and Brenna Swift –<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The UW-Madison writing center, like all centers, is built on collaboration. As tutors, we collaborate during individual consultations to help writers brainstorm ideas and revise drafts. We also collaborate with faculty, instructional staff, and teaching assistants across campus through our outreach program<\/a> to co-teach lessons on writing and lead writing workshops<\/a> on various genres, and through our WAC program<\/a> to help instructors integrate writing into discipline-specific classes and incorporate undergraduate Writing Fellows<\/a> from our staff into their courses . Beyond UW\u2019s campus, we work with Madison community members and provide sustained support for writing projects through our Madison Writing Assistance (MWA) program<\/a>. And Brad Hughes, our center director, has fostered strong partnerships with Madison-area high school teachers, through our <\/span>Madison Area Writing Centers colloquium<\/span><\/a> (broken link removed)and through a partnership with the Greater Madison Writing Project<\/a>. We also share materials and collaborate through our online writing center<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"Mike
Mike Haen is an instructor at the UW-Madison Writing Center and a PhD candidate in Composition and Rhetoric. He currently works as the Assistant Director for the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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\"Brenna
Brenna Swift is one of the graduate student coordinators of the UW-Madison Writing Center and a Ph.D. student in Composition and Rhetoric. In addition to working in the Writing Center this year, she teaches composition classes that focus on writing and social justice.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

All this collaborative work is grounded in reciprocity, with each party articulating their goals, needs, and expectations to learn with and from one another. In this post, we highlight a new collaboration our center formed with a Wisconsin high school earlier this fall 2018. We hope this post can offer helpful insights and practical resources for collaborations between university\/college writing centers and secondary and primary schools. We also hope this post can be a space for university writing center practitioners to share their approaches for successful collaboration with schools in their area.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On October 15, 2018, we welcomed about twenty <\/span>Johnson Creek High School (broken link removed)<\/span> seniors to our main center at Helen C. White. With the help of director Brad Hughes and science writing specialist Nancy Linh Karls, we collaborated with Johnson Creek English teacher Kyle Collins to organize a three-hour orientation to writing center work for juniors and seniors in his Advanced Placement English course. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prior to visiting, Kyle (with the support of his colleagues at Johnson Creek HS) had begun planning the launch of a new writing center staffed by his AP English students. He anticipated that his tutors would work primarily with middle schoolers, who study on the same campus. The AP class had already launched what Kyle called a writing center \u201cmini-pilot,\u201d during which some high schoolers helped middle schoolers work on a writing project. His students loved taking on the role of an \u201cexpert\u201d or mentor in their time with middle schoolers. The Johnson Creek schools have adopted an approach to teaching that values personalized, student-directed learning. Within this context, writing center work seemed like a natural way to foster collaboration, student engagement, and investment in the writing process. <\/span>A 2017<\/span> Peer Review <\/span><\/i>article<\/span><\/a> by a group of nine former middle school tutors supports the idea that writing center work can powerfully impact a student\u2019s middle or high school experience\u2014improving writing skills, boosting confidence, and even influencing career plans. Having worked at the writing center at UW-Eau Claire as an undergraduate, Kyle expressed excitement about how starting a writing center would benefit both his students and their tutees. As the day for our workshop drew nearer, all of us looked forward to sharing the challenges and joys of our own work in writing centers.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

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\"An
An aerial photo of Helen C. White. (from UW-Madison’s Photo Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Before his class\u2019s visit to UW-Madison, Kyle helpfully provided the writing sample we would discuss with students during a substantial activity (30 minutes) in the orientation and he also explained some of his students\u2019 concerns about tutoring. In planning our few hours together, we wanted to prioritize students\u2019 concerns but also offer students a fairly comprehensive overview of writing center work. So, in the week leading up to the session, we asked Kyle to assign chapters one and two of the <\/span>Longman Guide to Peer Tutoring <\/span><\/i>by Gillespie and Lerner for his students to read.<\/span>  We chose this text in part because it incorporated the perspectives of trainees in a Marquette University peer tutoring course, who had compelling insights into their writing experiences and the effects of tutoring on their orientations to writing. We hoped that these chapters would give students a taste of the transformative potential of peer tutoring while also showing them what writing center conversations look like \u201cin real life<\/span>.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because we wanted to prioritize students\u2019 concerns and what mattered to them, as shown below in our agenda, we started the day with a few reflection and free-write questions. We also asked them to bring a draft of some piece of writing that they were invested in, so they could improve that draft while practicing some of the tutoring methods they were exposed to with their peers throughout the orientation.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

After students introduced themselves and their reflective writing, we asked them to watch a sort clip of a tutoring session at our center and observe what was happening in that clip (#2 in the agenda below). The clip showed the instructor setting the agenda with the writer and prioritizing global concerns (e.g., thesis; organization) for a religious studies paper. After a short discussion of the clip and the tutor’s focus on big picture concerns, we moved to a discussion of global and local concerns, which we was inspired by Brad Hughes\u2019 useful <\/span>resource<\/span><\/a> found at our Writing Across the Curriculum website.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Agenda<\/span><\/i><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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  1. Welcome and introductions<\/b>\n
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    1. What is one thing about writing center tutoring that you\u2019re curious about or hoping to learn more about? <\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    2. What is one thing you\u2019re worried or anxious about?<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n\n\n\n
    3. Watching a short clip of a tutoring session<\/b><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    4. Distinguishing global concerns from local concerns<\/b><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    5. Five minute break<\/b><\/li>\n\n\n\n
    6. Following the break, Brenna and I led a discussion about the sample draft<\/strong> provided by Kyle. The prompt that the sample draft responded to was:<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n
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      \"Text:<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

      The purpose of this discussion was to have students apply the framework of global and local concerns (and they were prompted with the item below on the agenda):<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

      6. Reviewing a sample draft and applying the framework of global and local concerns <\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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            <\/ol>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

            \u00a0Questions to consider:<\/b><\/p>\n\n\n\n