If every scholarly author spoke as straightforwardly as
Stephen M. North, I know that I, at least, would read more journal articles,
and I think the field, as a whole, might get more done. He pulls no verbal punches
in his “The Idea of a Writing Center” (1984), and maintains that
no-holds-barred style as he critiques his own ideas in “Revisiting ‘The Idea of
a Writing Center’” (1994). It’s not just North’s approach that appeals to me in
these articles; in both I recognize elements of my own experience both as a
former tutor and a current teacher. North opens his 1984 article with a direct
run down of the ways in which both students and faculty, particularly English
faculty, misconstrue and misuse campus writing centers (p. 433), and I know I
am complicit in these crimes.
During
my first semester teaching college, after nine years teaching secondary, I got
quite the dressing down in some student evaluations for overemphasizing
grammatical correctness and formatting. Students expressed that they wanted
more than a “13th grade” experience from me. I knew where I had gone
wrong; when I encountered errors I didn’t expect to see at the college level, lack
of paragraph breaks or the non-capitalization of “I” for example, I immediately
made addressing such errors the focus of my whole group instruction. My next
strategy to help students making these types of errors was to, I groan now to
say it, send them to our campus writing center. That’s not to say our writing
center tutors do not help students, but I have realized, and realize even more
clearly in light of North’s words, that I am abdicating an important part of my
teaching responsibilities when I comment, even in the nicest possible way, “Take
your next paper to the writing center before submitting.” Knowing what to do
with students whose writing skills are below what I would expect to see even at
the secondary level remains a challenge for me.
North’s
assertion that writing centers should “produce better writers” (1984, p. 438)
is one with which I agree but also recognize that I have not, in action,
supported. Just as students often do, I have focused on the texts, the
products. Rightly, North encourages a focus on people, and I will bear that in
mind as I approach my interactions with the writing center in the future.
Ami,
ReplyDeleteI love your title! Who responds to North? No one! North is Writing Center Studies, right? Boquet and Lerner (2008), however, would appreciate a response to North to invite multiple perspectives into the field. I am interested in your blog this week because it is so different from my personal experience with writing centers. Before I ever set foot in a classroom as a teacher, I worked in my college's writing center for two and a half years. The focus on "producing better writers" rather than better papers was a mainstay in my tutor training. I conducted classroom visits and faculty demonstrations to advertise the WC and what it was that we did and didn't do. When I switched roles and became a teacher in the classroom, I encouraged ALL of my students to visit the writing center. I brought the tutors into my classroom for classroom demonstrations and even held group tutoring sessions during class time. Despite my personal experience and knowledge with writing centers, I continue to see only the students who feel like they need help with grammar work up the courage to take a writing center appointment.
I'm also interested in your statement of "abdicating an important part of [your] teaching responsibilities" by sending students to the writing center. I often view writing tutors as complements to writing teachers (and vice versa). One works in a one-on-one or small group setting and the other facilitates a class of writers. The challenge, I believe, is if tutors and teachers are on different pages, which is North's frustration with faculty expecting "A" papers after sending students to the writing center. The schools I've worked at have had strong relationships between the writing center and the writing program. This is essential if writing centers are to complement writing programs in ways that both fields find useful and productive.
Hi, Ami!
ReplyDeleteAgreed! North is a terrific writer and a gusty guy. I liked him even more for his 10-year reflection, but I wondered about what it says that his writing center was subsumed into his university's English Department? To me, it says that the business of talking to writers and helping them find a footing is a task too big for a program whose clients hugely outnumber the staff and who visit quasi-voluntarily. I can't help but think critically that, if talking was most all of what was needed to promote transfer, well, maybe the writing center would be alive and well. But what do I know? By the way, was any transfer happening?
Moving the writing center's work into a four-year writing program seemed like a great for English majors, but where do all the other students not majoring in English go?
I'm eager to learn what happens in a writing center. How do the tutors handle the surface errors that you talk about and that don't necessarily cloud the meaning of the content, but violate the conventions NCTE's Guideline for Professional Knowledge for the Teaching of Writing (2016) (page 4 of my print out) expect instructors to uphold?
"There is no formula for resolving this tension,'' the guideline says.
See you soon! Jeanne
P.S. I'm not sure why I'm named ADMHS Eng 9 on this post, but my blog is andnowforafewwords.blogspot.com
Ami,
ReplyDeleteThanks for writing. I like North a lot, and have always enjoyed the brassiness of his arguments (and advocacy) for the writing center community.
However, I'm going to go Full Alex for a minute here, and be the nutter who says I've always viewed North's "Idea" to be not a reflection of the true value or uses of the writing center (though it may *also* be that) but rather a positioning on the value of autonomy and siloing for writing centers--which I hate.
North's anxiety is clear from the beginning--this isn't just about what the Writing Center *does*, but its capability to *be* more ("they do not understand what does happen, what can happen, in a writing center" (433)). It's not about the relationship between writing center and writing, but about how "everybody else just doesn't get it, maaaaaaaan."
How different is this from the FYC people loudly proclaiming that nobody else in ES can understand their struggle, or lit people loudly proclaiming the primacy of lit as foundational to meaning-making and enculturation, or UI/UX people proclaiming usability king, or cultural studies people demanding that all knowledge be filtered through the lenses they have selected?
What is it about the humanities where everybody presumes not only that their work is a core essential of meaning, but is also deeply misunderstood and under-valued by everyone else? Could it possibly stem from those same everybodies misunderstanding and under-valuing all the other everybodies around them?
I also enjoy playing with North's notion that the "idea" of a writing center is the current idea he himself holds--even while he gives overwhelming evidence that the majority idea is opposite his own (and the historical one, too, as we see with Moore (1950) and his recounting of Carrie Stanley's U Iowa lab in the 1930s). It's an odd thought that any pedagogue knows their own role in *other people's pedagogy* (a term I just coined so that I can move on to writing a paper titled "You down with OPP?: There's no room for relationship, there's just room to hit it").
When North says "even those of you who, out of genuine concern, bring students to a writing center, almost by the hand, to make sure they know that we won't hurt them--even you are essentially out of line" (440)... I desperately want to remind him that none of the people cutting the checks for the writing center share all (or much) of his vision of autonomy, of a laissez faire WC that is "for writers" but never "for teachers." Maybe that sucks, but it's what's real. If the true idea of the writing center were North's, we would all live in a utopian writerly future... and there would be no support for writing centers.
Who is to say what the correct idea of the writing center is? I thought meaning was supposed to be deeply personal, contingent, and contextual? Maybe my idea of a writing center is right--for me; maybe North's is right--for him; maybe neither of us is right for the programmatic needs at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology; maybe neither of us is right for the demands of the writing center in 2027.
Who's to say? North, I guess (who responds to North).
As always, thanks for writing!
-Alex
Thanks, Ami, for your thoughts! Haven't we all been there: focusing on technical matters like grammar because it feels "easier" and alleviates some of the guilt of how subjective our work is? I do challenge North's diction in "produce better writers." The word choice "produce" implies an industrial and distant sort of relationship with our students, a relationship that puts us as teachers in the position of power to act, to "produce" something out of our own will. Hearkening back to Freire, we need to obliterate the hierarchy that this language perpetuates. I'm not sure what verb to offer as a replacement to be honest...maybe just replace the mantra altogether, as long as the focus remains on the students, as you point out, Ami.
ReplyDelete~Sarah