Connecting the Readings from Last Week

I'm disappointed to have missed class, and there's a great possibility that what I say here may have already been discussed, but I'm going to touch on some of what I felt were the most compelling readings for the past week.

We have been reading about three things: What WCs can do besides tutor, WAC/WID, and WC administration. In light of the first focus area, I have been more than interested to read about some of these ideas, about putting WCs in the position of researchers and advocates for change. This can only improve the marginal status we now hold. I especially was fond of the portfolio research. Of course I don't think I would do things exactly the same way, but the idea of collecting these writings and using them to determine the needs of the institution--especially at a smaller one like mine--seems like an invaluable task that would not just help the WC or English majors but all students. It's a wonderful blend of a research project and a WAC project.

At a school where students' writing is constantly a topic of discussion--often a very heated topic--I know that so much of what people complain about is due to a misunderstanding of what WCs--and composition courses, for that matter--are all about. The article about reading our own rhetoric was important, because it reveals what we do to ourselves, how we shape what we are, and how others may read what we write. So this comes right back to this idea of shaping ourselves as something more than editors--and a project like the portfolios (and many others--we wouldn't want to stop there) would help others see that we are not the periphery but the hub of writing on campus. Or at least that is what we would like to be.

Owens' article again addresses this very topic, and says that "The perennial struggle that Writing Center staff face...is how we might better convey the pedagogical role of the Writing Center to students, faulty, and adminisitrators" (155). His idea of a "cultural center" is less appealing to me as I think it takes too much emphasis off of writing, but the idea that we need to be less service-oriented is an excellent way to approach the struggle he discusses.

I was not too keep either on the idea of the WC being committed to "civic engagement" as Wilkey and Dreese imagined. While I think there is some merit to the idea, again, it can make the WC lose it focus on writing. Too, the idea that a tutor and student--the collaborators--would be equally invested in the writing they were working on because it had purpose beyond both of them is just too idealistic to be practical. We all know that the majority of writing that goes on in the academy is for the teacher, is meant to be a performance, and is not an end but a means. I just don't see the faculty all suddenly finding ways to make writing assignments authentic. It's been a struggle for the course of composition's history, and I don't see this being the resolution.

If we take some of the lists from Jennifer Beech's article and make an ideal for our particular circumstance, I can imagine this wonderful place where people come to hang out and work on writing, sometimes for help, sometimes as collaborators, sometimes as part of a writing group, where documents and texts from every discipline and every genre were available for people to look up and work together on, where all students and faculty know and trust is THE place to go to work on yourself as a writer. There would be editing workshops so that this concern would be covered, and technology workshops as well. Here are my favorites from Beech:
"Alternative to misguided classroom practices" (201)
"Voluntary refuge from classroom evaluation" (201)
"Engaged in intellectual labor" (201)
Students as "Writers/authors/producers of meaningful texts" (202)
Directors as "Secured or Tenure-track specialists in the field" (203)
Directors as "Peer/professor/professional worthy of respect/Campus leader (203)
I think Beech dropped the ball, though, by not creating a list of how tutors could be re-visioned, so to this I would add:
Tutors not as editors but as collaborators, mentors, and fellow writers
Tutors not as writing experts but as trained readers, listeners, and guides

Putting these three topics together--WAC/WID, WCs as more than a service, and the roles of WC administrators--I can envision the WC administrator who one day is seen as a colleague for the important role they serve on campus, as an academic, a researcher, a teacher, an as a service to the college. Much as librarians often fight for this recognition--and have at least achieved it in part--WC administrators I believe have hope that their role in the academy will continue to push at its boundaries and WCs all over will come to be seen as so much more than a place to get your comma splices fixed. And it is going to involve WCAs being more and doing more than tutoring in their writing centers. It is going to involve writing in all fields. It is going to involve research projects and publications and conferences and doing the work of the field. But if, in the long run, our students and faculty can see WCs as the one place where writing and writers are made, it would be all worth it.