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Professional Development for Writing Center Staff: Students' Investment in the Success of the Writing Center Fall 2008 / Training

by Elise T. Bishop, College of the Ozarks

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Elise T. Bishop Eight years after being named the director of the Center for Writing and Thinking (CWT) at College of the Ozarks (C of O), I still battle the misperception that my writing center is first and foremost a computer lab. My predecessor, the cause of this confusion, was enamored of Macintosh computers and all the wonderful statistical analyses they could produce for him. As a result, he installed thirty in the tiny writing center space, relegating writing conferences to a wobbly aluminum table in the hallway. The new writing center, designed in 2001 (without any input from me), wasn’t much better: thirty state-of-the-art PCs and computer stations filled it from wall to wall. As if sealing our fate, the vice president of the college appeared one day to hang a plaque that read, “This computer lab was donated by” so-and-so.

The upshot of this identity crisis is that the CWT remains open 65 hours per week, causing a lot of “downtime” for my undergraduate writing assistants.

These hours with nothing do except answer the phone and monitor the printer pose a problem for us: C of O is one of a handful of this nation’s work colleges, where students labor to pay for their tuition. (Our official nickname is Hard Work U.) Part of my duty as a work supervisor is to train my student writing

assistants how to work, not how to look busy when there is nothing to do.

To keep my staff productive, busy, and learning, last fall I devised a Professional Development (PD) program that we call “Reaching for the Stars.”

One hour of work on a PD project earns a student a star on the PD chart. (Yes, students still love getting those gold stars!) PD activities include the following: reading articles from professional journals and writing article summaries about them to present to co-workers at staff meetings; writing articles for “Writers’ Bloc,” our weekly column in the campus newspaper, and for publication in professional writing center journals; completing grammar exercises online to strengthen areas of weakness (such as identifying and eliminating passive voice); visiting a writing center at a neighboring institution and recording observations; volunteering at the writing center we helped establish at the local intermediate school; attending or presenting at a writing conference; or proposing a topic of one’s choosing for the director’s approval. When students accumulate fifteen stars in one semester, they are awarded prizes, such as a special edition CWT T-shirt or a $15 gift certificate to the campus bookstore.

All of my staff are now required to earn at least five PD stars every semester.

The PD program has encouraged some of them to pursue several excellent projects that are beneficial not only to them personally, but also to other students, the College, and the writing center. Last semester, for example, a math/education major and writing assistant named Michelle took advantage of the PD program to collaborate with the instructor of the college’s remedial writing classes. After giving students in the classes a learning styles inventory, Michelle paired them with a writing assistant who shared their learning style.

Students and assistants met twice on the same assignment, once to brainstorm and once to go over the first draft. Both “Reader Response” sessions (what we call our writing conferences) were conducted according to the students’ and writing assistants’ individual learning strengths: for example, aural learners had music playing softly in the background as they talked about their essays, social learners worked in small groups, solitary learners consulted one-on-one with a writing assistant, and physical learners manipulated construction toys. After marking the essays, the instructor reported the best grades of the semester– and she went over them twice because she couldn’t believe the improvement!

She was happy, the students were happy, and –of course–my writing assistants were thrilled. Even though the results are not definitive, Michelle was so encouraged by the outcome that she performed the same experiment with the members of an education class, and she is interested in doing further research in this area, possibly in graduate school.

The CWT’s resident computer genius, Sam, undertook an equally successful project. The staff and faculty in the computer science department have recently begun trying to lure Sam away from his student employee position at the writing center, but he is a loyal soul and happy where he is, in part–he says– because the writing center challenges him to pursue his interest in computers to benefit the center, its staff, and its clients. Sam has recently spent hours and hours developing an electronic version of our Reader Response form. Of course, we probably could have purchased an existing program, but then Sam would not have learned as much or gotten the same satisfaction from figuring things out for himself. More than that, he can be proud of his contribution to the improvement of the day-to-day operation of the writing center, not to mention the money we will be saving as a result of his efforts. One of the reasons our center functions as well as it does is because students–like Sam–have a personal investment in its success.

As a result of yet another project, initiated by student employee Caleb, our center is now certified by the College Reading and Language Association (CRLA). Caleb assumed complete responsibility for collecting, completing, duplicating, packaging, and submitting all of the required application materials, no small feat. New certificates in hand, my proud staff feel and act even more professional than they did before, recognizing that the certification lends added credibility to them as writing assistants and to our program. They can thank a fellow staff member for that.

Other projects that have resulted from the PD program include an annual Valentine’s Day contest for staff, faculty, and students; a training program for the high school staff of the new high school writing center; and plans to host a writing conference next spring at the College for local language arts teachers.

The PD program encourages my staff to be life-long learners, to take initiative and responsibility for improving their own skills, to take pride in their workstation by personally committing themselves to its success, and to develop the strong work ethic that C of O is committed to growing in every student. One important effect of the program is that it fosters community, the sense that everyone is working together for a common goal. The writing assistants also realize–by observing their director continue to search for new and better ways of doing things–that professional development never ends. ____________________

Elise T. Bishop is in her eighth year of serving as the director of the Center for Writing and Thinking (CWT) at the College of the Ozarks (C of O) in Pt. Lookout, MO. Additionally, she teaches composition and grammar classes in the C of O English department. Elise aspires to introduce public schools to writing centers. In Sept. 2007, the Writing Lab Newsletter published an article she co-wrote about the collaboration between the CWT and a local intermediate school. She and her staff are currently helping two regional high schools establish writing centers and are organizing a community writing conference at C of O to bring area English teachers together to discuss character and teaching composition. ‹ Pagecasting in the UWC: Writing, Digital Media, and Community Outreach

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