Sandy and Jenny
 
 
 

Those with a knowledge of literacy, its myriad manifestations and its ramifications, must become actively involved in shaping the complex of technology that, in turn, shapes our literacy, our cultures, and ourselves.  We . . .are “written” by the technologies we use, or more accurately, those with the knowledge, power, and desire shape the technologies that in turn shape us.

     -”Writing the Technology that Writes Us”  330
      Christina Haas and Christine M. Neuwirth

    I carry all the previous writing centers where I have worked inside me. The writing lab crammed with small round tables and humming with the sound of “tell me more” questions. The writing half of a spacious learning assistance center whose immense glass windows look out at grass and trees and the glimmer of water. And finally, my last workplace, nestled under the campus chapel with damp walls, crawly bugs but also with a friendly atmosphere and three big wooden tables—coveted by all who worked there.  My sense of what it means to be a tutor as well as what it means to tutor has been shaped by each of these three writing centers. I have not just been influenced by the students I’ve worked with—though god knows they have had a huge effect on me—but by the centers’ directors, the other staff members, my fellow tutors, as well as the physical location and layout of each center.  I realize that my own identity as a writing center professional is, if not quite contextually bound, definitely contextually shaped.
     Which is why I’m thinking about writing center spaces . . . mental, emotional, technological, and especially physical spaces . . .

My knees are my favorite paperweight; my legs are curled comfortably up underneath me.  My laptop, Bea, rests warmly on my lap, her curser blinking patiently while the words, the thoughts, the concepts take shape in my mind and overflow--if this is a good writing day, of course--on the page, in black , in my favorite font, in color if that’s my whimsy of the day.
 
I’d never really considered my writing process until my first experiences in a Writing Center some seven years ago; actually, I’d never thought of“writing” in any way other than “paper topic” and “word count.”  But actually helping someone see writing as a way to express these vague, shifting concepts that can be born as ideas on a page--now that is something revolutionary for a tutor, and I was forever changed by the experience of calling myself “tutor.”
 
And I do believe that at this point in my life, I was not only honored to label myself a tutor, but more emphatically than ever, I wanted to stake my claim as a writer.  Loving words, enjoying the aura of a favorite novel--these are but  branches from the engaging and seductive experience of writing, of knowing your own writing process.  Mine involves bare feet, hot coffee, gurgling fish, long calls home to my mother—my favorite editor when the word is on the tip of my tongue, and a pleasantly humming computer named Bea.  But is this how others write?  How everyone should write?  How we write in class?  Or even what we offer in a Writing Center?
 
As I sit here, sipping my coffee, wiggling my toes, and watching Bea’s cursor blink expectantly, I wonder how I could show others, when I’m wearing my little tutoring badge, that the magic of calling myself a writer lies within moments like these.

     As a tutor, I tell stories.  They are often stories about my own difficulties as a writer—about finding my voice, being a horrible speller, or fumbling toward conclusions.  By telling these stories, I hope to blur the barrier between the student and me.  I am not the flawless writer who makes magic happen the minute my hands touch the keyboard; I am the hardworking writer who has a process which works most of the time—a process I can talk about and occasionally complain over.  I am the writer who procrastinates too much and who sometimes gets hung up on a single sentence.  If I am not perfect, the student doesn’t have to be either.  But I tell other stories, too.  Stories about the times when the words flow or when I have solved a particular problem and my essay flies.  I find that many of the students I work with think they are horrible writers and this label is so rarely accurate.  I want my stories to invite them into a community—a writing community, an academic community—a community they are fully entitled and ready to join.  So, I keep telling stories.
 
Sitting at my formica table, all of my supplies rest in their familiar places.  I sit with my left leg curled up underneath of my right--a semi-Indian style pose--slightly reminicent of my at-home writing process.  Tutoring  folders are lined up on the left corner, signalling silently those who will be sharing my table this afternoon.
 
A green pen and notepaper rest along the folders, to the left, close enough for easy access, yet closer to the student than to me, placing control in their grasp rather than mine.  Sunlight streams in the windows behind and beside me, warming my hair, while the rhythmic stroke of the computer keys blends with the rich aroma of coffee to lull me into a semi-trace as I wait.  Muffled conversation, preganant, thoughtful pauses, and light laughter add to the atmosphere, filling the space, and the time, as I wait  for my next appointment.
 
Movement in the doorway catches my eye and I am jarred from my introspective lull and smile at the student who is already smiling at me, paper in hand.  The words of greeting form on my lips as questions pop to mind: “What happened with that paragraph we worked on last time?”  “Did the talk we worked on last time help?”  “What happened with the revisions you made--did you get the paper back yet?”
 
She sits down, her own favorite pen poised, her questions already formed.  I smile and ask her where we left off.
 

     It’s around 6pm and a girl with blonde hair and a sorority windbreaker walks into the writing center and stands hesitantly by the front counter.  There is no one to greet her and she waits there, nervously shifting from one foot to the other.  She reads something on top of the counter;  then looks up again as if not sure what to do next.   There is one tutor in the center but he is working with another student at one of the tutoring cubicles.  The layout is such that the tutor cannot see the student and the student cannot see him.  I wonder  what the student sees when she looks at the writing center.  How do her emotions and expectations shape her perceptions of this place?  As composition teachers, we often talk about issuing our students invitations to the writing life, but as writing center professionals, do we think enough about how we invite students into a writing center space?  Do we think enough about first impressions.  What is the first thing students see when they walk into a center?  Computers?  Tutoring spaces?  People? How does what they see affect their sense, their feeling, about what is to come?

 
The scheduling calendar fills the space not occupied by the computer and I end up shuffling it, and my green pen, to the floor for easier access.  In this position, I am practically under my desk and in the hallway at the same time.  I begin coordinating times and requests for workshops, checking off each in green, working systematically as the sounds of the Center permeate my consciousness.  Beside me, a tutor works on her own paper,  interchanging sporadic typing sporatically and emphatic backspacing.
 
Beyond her, a tutor conducts a workshop, and from the scattered words I can make out from behind the divider, I gather that she’s working with both e-mail and uploading files.  I can see several students which are sitting near the divider, both intent on not only listening to her verbal directions and nodding, but  attempting to listen, nod, and copy notes from the dry erase board on how to save a document as text.
 
My attention returns to the schedule and I renew my efforts more diligently when I notice a pair of brown leather sandals just on the fringes of my vision.  I raise my eyes and meet the uncertain gaze of the girl in the hallway.  I smile and then her smile mirrors mine. Shifting my clutter of goodies unceremoniously, I make room for her to enter, watching as she hestiantly clicks the counter labeled “tutoring.”  As she stands, waiting for someone to acknowledge her, a tutor walks up to me and says, “I worked with her last time; I’ll take her.”
 
An unexpected voice startles me:“Can you fix the printer?  I can’t get my document to, um, print.”  I automatically shift my attention to the student next to, and above, me.  I stand up, leaving my pile of papers, workshop confirmation slips, and calendar, and move toward the printer.  Along the way, I pass the newly formed session just as the tutor smiles and says, “Now, where did we leave off?”

 
     “So, where should we put the computers?”

     I’m sitting on Sandy’s couch with her powerbook in my lap, an open Clarisworks screen yawning before us.  We’ve been talking about writing centers and computers and space for days now and it’s time to put our money down and create a design.  We know some of the things we want:  large and inviting tutoring tables, bookshelves with actual books on them, some comfortable chairs to slouch in, and computers, yeah, we must have computers.  But where do we want them to go?  Cynthia Selfe suggests that  one should “plan computer-supported writing labs/classrooms so that they are tailored to writers, writing teachers, and writing programs, not computers” (xx).  We begin to think about first impressions.  What should students see when they walk in the door?  We quickly determine what we don’t want them to see,  a wall of glowing computer screens.  We want them to see tutors—working or waiting—and we want tutors to be able to see them.   So, we fiddle and electronically shuffle the furniture around the space we have created.  There are lots of computers in our new writing space, but we don’t want them to take center stage.  We don’t want to relegate them to separate rooms, but how can we place them in strategic locations so that they are both handy AND unobtrusive.  So, where should we put the computers?   The design we end up with after a night of debate is only a preliminary answer to this question and a decontextualized one at that.  But it’s a start.
 

 “So, where should we put the computers?”  Once again, we return to the same question that we’ve been musing over since beginning this project.  I’m sitting on my loveseat, Bea cradled in my lap as I sip my fifth cup of coffee and listen to Jenny’s rhythmatic typing on my other (or should I say former?) powerbook.  I’m watching Bea’s familiar cursor blink patiently again as I contemplate not only the answer to the question, but, perhaps more importantly, how my own answer has been reshaped throughout my experiences as both a tutor and a writer.  In my first Writing Center research endeavor, I wanted practically no incorporation of computers.  “What should we include computers for?” I asked myself, “We’re a writing center, not a computer center.”
 
Yet, as I take another sip of coffee, and look at both of us typing away on our matching little powerbooks, I have to smile at the irony: our processes are so intimately intwined in using computers that I don’t think that we could compose naturally without them.  I look over at her, lost in thought, clicking back through her previous paragraphs.  Of course, she could be using a pen and going back through a handwritten draft, but would that truly be the same? Could we even function naturally with this type of writing process?  I silently answer myself, putting down my favorite X-Files coffee mug, “I honestly don’t think so.”
 
Moving my eyes from the computer to that imaginary filing cabinet in my head which stores all those past writer-thoughts, the gems of ideas yet to be, and the words that are floating somewhere in between, I am haunted now, perhaps in a good way, by something that I had once written about.
 
A FUN Writing Center.
 
That’s a term that I have always associated with writing, and something that I think all  writing atmospheres--both personal and institutional--should be.  Could be. I thought--and still do--that Writing Centers should be constructed around a vision, and mine includes three principles:

Focused on writing
Uninhibiting
Natural
 
First, a Writing Center should be geared to one goal, one focus: writing.  I’ve learned through my own experiences that computers can be--and are--a part of the composing process.  Computers are not the enemy!  However, they need to be deliberately mapped out areas that are conducive to writing.  Once again, I return to the question, “So, where should we put the computers?”
 
Next, a Writing Center should be uninhibiting.  One of the most important aspects of writing is learning to take risks.  Students need to be in an environment where they feel that they can take risks and recieve feedback on their progress.  Atmosphere, then, is especially important in achieving an uninhibiting environment.  Bright colors, comfortable chairs, plants, and small workstations are all ideas that could complement the most important facet of an uninhibiting Writing Center--accessible and approachable tutors.  In Training Tutors for Writing, Thomas J. Registad and Donald A. McAndrew state that  “Tutors should be available and they should look available. This look can be created by having tutors sit so that writers can sit next to them and by having tutors keep the work space clear of their own gear.  What writer could refuse an obviously apprachable tutor in a pleasant work area?” (35).
 
And lastly, both focus and atmosphere contribute to creating the environment that surrounds students when they enter the Writing Center, and this environment should be natural; in other words, it should somehow touch on the writers’ processes for composing.  There are a variety of ways that students write, revise, rethink, and explore their ideas.  And Writing Centers should be concerned with--and prioritizing the space around--these varied components of the writing process.  The end result could then be a comfortable, interactive, natural--and yes--fun Writing Center.
 
I reach for my now cold coffee and sip slowly, aware of Jenny’s typing once again, complementing the gurgle of my fish.  I think, yet again, of space.  I know now that this is the heart of a Writing Center.  The answer to this question is revealed, then, in not only our choices for our physical design, but our vision for what a Writing Center should be. I think of Joyce A. Kinkead’s thoughts on how to define a Writing Center:

  A center which does not have a clear picture of what it is
  and where it fits into its institutional environment is doomed
  to strain and stress.  Only by knowing its context can a director
  decide whether to work within those contexts or against
  them (Writing Centers in Context 236).

    I have to say that I’m a bit jealous of Sandy’s acronym; I have not developed such an elegant and focused framework to put my thoughts about writing centers into, or more accurately, I keep expanding and reshaping the framework I do have.  My own writing center experiences—as a tutor, a tutor trainer, and an advocate for students—have had much to do with my shifting and evolving sense of what a writing center is and what it can be.  But Sandy’s framework doesn’t seem limiting to me; instead it forces me to ask myself about my own writing center values.  What is at the center of my own writing center vision?
 

Focused on literacy:
Two of the three writing centers I have worked in have been part of larger learning centers and, perhaps as a result, I see writing centers as assisting students with a range of literacy practices:  writing, reading, and even study skills.  I don’t think every writing center has to take on this wider range of duties, but as a firm believer in whole language principles, it seems strange to me to separate such interconnected skills.
 
Empowering:
This value touches on so many aspects of writing center practice—from the way tutors are trained to work with students to the physical layout of the center itself.  Sandy talks a lot about wanting her students to feel like writers, no, to become writers, and I have to agree.  A writing center should not only be “inviting,” a place that does not physically intimidate or alienate its users, but writing center staff should be “inviting” students into the larger academic community—helping them to join the “conversation” that Mike Rose talks so vividly about.

Constantly learning, constantly evolving:
Like skilled teachers, effective writing centers should never stop learning about what they could do better or teaching those who work in them.  Students utilizing the writing center are not the only ones who need to be empowered; student tutors themselves are para-professionals and they should be given as many development opportunities as possible.

"Place that rectangle there...Do you like that?"

"I think we need a support center, you know, where we could have a receptionist."
"Actually, I was thinking along the lines of coffee...We are going to have a coffee area,  right?"
Pause...We look at each other and say aloud what we’ve been mulling over for weeks  now.  It’s time to decide.  To put it on paper, in black and white (or, if I get my wish, in color).
Jenny looks up at me and I click for Bea to save what we’ve done.
We mouth the words now together: “So, where should we put the computers?”
 

 
Sharing our narratives with each other and writing in the same environment for this project has helped me envision what I--what we--have learned throughout our own unique and joint ventures into the world of Writing Centers.  I now see my own past differently, filled with signs and markers that were there all along, calling to me, whispering of what I know is right.
 
My memories are many and varied, and the most vivid ones are, interestingly, not those that I would have originally filed away as meaningful . . .
 
I see a card, sealed carefully in a lavendar envelope and detailed with bright pink ink,  waiting expectantly in my mailbox, the first actually, that is acknowledging me as someone other than “Sandy.”  Now I am a tutor, someone who helps. Her simple gesture suddenly becomes one of Those Moments.

I see my student, her red-rimmed eyes staring at me as she professes that her writing is awful--that she hopes to work hard enough to just pass.  I walk her down to the Writing Center myself, my voice reassuring, and she enters the door behind me, hoping only to fade into the woodwork.  I now see her at the end of the semester, diligently smoothing the crinkles out of her final paper, her pride evident.  “I can’t wait to tell Corey about this paper!”  Her enthusiasm is contagious and her smile warms me and I think, yes, she has experienced being a writer.  She’s shared, risked, and found the power in her.  I return her smile happily.
 
I see myself--now, in the present, as I write this composition--on the border of student,the fringe of professional.  I am a writer and I always want to remember how much I love sitting here, feeling what it is like to create and to shape. I see my own process now with new eyes--crossed legs, bare feet, and humming powerbook--and think of just how writing has become part of who I am and how I see myself.
 
A dog-eared and highlighted page of Christina Haas’ Writing Technology (that has become one of my favorite thought passages) returns to me vividly: “Developers’ decisions about tools are made much like other kinds of human decisions are made: by fiat or by neglect, on a whim or through political power plays, to meet a deadline, to appease the boss, to save money” (218). I sip my coffee, smile, and know now why this particular passage, fleeting in the intensive readings of a summer session, has stuck with me, flirting with my subconsious.  My decisions about how I want my writing process, and my writing job, to be have never rested on politics or whimsy.  It is part of me, it is at the center of me, the center of why I write. This, too, is part of my learning and I see this now too.  We all come to forks in the road where we must make choices, must stake our claims in that permanent black and white (or, of course color!) and I only hope that I am always guided by the writer within me.

I see now where the computers should go.

links back to our website:
                                    Writing Center Visions: Main Page
                                    Discovering the Center of Writing: Creating New Spaces for Composing in a WC 
                                    Our Writing Center Design
                                    Telling Stories: Writing Center Narratives
                                    Writing Center Resources on the Net
                                    Writing Center Resources (Print)