I am so excited to be working with the Writing Center again! I can't wait to be back in action, although, I know I need to re-learn how to use the scheduler and do the paperwork. I feel very fortunate to be in the position I am in, and for many very different reasons. One that has come to the fore during class is how lucky I am to not be terrified about actually doing a consultation, about really working in the center and talking with writers about their work. It dawned on me the first day of class that most of the people in the room had no idea what consulting with another writer felt like. I hope that my brief expression of thoughts helped quell some of their feelings of anxiety, and if not, I hope that I can become someone that the new consultants can speak with.
Another fortunate part of being back in the midst of Writing Center theory and practice is the fact that it allows me to get back to my roots in terms of what I privilege in teaching writing. I was lucky to grow up being exposed to writer's workshops and to thereby focus on process at a young age, but working at the Writing Center cemented this approach for me. They weren't always successful, and they certainly weren't nearly as effective as a consultation in the Writing Center, but I always tried to incorporate workshops in the English classes that I taught. Even when I couldn't, my work with writers in the past led me to approach my students and their texts in a similar way. After being out of the Center for so long, though, I forgot that it was the practices I had learned them that had so informed my teaching, and for that reason, I am so grateful to be "getting back to my roots".
I'm now one of those obnoxious students, though, because I just finished reading the book assigned for the GA's. The trouble was that it was just so cohesive, and the ideas were so well presented, that I just couldn't put it down. I bring up this malfeasance, though, because I'd like to connect something I learned from the book to the previous paragraph. From the earlier passage, it might seem that after working in the Writing Center and then teaching, I feel that I have some special level of expertise at helping writer's with their work. But the truth is that I still feel like I have a great deal to learn. The GA text (which I am too lazy to go grab and look at the title, presently) says a great deal about the dance that goes on in the moments in-between, those hazy gray situations where one can "follow the rules", or can slice, quickly evaluate and respond to the circumstances using strange gut-instincts that are actually complex amalgamations of previous experiences and ideas. The text notes how effective this artful slicing is, at getting to the heart of an issue and doing so pointedly and efficiently. I have to agree, yet the matter remains that this is an art, not a science, and I feel that to improve such a thing, practice, in addition to study is required. So, after digressing terribly, my point is that I am excited to learn more about this artful dance and to have more of those ephemeral and beautiful interactions that really are just like magic, because no matter how many such experience you have, there are never enough to prevent one from being enchanted, or from learning something new.
Also, from the reading I was actually supposed to do, I think at least, that I agree with the scholarship done in 2008 on North, that I like his first piece better than the second. I think I prefer it because as idealistic and unattainable as some of the ideals set forth in it are, I like having high expectations, and I like having goals to work towards. I do appreciate that he qualifies his remarks in the second piece, though, because sometimes people do get too caught up in the ideals to the extent that they can no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel.
As for Andrea Lundsford's piece, I love that she calls out the notion of collaboration and breaks it down into the ways that the positive term can be abused when the power being shared in the name of "collaboration" is really not being shared, or is so inequitably. I am so grateful for the shift in education that has made the institution at least more aware of its inherent propensity to lean towards models like Lundsford's "storehouses". In my education to become a teacher, there was a definite focus on how to shift the control away from the teacher and towards the students. The ideal we worked towards was not to let the students be in total control, but to be more a facilitator than a "pontificator". My experience is only at one institution, but at least the seeds were sown to reject the absolute teacher-centered, student-deficit model of education. After reading Lundsford, I am so thankful that the perceptions of collaboration have shifted as well, as it was just mortifying to read the injustices she noted of what others had been denied after working collaboratively.
