PeerCentered

So it is officially one week after the flood that tried to shut down the Salt Lake Community College Student Writing Center. They are are doing a massive clean-up asbestos abatement on our floor, we're back down in our building's lobby. We're not feeling so homeless this time, as we have a phone, a computer, and more students than we have chairs for. Our College's President and Academic Vice President have walked by regularly and have been impressed. Here's what the hall near the SLCC Student Writing Center looks like some moments ago: Sad. Well, as they say, whatever doesn't kill us....

Open mic was a great success! We all had fun, laughed, felt, were moved, and laughed even more. I will have to say that the entire trip was worth Paula using the phrase "Belching Divas" in reference to ordering cucumber seeds during the winter. Sorry you all missed it. zwk Update. Here is a photo of me reciting poetry. Here is the link to the SI Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com/groups/wcsi2008/pool/

To all the folks that missed the webcast: Boy did you miss out. I was great. But that was not all that happened on day 3, just the most public. I had planned to write every night, but last night a group of us returned late--read 2345 local time--from a fantastic rendition of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." As Brad asked, "What made it fantastic?" Well, the actors did not really hurt the situation, nor did the lighting, music, setting, and the script seemed to be useful. To be honest, the actors performed brilliantly. The adaptation made parts of the setting more modern--such as dress and props--but the lines were more or less original. And the dancing at the end was really great, also. The more academic--if anything can be more academic than Shakespeare--activities of day 3 included an opening session discussing how to prepare consultants for working with multilingual writers. As you can tell, multilingual writers are something of a theme for the SI, but for good r...

Great flood of 2008 , originally uploaded by Student Writing Center . Because of a problem with a new roof, the Student Writing Center was forced out of its traditional home by pouring water. We found a new space, however, in the foyer of our building.

It looks like peercentered.org is finally playing nice. Enjoy the new home!

Blogger.com is being very uncooperative on the redirect to peercentered.org. I'll keep you posted.

Hello all. Another packed day here at the Pyle Center. The weather is holding, the food is good, the conversation stimulating: A good day. But what a day. It started with an in-depth cursory look at diversity in the writing center. Follow me on this one. It was in-depth because we discussed and questioned many oft-overlooked topics within diversity, but cursory because we could not run all the conversations out to their full length or strength. I doubt any conversation about diversity within any institution can ever be really run out, but we did not even get fully warmed up. One point that really stood out to me about the discussion was the varied--and often unaddressed--expectations. It seems that so many topics and points within diversity are hung up on unreconciled--or inadequately articulated--expectations, which are not being met. Since diversity means different thing in different situations--rhetorical or otherwise--and since each mean carries specific, if unexamined and una...

The server on which PeerCentered was hosted was caught in a flood. I have, therefore, moved PeerCentered to its own domain, www.peercentered.org. Hopefully all will go well.

To follow on Clint's message about the webcast, I would like to make a few comments about the SI and who it is progressing. To begin; we are busy and a great deal of information is being shared and discussed. There is no real way to contain it all, but the discussions and ideas that have spawned are intriguing and inspiring. To we began the discussion by looking at the similarities and differences between the varied centers represented. Four basic types of centers were detailed: high school, community college, American universities, and international universities. Each has specific needs and goals, but they all are focused on writing and writers. From there we discussed the use of theory and how it to use 'theory' as a verb, not just a noun. This took some work to wrap my head around, but by the end of the session, my mind--and it would appear the minds of those around me--were spinning with new ideas and possibilities. One phrase that I hear over and over hear: "I...

The IWCA Summer Institute (an annual gathering of writing center professionals from around the world which focuses on writing centers and writing center development) will conduct a live webcast this year: How Did We Get Here? Finding and Mapping Writing Center Literature Presenter(s): Neal Lerner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Elisabeth Piedmont-Marton, Southwestern University Status: Not Started During this interactive webcast session, originating from the 2008 IWCA Writing Center Summer Institute, we'll survey the field of writing center literature, identifying and discussing key texts and ideas that helped define and continue to shape the field. We'll do this, in part, with game playing to examine participants' knowledge of writing center literature. Next, we'll move beyond surveys and games to take a critical look at writing center literature and consider such questions as, have some of our founding texts become codifying and limiting, a...

I'd like to introduce Kayla into our peer-centered discussion. She's posting under my identity because she will be here only fleetingly. We would love to hear any of your comments! Here she is: Hi! My name is Kayla Sinclair. I am a sophomore at Meridian High School in Idaho and I am part of the TRiO Upward Bound program. TRiO is a program helping first-generation college students with low income get into college and get the job they want. One thing TRiO does is a five-week summer program where the students stay on Boise State University campus for five weeks. While we're here, we take two classes and do a lot of activities, including service-learning projects. Some students are doing internships instead of their second class. My internship is at the BSU Writing Center. Since I've been working at the center, I've been thinking that it would be really nice, not to mention really useful, to have a writing center at Meridian High. I am working on an artic...