PeerCentered

Last weekend was the 25th NEWCA , held at the University of Hartford in the wilds of Connecticut. This was the first conference I attended as a steering committee member, and it really made a difference; I always had a good time attending NEWCA, but I had such a great time this year! Harvey Kail from the University of Maine in Orono gave a great keynote, and Neal Lerner from MIT gave a good talk after lunch about the history of NEWCA. I managed to sit in on some really interesting sessions. I chaired a session called "Record, Reflect, Renew: Using iPods to Understand Writing Center Work," in which students/tutors were using iPods to record tutor sessions for analysis and tutor training purposes. The second session I attended, "Decentering the Center: Taking the Writing Center Pedagogy into the Community," was co-presented by two Teaching Fellow from St. John's Univ. in Queens; they discussed taking writing center pedagogy into the community - Meridith into a chu...

Over on the podcast, you'll find a new episode featuring Nancy Grimm !

At his plenary wrap-up of the Joint NCPTW/IWCA Conference, writing center and peer tutoring legend Harvey Kail asked a simple question in response to the various ideas that came his way during the conference: "Are we asking too much of peer tutors?" Harvey was referring to specifically, I think, Nancy Grim's keynote challenge that writing centers take on new social realities and extend their project to important issues in social justice such as anti-racism work (among others.) (By the way, I only had the opportunity to record the tail end of Nancy's speach, and I will no doubt be podcasting it soon.) After he finished his talk, Harvey had us write on 3 questions--all relating to the challenges that the conference threw at us as writing center folk. The table I went to sit at were very interested in Harvey's statement about peer tutors. One person thought it was a false dichotomy, as if there was one pure thing that we are asking of peer tutors and that was s...

I've been pretty busy the last couple of days coordinating tech support and hosting my own personal Mike Douglas show with writing center megastars by the Alexis pool. I haven't been able to blog as I wanted, nor to record any sessions at all. I've run into various PeerCenterites, and we had our flash mob yesterday at noon. Despite Tiffany Turcotte's belief that our flash mob was at midnight, instead of noon, we had a great time. In between running around solving people's tech issues along with Allison Scheel, David Rockwell, Suzy Gehring, Zach Koppelman, Dusty Bailey, Jeannette Jeanault, and Chris Bently, I've seen many interesting sessions today. I have to run to the banquet now. More later.

I encourage all PeerCenteristas to blog during their time in Las Vegas for the upcoming NCPTW/IWCA Joint Conference. I'll be posting, although I have several official duties that most likely won't let me attend many sessions. I'll also (I hope to have time that is) be conducting some podcast interviews. If I have the time and the gumption, I'll post those on-the-fly! We'll also be having our PeerCentered (facebook) flash mob in the Apollo foyer on Thursday at 12:05. It will last for 10 minutes. Come get your PeerCentered button! See you in Vegas!

Today I had the opportunity to chat with Claire Hughes, Coordinator of the Weber State University Writing Center and President of the Rocky Mountain Writing Centers Association about the upcoming NCPTW/IWCA joint Conference in Las Vegas. Give it a listen ! (And apologies for the sound quality, but it was an old-skool phone line recording!)

This just in from Brian Fallon of NCPTW: NCPTW Peer Tutor Scholarship and Travel Awards The National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing is pleased to announce that monetary awards to support the scholarship, service, and conference participation of undergraduate and graduate writing center tutors have been established for the 2008 IWCA/NCPTW Las Vegas conference. The Scholarship and Travel Awards (up to $250) will support conference travel expenses for peer tutors who have registered for the upcoming 2008 IWCA/NCPTW Las Vegas conference. The committee will accept multiple applications from one institution but will try to make a balanced distribution of the scholarship funds to ensure awards for tutors from a number of schools. Tutors are encouraged to apply collaboratively for one award. Candidates for these awards must provide the following materials in their applications: 1. Name, e-mail address, mailing address, phone number, institution, and academic level (undergraduate or...

The facebook PeerCentered strikes again! PeerCentered will be hosting a flash mob at the upcoming International Writing Centers Association (IWCA)/ National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing (NCPTW) 2008 Conference in Las Vegas. For 10 minutes starting at 12:05 on October 30, 2008, PeerCentered will mob the Zeus Foyer in the conference hote l, the Alexis Park*. Come get a PeerCentered button and meet your fellow PeerCenteristas.

Hi, all! This past weekend was the 24th Annual Northeast Writing Centers Association Conference , this year hosted at the University of Vermont, in Burlington, Vermont - one of the most beautiful (and biggest!) campus I've ever seen. It was quite a conference, and it made me realize just how much I missed by not going last year. We all had such a great time. I was fortunate enough to be one of the presenters this year, and, along with fellow tutors and graduate students Tamara Lebron and Zahra Patterson, led a well-received panel presentation on our experiences having (audio) taped a tutoring session, then transcribing that session and analyzing it. Our work was prompted by an assignment given by our professor and Writing Center Director (and overall fearless leader), Dr. Patricia Stephens, who attended our NEWCA session with us and was able to offer insight into her reasoning behind having given this assignment as a means for tutors to reflect upon their tutoring strategies and te...

I've just arrived home from Day 1 of the Rocky Mountain Peer Tutoring Conference. Today's sessions were geared for directors but peer tutors also had some informal activities to take part in. We had presentations from Dan Emery and Glenn Newman from the University of Utah on ESL and the Space Between Disciplines. Sylvia Newman from Weber discussed template theories. Julie Simon from Southern Utah University explored the sticky issue of grammar and the Center. I then led a discussion with Michele Eodice (our keynote speaker) about _Everyday Writing Center_ from USU press. _EWC_ was co-authored by Anne Ellen Geller, Frankie Condon, Beth Boquet, Meg Carol, and Michele. I video taped that discussion, but I'm not quite certain how it turned out. If it turned out ok, I will probably put it on PeerCentered vlog ( http://bessie.englab.slcc.edu/pc ). Claire Hughes of Weber State University has done a great job with the conference. I am really looking forward to tomorrow wh...