Writing center tutors know that improving writing skills requires sustained effort over a long period of time. They also know that motivation--the drive to actively invest in sustained effort toward a goal--is essential for writing improvement. Because motivation can direct attention toward particular tasks and increase both effort and…

Conferences with one's own students are always influenced by personal context. They differ from first-time tutorial encounters in that teachers have "personal knowledge" of their student writers' strengths and weaknesses--where they are with a piece of writing and where writing tutors' experience tells them they need to be in order to succeed in…

Continues a discussion of critiquing peer tutoring groups by underscoring a typically unacknowledged component: the way in which an emphasis on "peerness" disguises the inherent aggression in tutoring relationships. Defines "peerness" as a complicated relation that involves power and aggression as well as equality. (SG)

Suggests that students and tutors resist conference summaries because they maintain a hierarchy between student and tutor. Proposes that tutors and students need to embrace the resistance that they feel toward conference summaries and rethink how tutoring sessions are "written up." Concludes that tutors must be willing to believe that students can…

Offers an analysis of the ways in which the structure and practice of writing centers may be uncomfortable, difficult, even anathema to many boys and young men. Describes ways the author's writing center at a boys' school has changed some of its practices in an attempt to address this issue. (SR)

Argues that the writing center is an ideal place to teach and practice a critical and self-reflective form of acculturation, encouraging underprepared students (especially those marginalized by race, class, and ethnicity) to adopt critical consciousness. Discusses acculturation verses the goals of critical consciousness, the traditional writing…

Examines the nature of the relationships tutors create with their clients in a writing center. Finds that asking open-ended questions, echoing each other's speech, and using qualifiers are ways tutors worked toward collaboration; and that, in a number of cases, an undue or misdirected emphasis on the collaborative approach resulted in wasting time…

Raises the complementary issues of faculty/tutor collaboration and tutor-writing confidentiality at writing centers by relating a serious dilemma involving a student's blatant attempt at plagiarism of an online text. Raises concerns regarding conflicting roles of the writing center in upholding itself as a safe place for students and/or as a place…

Provides a synthesis of what some of the popular and scholarly literature says about spirit. Narrates a writing-center story in which the writer's text served as a vehicle for a transformation of the people involved. Follows this with an analysis of the experience grounded in the literature on writing and spirit. (SR)

Suggests that the conference summary (the record of a tutor's interaction with a student) offers one of the few ways to extend the discussion of one-to-one work beyond the writing center on a weekly basis. Discusses its uses; gives sample summaries. Finds that a faculty survey confirmed the value of weekly reports. (PA)

Talks about the benefits of failure, both to the individual teacher and to the writing center as an institution. Examines the phenomenon of the hard-to-help student and how it leads scholar-teachers to reexamine their approaches and pedagogies. (TB)

Contrasts the advantages and disadvantages of writing center tutors who are familiar with the subject matter in a given field or discipline with those who are not. Asserts that by being "ignorant" of the subject matter, a tutor forces students to take responsibility for their writing. (MM)

Describes the effects (both positive and negative) personal knowledge about students has on student writing conferences. (MM)

Offers perspectives of four different writing lab personnel, namely: (1) a new peer tutor with writing skills but no formal training in teaching; (2) a graduate teaching assistant in writing with no tutoring experience; (3) an experienced tutor reflecting on what he wished he had been taught; and (4) a director-tutor sharing her lab experience.…

Examines some of the difficulties in peer tutoring and points out the dilemma of whether to emphasize the tutor component (apprentice model) or the peer component (colearner model). Offers a solution that incorporates elements from both stages, one that treats tutors developmentally. (NKA)