I attended a small, private high school and for every class I took throughout grades 9-12 I was required to take my writing assignments to the writing center before they were due. My 13-17 year old self found this to be an annoying and tedious task, but reflecting back many years later, I am very thankful for this requirement and for my experience of using the school's writing center. In fact, not only was I required to take my take my papers to the writing center before they were due, but I was also required to take them back to the center when we got them back, graded. If they weren't returned to us in perfect quality (which of course as students, they never were) we spent additional time at the writing center determining how to make the papers perfectly written with exceptional grammar, focus, organization, development, audience awareness, and appropriate research and citations. The end result was an essay or writing assignment that I was confident about and overall it made me a more effective writer and communicator.
While in high school although visiting the writing center so many times may have seemed excessive at the time, I had the opportunity to meet 1:1 with talented staff members who helped me realize how I could improve my papers to ensure they were in tip-top shape. It was nice to know I had a resource that I could visit for tutoring at any stage of the writing process, whether it was coming up with a topic, developing ideas, writing a draft, or editing/proofreading.
Having an extra set of eyes on a writing assignment or paper makes the writer accountable to put forth best effort. I believe in the goals of a writing center and am really glad I had the experience of using one throughout my high school days.
It's so interesting to read about your high school experience, Annie! I could see how as a high schooler you may have felt that the task was tedious or boring, but I'm sure it impacted the quality of your writing immensely. I wonder what it would be like if every school had the same writing requirements, and had the staff available to work at a writing center. Coming from a rather large public high school growing up, we definitely did not have those types of resources available, and I wonder how my attitude towards writing would've changed. Writing is such an important skill to have in today's society, so I really think it's something that should be considered when structuring a school.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting. Clearly your high school invested in the writing center with the goal in mind of developing strong writers for the real world. Relating that to elementary education, I think a similar model could be used by utilizing writing conferences. We can meet with students during/throughout their writing, and then help them reflect on a piece of writing after we give them some feedback.
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