THE IDEA OF A WRITING CENTER MEETS THE REALITY OF CLASSROOM-BASED TUTORING
Stephen North’s essay “The Idea of a Writing Center” (1984) stands as the touchstone for much subsequent writing center theory and writing tutor practice. The essence of North’s essay (and, hence, of most writing center philosophy) is summed up in this oft-quoted idea: “[I]n a writing center the object is to make sure that writers, and not necessarily their texts, are what get changed. . . . our job is to produce better writers, not better writing” (438).1 The work of a writing center tutor, then, is not to help the student writer “fix” or “correct” the current draft of a particular assignment or even to improve a single draft in more complex, logical, organizational, and intellectual ways than are suggested by these mechanical-sounding verbs. The work of a writing center tutor is to engage the student writer in an intellectual process that will result in more fully developed and carefully crafted writing in general. A particular paper is not the focus—but rather the writer’s processes and strategies for producing and crafting any piece of writing.
How does that philosophy work in practice? Usually it means keeping the writer in control—not writing on her paper or making specific prescriptive suggestions for wording or organization. Descriptions of such tutorial approaches emphasize that tutors ask questions rather than provide answers. For example, in The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring (2000), Paula Gillespie and Neal Lerner suggest that a tutor begin “by asking writers a few basic questions [about the assignment, the writer’s main argument, the writer’s concerns about the draft] before they even consider the draft” (26). Then the tutorial proper begins, with the writer reading his entire draft aloud as the tutor listens and takes notes. “Listening to the whole thing from start to finish and taking notes puts you in the role of the learner, and the writer in the role of the expert. . . . You’re taking notes, listening. . . . [H]e’s the expert since it’s his paper. . . . [I]n a good tutorial, the tutor asks questions, and the writer decides what to do with a draft” (26–27).
In their discussion of the ethics of writing center work, Irene L. Clark and Dave Healy (1996) provide an overview of similar scholarship in tutor training, illustrating the degree to which the nonintrusive tutorial model dominates. They quote a variety of authors who, by advocating “Socratic dialogue” and “minimalist tutoring” and by castigating the editing or improving of papers or mentoring of students, make “the concept of tutor restraint a moral imperative, dictating a set of absolute guidelines for writing center instruction.” Clark and Healy’s ultimate example of this dogma comes from Thomas Thompson’s description of the Citadel’s writing center: “[T]utors try to avoid taking pen in hand when discussing a student paper. They may discuss content, and they may use the Socratic method to lead students to discover their own conclusions, but tutors are instructed not to tell students what a passage means or give students a particular word to complete a particular thought” (35).
North’s model of writing center work has been adopted enthusiastically in writing centers in universities and in primary schools, from the Northeast to California, but does it travel as well outside the realm of the writing center? What about when writing tutors move into the classroom? As coordinator of First-Year Writing (Barbara) and a well-trained and experienced peer tutor (Holly), we were involved in establishing a classroom-based tutoring component for a developmental writing course at Eastern Connecticut State University. We quickly discovered that the nonintrusive, writing center(ed) model in which Eastern’s tutors had been trained did not always meet the needs of the students with whom they were working in the classrooms. In what follows, then, we will offer a description of our situation as one example of the difficulties writing center(ed) tutors can encounter in making the move into the classroom, the ways in which some of our tutors began to respond to their sense that a different kind or kinds of tutoring might be appropriate in the classroom, and the ways in which these responses are reinforced by a growing body of writing center theory that offers alternatives to the dominant nonintrusive model.
CLASSROOM-BASED REALITY AT EASTERN
Eastern Connecticut State University lacks a full-fledged writing center. Therefore, our classroom-based tutoring program did not develop as an extension of such a center; however, it did grow out of a writing center(ed) program developed by the English department. For many years, Eastern has provided some tutoring in writing through the university’s Learning Resource Center (LRC), which also provides tutoring in math and a variety of other academic subjects. Several years ago, the director of the University Writing Program began to realize that the tutoring in writing provided by the LRC was inadequate in regard to the number and availability of tutors and the quality of their training; therefore, the writing program director began the Writing Associates Program, in which promising English majors (who were first identified and recommended by English faculty) were recruited to act as tutors for the first-year writing course. Writing associates received internship credit for tutoring students in particular sections of the first-year writing course to which they were assigned; however, the tutoring took place outside the classroom, by appointment, in much the same way that it would in a writing center. Writing associates were trained by taking a junior-level course in composition theory and pedagogy that included an introduction to writing center theory and practice. Thus, although these tutors were not literally working in a writing center, their work as tutors was writing center(ed) in many ways.
Eventually, the Writing Associates Program added a classroom-based tutoring component for a new developmental writing course, English 100Plus. However, tutor training at Eastern remained the same, so that the key differences between writing center and the 100Plus classroom contexts were largely unaddressed. Therefore, tutors assigned to 100Plus entered the classrooms with a number of assumptions from their writing center(ed) training that didn’t necessarily jibe with the classroom-based context in which they had their initial (and much of their ongoing) contact with student writers. The first several tutors to work in 100Plus were left to make their own adaptations and philosophical adjustments, in part because they brought with them key assumptions derived from their training in writing center theory. The following assumptions became especially problematic in the 100Plus classroom-based context:
• Writers come to writing tutorials of their own accord, in their own time, and through their own motivation.
• The writing tutorial’s purpose is to help the writer improve as a writer, not to help the writer improve a particular piece of writing or to support the curriculum or coursework of a particular class.
• The writing tutor’s role is of learner, listener, and questioning partner in dialectic, not that of writing expert, teacher, or teacher surrogate; therefore, the writer carries the authority in the interaction among writer, tutor, and text.
Hence, English 100Plus tutors had to develop new strategies for classroom-based tutoring that either adapted or put aside their writing center(ed) training.
After we share our tutors’ intuitive strategies for adapting to their new tutoring environment, we will discuss how these accommodations are validated by a number of writing center theorists who are suggesting alternatives to the dominant nonintrusive tutoring model. Finally, we will share our plan for a revised approach to tutor training that draws on these theorists and our tutors’ experiences.
MOTIVATION IN ENGLISH 100PLUS TUTORING
One of the largest differences between the context for our classroom-based English 100Plus tutors and the context assumed in the writing center(ed) model is that writers do not initially come to the tutors; the tutors come to their classroom. In North’s description of the writing center, the catalyst that brings the writer and tutor together is the writer’s own commitment to his or her current writing project and motivation to make it as good as it can be. Writing centers, he argues, do their best work not when students have been required by an instructor to make an appointment, but when they are “deeply engaged with their material, anxious to wrestle it into the best form they can: they are motivated to write” (1984, 443). English 100Plus tutors, however, cannot wait for motivation to strike. They often need to prompt the motivation. If they are to do their job and earn their pay, they must become the catalyst that brings about productive writer/tutor interaction.
This catalyst role is one of the most fundamental differences between traditional writing center tutoring and tutoring in the English 100Plus classroom. In writing center settings, a writer’s motivation to seek help with her writing will likely occur when she has a finished (or nearly finished) draft that she feels needs revision. North notes that these moments of motivation (while they may occur in other stages of the writing process) do not always coincide “with the fifteen or thirty weeks [students] spend in writing courses—especially when . . . those weeks are required” (1984, 442). In English 100Plus, most of a tutor’s time is spent working with students whose presence in the classroom is required, who do not have finished drafts, and who may (as so-called developmental writers) be particularly apprehensive about sharing their writing.
For the student writers in English 100Plus, apprehensions about sharing often stem from their awareness that they are (or at least have been labeled by their placement as) inadequate writers. Most are also insecure about their abilities because of their lack of experience with writing. They do not know how to talk about their writing and, more important, are probably nervous about their skill level. When a student writer enters a writing center, while she may be quite apprehensive about the tutoring process, she has still reached a point where she feels that she can show another person her thoughts. When students are working during an English 100Plus class, however, the tutor often approaches them, whether they have reconciled themselves to the need to share their work or not. Therefore, in their efforts to reach out to writers, tutors may invade the writers’ comfort zone when they are not necessarily ready to show their work to someone else. When a tutor approaches these students without their permission, she treads a thin line between help and invasion. While our tutors are sensitive to this problem, they also know that it is part of their job to make each class session productive, for both themselves and the student writers.
This is perhaps one of the most difficult conundrums for the tutor working in the classroom environment. How should one approach a student who is in the middle of writing? The student who isn’t really writing yet? Or the student who is unsure if what he is doing even constitutes writing? Many tutors, like Holly, find that, through taking a gentle, peer-centered approach to instigating in-class writing conferences, they can make the classroom-based tutoring process comfortable for both themselves and the student writers with whom they work. Once initial contact is made, students and tutors can then learn that their conversations about writing can be helpful, not just when it seems most obviously necessary, but at many other points in the writing process. The key to this gentle approach is a gradual easing from social conversation into the talk of a writing conference.
Tutors who have adopted this approach feel that it is unwise for a tutor to simply sit down next to a writer and immediately ask to see his current progress. Rather, it is better for the tutor to first approach the writer in a way that builds on her status as peer, then expands to include the use of her expertise. Holly found that inquiring about the student’s general mood (his relative confidence or apprehension) about his progress with a writing assignment was a good place to start. She might begin with a relatively nonthreatening icebreaker such as, “How are things going?” While some students would share their apprehension, leading to some commiseration on Holly’s part and then some suggestions for how to get over that apprehension, most students responded as briefly as possible: “Fine.” Holly noted that the easy thing to do at this point was to leave her interaction with the student at that, but she realized that if she didn’t press further she might never get beyond this level of conversation with the student. Her next step, then, was often to express curiosity about the writer’s general topic and what he had done with it so far. After a bit of discussion along this line, Holly would express interest in a particular aspect of the writer’s description of his work and ask the writer to read that part of his paper. In most cases, however, she didn’t need to ask to see the writing. By that point in their conversation, most writers had already read parts of their work to her because reading it was easier than explaining it. Thus, Holly was able to engage most students in their first writing tutorial relatively painlessly.
Another experienced English 100Plus tutor, Mandee, finds that she is uncomfortable trading too much on her status as student peer. She feels she has more to offer if she maintains a more professional (yet still empathetic and supportive) role in the class. She still tries to lay the groundwork for productive interaction gently and as early as possible, but her approach is different. On the first day of class, Mandee introduces herself to the class as a whole. Her introduction often goes something like this:
I’m here to help you with your writing no matter where you may be with it. Even if you’re stuck because you’re not sure what to say or how to say it, I can help. If you are unsure about the assignment and have questions you don’t want to ask Dr. Liu, I can help you with that. I took this class with Dr. Liu, I’ve tutored for her before, and I know her assignments inside out. I’m also really interested in your writing. I’ve learned some really interesting stuff from reading student papers and seen some perspectives I otherwise wouldn’t have seen. To best help you with your writing, I’ll need to get to know a little about you, your interests, your concerns about your writing, and your writing itself. So don’t be surprised if in the next few days I come over to you to talk a bit. I’ll want to get to know you and read some of your writing, so that I can work with you to figure out how I can best help you.
Mandee’s introduction sets the professional tone she finds most productive, and it prepares students for her interruption—not only by letting them know that she will be interrupting them, but also by letting them know the role those interruptions will play in establishing an ongoing tutor/writer relationship. When Mandee sits down next to students, then, they are prepared for it. They may have already chosen a writing sample that they are comfortable showing her, and they are prepared to talk to her about writing. She reintroduces herself to each student and asks his or her name, often offering her hand to shake. Many students find this formality reassuring; they know what to expect from Mandee.
DIFFERENT PRIORITIES IN ENGLISH 100PLUS TUTORING
Once students begin to feel comfortable with having the tutors around and working in the classroom, they will start to raise their hands and ask for help with specific concerns. Because the tutor is in the classroom and students are expected to be working on the writing assignments for that class, the questions students have and the kind of help they want is always related to their English 100Plus coursework, usually the specific assignment due next on the syllabus. In many instances, writers’ questions will be even more specific: about a particular grammatical or syntactical puzzle they are dealing with in their writing at that moment, for example, or about the clarity, effectiveness, or relative improvement of a particular idea, sentence, or paragraph (i.e., “Does this sentence make more sense now?”). While such questions are asked in writing center tutorials, the mandates to (1) improve writers and not necessarily particular texts; and (2) serve the writer rather than a particular course curriculum, lead writing center tutors to redirect the students’ immediate attention to so-called higher-order concerns. In The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring, for example, a boldfaced heading in the chapter on “The Tutoring Process” announces “HIGHER ORDER CONCERNS COME FIRST.” Here, Gillespie and Lerner remind tutors that “one of the most important things you can do as a tutor is to deal first with . . . higher order concerns. As a tutor, you’ll save grammar and correctness for later.” They go on to note that “if we help writers proofread first, a lot of writers—especially those who are inexperienced or hesitant—won’t want to change anything in their papers, even to make things better, because they feel that once they have their sentences and punctuation right, all will be well with their writing” (2000, 29). Redirection to higher-order concerns makes sense in the context of the writing center, not only philosophically but practically. Writing center tutors are able to put higher-order concerns first because of the amount of time they have for each student writer. Out of the sixty minutes a tutor has with a student, he may be able to afford to devote fifty to higher-order concerns, and then help the student recognize and deal with syntax or punctuation in the remaining ten minutes (or in a subsequent session). Additionally, when a student comes to a writing center tutorial, she has completed her writing for the moment, left the place where she was working on it in order to travel to the writing center, and is not currently actively engaged in the act of composing.
The situation in the English 100Plus class is quite different, however, and hence, a different response is needed. Students spend much of their time in class writing. When a student chooses to interrupt his composing momentarily to ask a tutor a specific question, that student believes that his question is of the utmost importance to his writing at that moment. He plans to receive an answer or advice and continue writing immediately. He does not usually plan on getting his answer, applying it to his writing, and then working no further to complete or improve his writing. Therefore, most English 100Plus tutors and instructors feel that student writers are best served when the tutor acknowledges the question and immediately offers an answer or advice on the specific concern the student has raised.
As Gillespie and Lerner note, embracing North’s idea of a writing center, “writing centers are not about editing. We are about teaching and maintaining a much larger view than correcting the immediate paper: our goals for sessions are to help the writer learn the skills needed to improve not just this paper but subsequent papers” (2000, 40). However, in the College Writing Plus class, if tutors ignore the initial questions they are asked by students, they invalidate the students’ writerly instincts and thereby damage their ongoing working relationship with those students. By not answering their questions, tutors may make writers feel belittled and unheard, which will ultimately lead to less and less worthwhile interaction between tutor and writer. Many of our tutors find, therefore, that it is simple enough to answer the writer’s initial question, and then—if time permits and several other students aren’t vying for the tutor’s attention—the tutor might respond, “Now that we’ve figured that out, if you’re okay with it, can we look at the rest of the paper to see if you have any other concerns?” Sometimes this is all it takes to move the writer toward higher-order issues, but at other times, the writer may not be ready to discuss more of her paper with the tutor just yet. As working relationships are established throughout the semester, tutors no longer need to impose themselves; rather they can allow the students to initiate and set the limits for their class-time tutor/writer interactions. If tutors have done a good job establishing productive working relationships with student writers, the students know that tutors are always available for them and that the writer’s concerns are the ones that count in the classroom. This knowledge encourages ongoing interaction between writer and tutor by establishing an open and accepting role for the tutor. Tutors can also rest assured in the knowledge that they will have ample opportunity to address higher-order concerns either later within the fifty-minute class period or during the additional office hours they are required to hold outside of class.
AUTHORITY IN ENGLISH 100PLUS TUTORING
The time limitations of the classroom context also usually prohibit tutors from engaging in the kind of Socratic dialogue recommended in the writing center. As Gillespie and Lerner note, “in a good tutorial, the tutor asks questions, and the writer decides what to do with the draft” (2000, 27). Good writing center tutors then are learners, questioners, and listeners, not experts, teachers, or authorities. However, this role structure cannot always be adapted to the classroom-based tutoring context. As we have noted above, it is not always appropriate for an English 100Plus tutor to answer a student’s question with another question. The student wants an immediate authoritative answer, so that he can continue writing. Because the student wants an authority at those moments, the tutor becomes one.
However, the student is not the only one who confers authority on the classroom-based tutor. The instructor and the writing program do as well. Since tutors are part of the curricular structure of English 100Plus, and since the primary authority figure in the classroom—the instructor—introduces tutors to the students, tutors do, in essence, receive a “stamp of approval” as an expert. Ideally, student writers should not see tutors as authority figures, as teachers. The context of the writing center, a context student writers choose to enter, Christina Murphy notes, “places those students in a different type of relationship with the tutor than with the instructor in a traditional classroom setting. . . . the tutor’s role often is primarily supportive and affective, secondarily instructional, and always directed to each student as an individual in a unique, one-to-one personal relationship” (2001, 296). Gillespie and Lerner also emphasize an affective, nonauthoritarian tutor/student relationship in their discussion of trust and tutoring. “As a writing center tutor, you’ll create an atmosphere of trust for the writers who seek your help. In that environment, you and the writers with whom you meet can accomplish truly important work. . . . You’re not going to give a grade to a writer’s essay, you have great insight into what it means to be a student, and you’ll have many things in common with many of the writers you meet. . . . the rapport that you can create with writers is one of your best assets as a tutor” (2000, 8).
For English 100Plus tutors, there are impediments to the kind of nonauthoritarian, affective working relationship Murphy and Gillespie and Lerner describe. Again, their presence in the classroom is not a matter of student choice, and their authority is automatically conferred on them by the endorsement of the instructor.
While this authority may give tutors certain kinds of credibility in the eyes of the students, it may also hinder the building of the more peer-based relationship that their training has led them to expect. Some students may feel, for example, that they cannot express their frustration with an assignment or an instructor with a tutor they perceive as the instructor’s proxy. They may be more reluctant (than they would be with a writing center tutor) to disagree with or ignore a classroom-based tutor’s advice. In effect, they might not see the tutor as a supportive peer; they may not trust their tutor. Therefore, many tutors find themselves sometimes calling on, sometimes resisting their authority.
In resisting their authority, tutors sometimes fall into the role of classmate (rather than tutor) by getting wrapped up in conversations with groups of students about other classes, the latest basketball game, the residence hall scandal of the moment, or their personal lives. We have noted that some tutors find that a friendly approach is the best way to make initial connections with students; however, the productive motive for their friendliness is subverted when tutors forget their sanctioned role in the classroom and become friends and fellows with the students, spending too much time in off-topic social conversation. Therefore, tutors like Holly have found that the best way to establish a friendly working relationship with a student is to focus their conversations on that student’s writing, rather than on other topics. The most appropriate way to be friendly, and to reinforce their supportive role, is to offer consistent encouragement and judicious praise. Since they get glimpses of students’ work at various moments throughout the writing process, it is relatively easy for tutors to find appropriate moments for comments such as “You’ve really been productive today; is that two new pages of writing I see?” or “Your new introduction really grabs my attention!” Such comments reinforce for students that the tutor is there to talk about writing, but that their role is more in the way of encouragement than policing.
The examples we’ve shared here show a number of ways in which our tutors have revised the writing center(ed) tutorial model in which they were trained in order to create and maintain productive working relationships in the context of the English 100Plus classroom. They have learned to take the initiative and act as catalysts, not waiting for motivated students to come to them. They have learned that there are times when higher-order concerns should take a back seat to immediate questions about correctness and effectiveness. And they have learned that their role in the writing curriculum confers authority on them that they must sometimes invoke and sometimes resist in order provide a foundation of trust on which a productive relationship can be built.
As a result, we have also learned that we need to adapt our training to better prepare our tutors for classroom-based tutoring. We need to update our handbook (revising it for this essay has helped a great deal in that endeavor) and incorporate the revised handbook more fully into the training curriculum.2 But we also need to find voices in writing center theory that, as Linda K. Shamoon and Deborah H. Burns put it, provide alternatives to the “orthodoxy of current practice” (2001, 226). In considering for this chapter the classroom-based context of tutoring in 100Plus and the adjustments our tutors have had to make to work productively in those classes, we have sought out such alternatives in the published discourse of writing center theory. We feel that given the preponderance of theory that maintains the dominance of the nonintrusive, writing center(ed) model, tutors might see the exceptions we suggest they make to these rules as ethically, professionally, and theoretically suspect. Certainly many tutors—such as those whose experiences we have cited here—make the necessary adjustments as they move into the classroom and the reality of the situation reveals different demands. But if in their training they were acquainted with other models that have received some sanction and recognition in the field (through publication in its journals and books), they might make those adjustments with greater ease and efficiency. They might not spend the first several weeks of the semester standing awkwardly at the front of the classroom, hoping that a student will be motivated to ask for their help. They might not then ask every student who finally does request their help to read his or her paper out loud in its entirety. And they might more quickly find ways to connect with students and build productive working relationships so that they can fill their office hours with the more in-depth and nonintrusive kinds of work typical of the writing center.
Therefore, when she next trains tutors, Barbara is planning on going beyond the orthodoxy expressed in the current training materials and expose new tutors to a variety of alternative models of tutoring. One source of alternatives will be Clark and Healy’s article “Are Writing Centers Ethical?” Clark and Healy question the prevailing orthodoxy of nonintrusive tutoring (or, as they put it, textual noninterventionism) on two fronts. First, they note the basis of this approach in the need to “assure colleagues in the English department that the help students receive in writing centers does not constitute a form of plagiarism.” Their response is to argue that “such a philosophy perpetuates a limited and limiting understanding of authorship in the academy” and misunderstandings about the importance and nature of collaborative conversation in much important writing (1996, 36). Next, they argue against the dominant writing center model on pedagogical grounds: “Textual noninterventionism is suspect not only on theoretical grounds . . . ; it also overlooks the possibility that for some students, an interventionist, directive, and appropriative pedagogy might be more effective—as well as ethically defensible” (37). Clark and Healy share examples of writers who have profited from more directive forms of tutoring, then make a parallel between such tutoring methods and Vygotsky’s concept of “the zone of proximal development,” which they say, quoting Vygotsky, “suggests that tutors should work on ‘functions that have not yet matured, but are in the process of maturation, functions that will mature tomorrow, but are currently in an embryonic state.’ Such functions might require the tutor to assume a more directive role until the student can assume the function alone” (38).
Vygotsky leads Clark and Healy to validate other models of tutoring, especially the models offered by Shamoon and Burns in “A Critique of Pure Tutoring.” Clark and Healy draw examples of successful directive tutoring from Shamoon and Burns, who note that the frequency of such stories makes them “seriously question whether one tutoring approach fits all students and situations” (2001, 230). As a result, Shamoon and Burns turn to master classes in music as one model of beneficial and productive directive tutoring. They offer this description of the elements of the master class:
What strikes us as important about master classes is that they feature characteristics exactly opposite current tutoring orthodoxy. They are hierarchical: there is an open admission that some individuals have more knowledge and skill than others, and that the knowledge and skills are being “handed down.” This handing down is directive and public; during tutoring the expert provides the student with communally and historically tested options for performance and technical improvement. Also, a good deal of effort during tutoring is spent on imitation or, at its best, upon emulation. Rather than assuming that this imitation will prevent authentic self-expression, the tutor and the student assume imitation will lead to improved technique, which will enable freedom of expression. (232)
It seems to us that there is much in this example that speaks to the situation in the English 100Plus classroom. Just as the musician conducting the master class is not the students’ regular instructor (he does not have the power of the grade over them), so our tutors are not instructors. And just as the master still has authority based on his greater experience and expertise, our tutors have the authority of their greater experience in academic writing—in fact, they are often more experienced in the specific writing required in that class, since many (like Mandee) are recruited after taking English 100Plus and work with the same instructor for multiple semesters.
Shamoon and Burns provide examples of other contexts in which alternative tutoring models are practiced: studio seminars in the fine arts and “clinicals” in nursing training. Their point is that through modeling their own “widely-valued repertoires” of skills and strategies and allowing students to “practice similar solutions and try out others,” directive tutors provide “a particularly efficient transmission of domain-specific repertoires, far more efficient and often less frustrating than expecting students to reinvent these established practices” (2001, 234).
Finally, Shamoon and Burns find examples of such directive tutoring in Muriel Harris’s description of “Modeling: A Process Method of Teaching” (1983) and various writing centers around the country that are designed to enhance writing across the curriculum programs and, hence, take as part of their mission the handing down of discipline-specific expertise (Shamoon and Burns 2001, 238). The plethora of examples Shamoon and Burns provide can offer tutors in training insight into a variety of tutoring models. Just as good writers need a broad repertoire of skills to address a variety of writing situations, tutors will see that they need a broad repertoire of approaches to address a variety of student needs. As Clark and Healy put it, “Leveling its clientele through rigid policy statements—e.g., ‘Refuse to proofread,’ or ‘Don’t even hold a pencil when you’re tutoring’—denies the diversity found in any [writing] center and stifles the creativity of writing center consultants. Writing centers need to be creative in opening up the world of discourse to their clients and their clients to that world” (1996, 44).
Shamoon and Burns and Clark and Healy are not the only authors who are questioning nonintrusive writing center orthodoxy, suggesting alternatives, and emphasizing the need to match the pedagogy to the writer, context, and situation. Others include Muriel Harris (1983), John Trimbur (1998), and Christina Murphy (2001). These authors provide ample fodder for a revised reading and discussion list in our tutor-training course at Eastern, an institution without a writing center, so that tutors will be more fully prepared for the realities of where and how they will be tutoring—the classrooms of English 100Plus. While we still will present our novice tutors with writing center orthodoxy (after all, with all these well-trained tutors, we hope to found a center soon), we will balance and complicate that orthodoxy with an awareness that it may not always make sense in the class, or with a particular student, or at a particular moment. We hope that with a less exclusive vision of writing tutoring, our tutors will be more willing and able to adapt to their job in the classroom and that their idea of a writing center will not limit their ability to work productively within the reality of classroom-based tutoring.
. 1. While North was not the first or only author to advocate a nonintrusive, noneditorial model for writing center tutorials, his essay stands as one of the most-cited statements of writing center philosophy. It is referenced in numerous writing center mission statements, as well as the predominance of subsequent writing center scholarship. At Eastern, when our president expressed interest in establishing a writing center, our writing program director immediately sent him a copy of North’s . essay in order to provide him with an enlightened understanding of what such a center would be about.
. 2. That handbook, entitled It’s a Whole New Ballgame, contained classroom-based tutoring strategies that Holly had discovered in her work as a tutor and that Barbara suggested from her perspective as instructor. It comprised the first incarnation of what has become this article.
