ERDL, just to the right of the entrance to the PACC (Phillips Academy
Computing Center).
HOURS:
Wednesdays and Thursdays from 8:00 - 9:15 p.m.
STAFFING:
Instructors in English and History & Social Sciences and 12 students.
QUESTIONS?
Contact Instructors Lynne Kelly or Randy Peffer.
The three principles of the peer-reading component
of the Writing Center are that any writer, regardless of ability,
can gain from one-to-one conferences; skilled intervention in the
writing process helps students to become better writers; and a supportive
atmosphere builds confidence, which can lead to increased proficiency
and, in time, greater self-reliance.
The Writing Center is staffed by students recommended
for their writing ability and for their friendly and encouraging
attitudes. They do not act as doctors ministering to the sick paper,
or as respositories of writing knowledge to be dispensed to the
uninitiated. Instead, through thoughtful questions peer-editors
elicit from students what they know about their topic, audience
and purpose. Peer-readers study and practice specific teaching strategies
effective in conferences. Our comments begin with whatever we consider
the most important problem to be solved first. Usually this means
talking with the writer about content, organization, coherence and
unity, point of view, and tone. To the extent that a paper's offending
surface features mar comprehension or interfere with aesthetic pleasure,
we locate but do not correct.
The one-to-one setting is an environment where
teaching is, indeed, learning. Paradoxical as it may sound, writing
centers do not promote dependency. Collaborative work means talking
about what is getting in the way of the clear and graceful expression
of ideas. Once a problem is located, the peer-reader asks questions
and occasionally makes suggestions before leaving the writer to
revise.
Writing in the various disciplines means practicing
fundamental academic strategies: observing, paraphrasing, quoting,
summarizing, interpreting, analyzing, and synthesizing. Students
must learn to think critically and reason cogently as they read,
compose and revise. Peer-readers will help students to view writing
and revising as a recursive process which may need to begin with
understanding the assignment, setting reading goals, or pondering
the topic before writing. Understanding writing as a process is
important because it shifts the focus from what students have written
to the way they write. Observing writers at work leads us to ask
why they behave as they do, and eventually we come to question the
assumption that writing is an intrinsically individual, asocial
activity. Understanding the ways in which writing and reading are
social and cognitive acts has broad implications for our work.
Readers at the Writing Center assume that students
have something to communicate and some idea of how to do so. By
staging writing as a learning activity, we keep the focus on the
writer writing, not on the paper. Like writing itself, the teaching
of writing can always be improved, and the Writing Center hopes
to be the bridge between theory and practice that creates a school-wide,
ongoing discourse on learning to write at Phillips Academy.
