Brenda Hillman begins the title poem of Practical Water—part of an elemental tetralogy just finished with a flame of a book about fire—with a rhetorical question so vast that, in the poem’s second line, she admits the impossibility inherent in its very asking.
Read MoreLately, I have been writing eagerly on the subject of writing centers and disability disclosure. An important topic, for certain, but much of what I am researching and writing deals with sessions in which it is the tutee/writer who has a disability and therefore must navigate disclosure. In thinking about this, I am asking myself: What does disclosure in writing centers currently look like for a tutee with a disability? What should it look like? How does how we handle disability disclosure inform our practices—and how should our practices inform how we handle disability disclosure?
And yet, dealing with disclosure in the writing center is an everyday occurrence for me—only in the opposite direction. This is because 100% of my sessions happen with a person with a disability—but that person is me.
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Kerri Rinaldi is a faculty writing center consultant at Drexel University. Her research interests include self-initiated writing practices and the framing of disability in writing center theory and practice
Read MoreUnease has long been an important part of my work as a writing consultant, both because there are some practices that I feel uneasy about, and because I have long believed that moments of unease - those long, awkward silences in the middle of a session - can be vital to a successful consultation.
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