Axis Special Issue: Imagining the Decolonizing Writing Center
Training Writing Tutors about Language and Identity
Adam Daut and Tristan Rebe
Arizona State University
Keywords: Language, Identity, Training, Linguistic, Nondirective, Directive
There has been increased focus and research about the positionality of writing centers and, to that point, the purpose and role supporting students’ writing in an institutional academic setting, such as at a college or university (Camarillo, Condon, García, Greenfield, Grimm, and Inoue). Namely, how do writing centers reconcile the demands of rigid academia with the practice of linguistic justice? One way we, as writing center coordinators, have addressed this question is by rethinking training to better equip our tutors for conversations with students of various cultural and linguistic backgrounds. By better equipping our tutors, they can more directly empower students to make choices about their writing.
The writing centers we direct are based on a peer-to-peer, collaborative model, meaning our tutors are also students enrolled in classes at the university. Using their perspective as a peer and interested reader, tutors can work alongside (collaborate) with students to prioritize their individual goals and needs. With this model, we determined that it was important to engage our tutors in discussion about language and identity in order to call attention to structural barriers and cultivate a mindfulness of difference as Romeo García discusses in his work “Unmaking Gringo Centers” (48).
In Fall 2020, with the help of two other colleagues, we created a four-part training series called “Language and Identity”. We set out with the goal to train our tutors about tutoring students’ with various cultural and linguistic backgrounds. We focused on recognizing the academia’s established measure of Standard Edited American English (SEAE), acknowledging students with various cultural and linguistic backgrounds who matriculate into the university, and identifying the tensions tutors navigate in writing sessions. By tensions, we mean the role tutors play in navigating a student’s linguistic identity, community norms, disciplinary expectations, professors’ preferences, and institutional standards. When tutors are unaware of the tensions present in a writing session, there can be missed opportunities for tutors to dialogue with students about the rhetorical and grammatical choices in their writing. The focus on discussing tensions along with our other goals acted as the catalyst for creating a training that covered language and identity. Our focus helped to create learning outcomes for each workshop in our four-part training series:
Recognize the preference for standardized English in the university community and explore our role as writing center staff in navigating between students' languages and standardized English.
Rethink how we, as tutors, engage in conversations with students about navigating their language and writing goals as well as academic expectations.
Review strategies for addressing various student grammars, specifically we examine common SEAE grammar concepts and how to discuss them while acknowledging SEAE is one type of grammar.
Revisit language biases by taking a closer look at the concept of accents. Tutors consider explicit and implicit biases toward accents and how biases can affect perceptions of student writers.
With positive reception from our tutors about the training in Fall 2020, we knew we wanted to deliver the training series again in Fall 2021. In reviewing the content for Fall 2021, we wanted to make sure that our training was dynamic and addressed current conversations in the writing center field and in general public discourse. As a result, we came up with the solution to develop two tracks: one for new tutors and one for returning tutors. This pedagogical shift allowed us to still lay a foundation for new tutors while engaging our returners about the topics through more in-depth discussions. In addition to a two-track system, we decided to scaffold and adjust the curriculum in a way that better prepared our tutors. The scaffolding and adjustment of the training, specifically for our new tutors, will be the focus for the rest of this special issue.
For new tutors, we delivered a workshop called “Language and Identity: Recognizing English Language and Promoting Student Voice with Academic Writing”. Recognizing that our tutors also come with various cultural and linguistic backgrounds, we wanted to provide them with definitions and context before delving deeper into activities and discussions about language and identity. Through this workshop, we were able to explore the intersection of language and identity, which established a base from which we could address the history of English standardization and the academy’s relation to SEAE. The scaffolding of this content gave us the flexibility to spend time ensuring that the new tutors understood the base of the discussion in a way that easily connected to future workshops in the training series.
In the second workshop, the new tutors applied the information we covered from the first workshop of the training series. First, we addressed many of the questions and concerns our tutors had about navigating tensions in a writing session. In the first workshop, the tutors raised issues related to balancing the expression of different Englishes, working with multilingual writers, recognizing personal linguistic biases, and negotiating professor feedback with academic standards and students’ identity as writers. Based on the questions and concerns our tutors raised, we created several scenarios where they could apply the information we discussed in the first workshop. In all, we created half a dozen detailed scenarios based on courses and assignments we received in our writing centers. The tutors were assigned small groups and a scenario to respond to before reporting back what they would do in a larger group setting. This larger group sharing allowed each smaller group to hear, consider, and respond to all scenarios.
In Fall 2021, we offered the same two workshops, but provided our new tutors with more time and space in between to implement what they learned in the workshops. This adjustment allowed our tutors more time to build a stronger foundation by being able to try out strategies when they worked with students. The time new tutors spent implementing strategies and developing their skills provided them with an opportunity to practice rhetorical listening so they might better recognize it as a tool for cross-cultural communication (Ratcliffe) and be better prepared to explore rhetorical listening as a “form of actional and decolonial work” (García 33). Rhetorical listening in this case, and in accordance with García, becomes the site from which tutors can understand individual student needs and provide peer advice in navigating the academy.
In order to better facilitate this rhetorical listening, we posed questions to our staff about directive and nondirective strategies to consider their participation in their writing sessions. Using Steven Corbett's work on tutoring styles and methods, we used the following questions as a basis for discussion:
How can you use nondirective strategies to learn more about the students’ goals?
To what degree do you use directive strategies to provide the student with a chance to make decisions about what they like or want to change in their writing?
How much talking do you do (i.e., do you dominate the conversation) in a tutoring session?
How do you use wait time to give the student a chance to process and think?
In what types of tutoring situations or for what types of topics do you model for a student? Do you follow up modeling with a directive approach to ask the student to do something in return?
The revisions for Fall 2021 proved effective with our tutors and provided us with more to consider as we continue to engage our tutors in discussions about language and identity. The scaffolding and adjustment provided time for tutors to reflect and practice how they listen and respond to students in writing sessions. As we found out, the reflection and practice also proved helpful for tutors because they had the opportunity to discuss the concepts of language and identity with their peers and supervisors. As a result, we were able to receive feedback and listen to how they could implement strategies to promote students’ agency through their writing in a writing session. =
Overall, rethinking our training for Fall 2021 allowed us to continue the efforts we started the previous academic year, and to tailor our approach to calling attention to structural barriers and cultivating a mindfulness of difference with our tutors (García 48). Although our revisions for Fall 2021 proved successful, we are interested in how we can continue the conversation outside of training, for example, in one-one-one meetings and performance evaluations that we have throughout the semester. Additionally, Eric Camarillo’s discussion of university history offers another interesting innovation for training (para. 30). By discussing the history, tutors can better understand the context and space they operate within at the university. With the revisions we made and future considerations, exploring how we can continue to engage our tutors in discussions about language and identity can help to further decolonize writing centers.
works cited
Camarillo, Eric C. “Burn the House Down: Deconstructing the Writing Center as Cozy Home.” The Peer Review, vol. 3, no. 1, Summer 2019, https://thepeerreview-iwca.org/issues/redefining-welcome/burn-the-house-down-deconstructing-the-writing-center-as-cozy-home/.
Corbett, Steven J. “Negotiating Pedagogical Authority: The Rhetoric of Writing Center Tutoring Styles and Methods.” Rhetoric Review, vol. 32, no. 1, 2013, pp. 81-98.
Garcia, Romeo. “Unmaking Gringo-Centers”. The Writing Center Journal, vol. 36, no. 1, 2017, pp. 29-60
Ratcliffe, Krista. Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness. Southern Illinois UP, 2005.