The Successful High School Writing Center: Building the Best Program with Your Students

by Dawn Fels (Editor), Jennifer Wells (Editor), Celia Genishi (Editor), Donna E. Alvermann (Editor)

Overview

This book highlights the work of talented teachers and tutors who connect theory and practice with the lessons they learned from working with students in their high school writing centers. The authors offer innovative methods for secondary and post-secondary educators interested in adolescent literacy, English Language Learners, new literacies, writing center pedagogy and evaluation, embedded professional development, differentiated instruction, and cross-institutional collaboration.

The Successful High School Writing Center demonstrates how writing centers help school communities that serve diverse student populations grapple with the realities that come with literacy education. Depicting real-life writing centers as leaders in literacy education, the accounts presented will enrich the work of teachers, writing center directors, writing center tutors, and student writers in socially significant ways.

Book Features:

• Models of writing centers and literacy centers that explicitly integrate reading and writing across the curriculum.
• Creative strategies from a diversity of schools, models, and students served.
• Literacy-based, collaborative research projects for writing center evaluation.
• Helpful forms.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807752524
Publisher:	Teachers College Press
Publication date:	11/01/2011
Series:	Language and Literacy Series
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Dawn Fels teaches composition and directs The Writing Center at George Mason University. Jennifer Wells is the director of The Reading-Writing Center at Florida State University.

Table of Contents

Foreword Richard Kent ix

Introduction Dawn Fels Jennifer Wells 1

1 The Promise of Change with One-to-One Instruction Ben Rafoth Jennifer Wells Dawn Fels 7

2 Change I Can See: A High School English Teacher's Perspective of the Writing Center's Impact on Bilingual, Hispanic Students Katherine Palacio Kevin Dvorak 19

3 The Idea of a High School Writing Center Kerri Mulqueen 28

4 Building a Peer Tutoring Program Andrew Jeter 39

5 Revising and Rewriting Roles: Exploring the Challenges of Peer Tutors in a High School Writing Center Cynthia Dean 51

6 The Tutors Speak: Current and Former Tutors' Reflections Alexandra Elchinoff Caroline Kowalski with contributors Hannah Baran Emma Boel Jon-Carlos Evans Jasmyne Grismore Allie Grondine Naba Khan Stephany Martinez Justin Schulz Sarah Senan Kendal Shapses Nicole Wilson Winta Woldu Rachel Wrobel 62

7 Integrating Reading into the High School Writing Center Jennifer Wells 79

8 Connecting Pre-Service Teachers with High School Writers Jill Adams 95

9 What State Auditors Taught Me About Writing Center Evaluation Dawn Fels 114

Appendix A Tutor Recommendation Form 131

Appendix B Tutor Interview Form 133

Appendix C Tutor Contract 135

Appendix D Teachers and Students as Researchers: Literacy-based, Collaborative Projects for Writing Center Evaluation 136

Appendix E Words of Wisdom from Writing Center Educators 139

About the Contributors l43

Index 147

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“It is an immediately useful book, yes, but also a critical collection imbued with theory-to-practice models that address our marginalized students and their teachers.”
—From the Foreword by Richard Kent, University of Maine