LET’S WORKSHOP!
Saturday afternoon, February 18, features two workshop opportunities from 1:45 to 4:45 PM. Pre-register by checking the box on the on-line SWCA 2006 registration form. The cost for each workshop is $20, payable at the conference.
Let’s Get Started: For New Writing Center Administrators
If you're new (or relatively new) to the writing center world, this workshop is your chance to meet with other newcomers. Experienced writing center directors are welcome to attend, too, if they'd like to meet and support colleagues new to the field. Participants will discuss basics about writing center administration, literature, theory, and practice; consider any writing-center related questions you want to pose; and be offered an opportunity to create mentoring relationships that can continue once the conference is over.
Neal Lerner, keynote speaker for SWCA 2006 and former leader of the Writing Center Summer Institute, will be the workshop facilitator. Neal currently helps guide our flagship Writing Center Journal as co-editor with Beth Boquet and serves on the IWCA board. With Paula Gillespie, Lerner also co-authored The Allyn and Bacon Guide to Peer Tutoring. Neal is also past chair of the Northeast Writing Centers Association and is a three-time recipient of the IWCA Outstanding Scholarship Award. He teaches scientific and technical writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Let’s (Re)Start a Secondary School Writing Center
How do we increase student learning and the quality of student writing as well as student attitudes toward writing? How do we encourage teachers to value the use of writing to improve the learning of content across the disciplines? The answer to these and many other questions may be found by establishing a writing center in every high school. Although writing centers vary from school to school, they basically function as an indispensable resource for the learning of students and faculty rather than a remedial facility. This workshop will focus on the idea of a writing center and the possibilities one offers to an institution. Research, practical application and continuous revision will be the basics of this interactive workshop.
Dr. Pamela B. Childers, board member and former president of the IWCA, will be the facilitator. Pam has started writing centers in both public and independent secondary schools. She has authored The High School Writing Center: Establishing and Maintaining One, Programs and Practices: Writing Across the Secondary School Curriculum (with Gere and Young), and ARTiculating: Teaching Writing in a Visual World (with Hobson and Mullin), as well as over fifty chapters and articles in professional books/journals. A featured columnist in Southern Discourse and Across the Disciplines, Pam is a frequent keynote speaker and workshop leader internationally. She currently holds the Caldwell Chair of Composition at The McCallie School and teaches graduate courses in The Teaching of Writing for Lesley University.