Topic One: Working with Writers & Writing Across Disciplines
Sponsoring Literacy Sponsors' Literacies: Training Writing Tutors in Genre, Writing in the Disciplines, and Critical Language Awareness
Annaleigh E. Horton, Fairleigh Dickinson University
In this session, tutors will learn about genre, writing in the disciplines, and critical language awareness as they expand their knowledge on how to tutor students across the curriculum with widely varying disciplinary writing needs. Tutors will also develop reflective practices for creating and articulating their individual tutoring philosophy to define their purpose and goals as writing tutors. This training session was originally designed for professional tutors who had writing experience but lacked training in writing tutoring praxis and applying best practices. It can be easily customized to early-service tutors or more advanced tutors through its case study analysis approach and extension options. This session can be conducted in-person or online, preferably synchronously (see Extensions & Adaptations for asynchronous suggestions).
Looking Closely at Writing: Examining Disciplinary Writing Style
Amanda May, New Mexico Highlands University
In this training, tutors will examine academic journal articles from disciplines outside their own and observe writing style using a worksheet that considers elements like word choice, sentence length, jargon, voice, and verb tense. Through this approach, and in collaboration with other tutors looking at other disciplines, tutors can broaden their understandings of expectations in disciplinary writing and be more prepared to support writers in sessions. Beyond this training, the worksheet can be implemented in and beyond sessions to help writers begin to examine disciplinary writing themselves, providing approaches that can be adapted and help writers succeed in new contexts.
New Horizons, Familiar Path: Using Story as a Rhetorical Framework for Tutoring Humanities and STEM Writing
Coleman Numbers, Maren Sorber, Merlin Blanchard, Ben Christensen, and Zachary Largey, Brigham Young University
Writing center tutors often work with topics, papers, and genres outside of their discipline. Any experienced tutor knows how challenging it can be to advise writers when we aren’t familiar with the subject matter or conventions of a given assignment, like when an English major encounters a chemistry paper for the first time (Finocchio, 2017).
So, what do we do?
One answer is to recognize that certain traits, principles, and practices of writing transfer across genres—that pieces from two different disciplines are often more similar than not. This lesson hopes to build tutor confidence by offering a simple framework, centered on principles of storytelling, to help the humanities major feel more comfortable tutoring a STEM paper, and the STEM major more “at home” with a humanities paper.
Note: We focus on two common variants of writing in this lesson—the research paper in STEM and literary criticism in the humanities. Of course, there are many more variants in each category, as well as many types of writing, such as popular science books and creative non-fiction essays, that cross disciplinary boundaries. This lesson is simply designed to help tutors think about applying an oft-siloed rhetorical framework across domains.
Topic Two: Checking in With Writers
Pivot! How to Change Directions During a Tutoring
Daniel Mueller and Macy Dunklin, Texas A & M University
This PowerPoint-style lesson 1) primes tutors to recognize when and why pivoting is necessary in a session, and 2) asks them to problem solve how they might pivot when faced with common difficult tutoring situations, e.g., when the student repeatedly refuses a tutor’s suggestions, when the student does not grasp a tutor’s explanation, and when the tutor realizes they have provided incorrect instruction. The lesson approaches the topic with a sense of practicality, acknowledging that each tutor has their own tutoring style while offering scripts in the instructional plan that tutors can adapt into their own style or use verbatim. By the end of the lesson, tutors should walk away with greater confidence to pivot in challenging situations.
Flowchart Heuristic for Novice Tutor Training Focused on Conversations about Higher Order Frameworks
Carol Saalmueller, University of Minnesota
This training for novice tutors uses a flowchart heuristic to familiarize writing tutors with the process of establishing a consultation conversation with a writer from any discipline when introduced to a project that is new to the tutor. While leaving room for the writer to take agency on the direction of the conversation, the flowchart models a process that prioritizes higher order concerns to ensure the formal requirements or expectations of the assignment or overall textual genre are met before focusing on other aspects like mechanical accuracy. The flowchart heuristic is accompanied by reflective questions for discussion and facilitation of meta-cognition.
Coregulatory Tutoring: Harnessing Nervous System Regulation for Comprehension
Nichole E. Stanford, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
Tutors provide sound feedback, but students sometimes struggle to comprehend or retain it due to nervous system dysregulation and challenges with executive function. This module introduces nine coregulatory methods to help students access best learning states and improve sessions. Coregulatory tutoring is a framework that integrates nervous system regulation into writing center pedagogy to support student comprehension and engagement by fostering safety and playfulness.
Tutors begin by reflecting on how their own writing changes when they are calm versus stressed, and they identify personal regulation strategies like music, lighting, or movement. In the PowerPoint pre-reading, tutors learn the theory of coregulation, with opportunities to explore the concepts more thoroughly in “Deeper Dive” slides, including limits and cautions. Then tutors learn to recognize dysregulation in students and practice using corresponding interventions—for example, mirroring a student’s expression to attune; labeling emotions (“Is that confusion I see?”); or reframing through humor (“Don’t worry—you’re not the worst writer; that’s my title”). Training concludes with another discussion and opportunities for ongoing practice such as roleplay.
