A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Approach to Tutor Training: Incorporating Linguistic Justice and Anti-Racism Scholarship into Staff Meetings Ashley M. Beardsley, Western Illinois University abstractThis lesson plan includes instructions for using reading groups for writing tutor training. I discuss setting up reading groups, assigning readings, and sharing content that introduces tutors to an anti-racist approach to tutoring. Discussion questions, the list of tutor-selected readings, and sample materials demonstrating how we implemented concepts from the readings are included to show how to design similar training sessions or share with consultants.
In-person tutoring LESSON OVERVIEW In this lesson, I detail one approach writing centers can take to add readings that focus on anti-racism to tutor training. During the spring of 2023, University Writing Center (UWC) consultants worked on a semester-long project to improve their approach to anti-racist tutoring. By framing tutoring as anti-racist, writing centers can work against the myths surrounding the writing center as an editing service or grammar fix-it shop while encouraging consultants and students to investigate the ways language and the promotion of Standard American English (SAE) are racist and detrimental to learning. The initial idea for a project centering linguistic justice and anti-racist scholarship came about when I reviewed our training materials during my first semester as writing center director at Western Illinois University (WIU), a public university with just over 7,500 students and campuses in Macomb and Moline, IL. Regardless of your institution type and demographics, writing centers should take an approach to tutoring that recognizes students’ identities and investigates how the language we use during sessions can promote anti-racism because our students need to understand how to use their writing post-graduation and the writing center is a nexus of these conversations. The choose-your-own-adventure approach to tutor training is one method that can help develop consultants’ anti-racist tutoring practices and close the gap in tutors’ ability to apply anti-racist readings. That spring, I revised the tutor training schedule to incorporate readings and discussions with the goals of applying linguistic justice to sentence-level feedback and developing a shared understanding of the writing center, embracing what Ibram X. Kendi (2019) refers to as space anti-racism: “A powerful collection of antiracist policies that lead to racial equity between integrated and protected racialized spaces, which are substantiated by antiracist ideas about racialized spaces” (p. 186). We selected articles to read and discussed writing center scholarship on linguistic justice and anti-racism while working to apply current writing center pedagogy across appointment modalities (face-to-face, online, and eTutoring). Additionally, we curated a collaborative annotated bibliography for current and future tutors. Each consultant was responsible for finding one academic source on linguistic justice or anti-racism, following APA to add their source to our collaborative annotated bibliography, and leading a small group discussion. Through creating these materials, we established anti-racism as the foundation for tutor training and updated readings to use with new consultants in the fall. This lesson provides a quick overview of our previous tutor training model, foregrounds how the new method centers around facilitating agency and choice, and includes the materials needed to discuss current scholarship on linguistic justice and anti-racism during 30-minute training sessions. The lesson is designed to span two meetings with a third to assess for understanding; however, the activity can be adjusted for one meeting or implemented multiple times.
FORMAT TYPE In-person TIMING & OCCURRENCE Lesson Time: 30-60 minutes TUTOR AUDIENCE Novice tutors
AUTHOR INFORMATIONAshley M. Beardsley, Western Illinois University Ashley M. Beardsley is an Assistant Professor of English and director of the University Writing Center at Western Illinois University. She holds an MFA in Writing and Poetics with a concentration in Poetry from Naropa University and a Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Writing Studies from the University of Oklahoma. Her research interests include food rhetorics, media studies, and feminism. You can find her work in the Popular Culture Studies Journal, Writing Spaces, Kairos, and Peitho. |
