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=Kathleen Evans= =Marquette University= =EDPL 223= =Leadership Project Wiki= 

**Project: A Collaborative Peer Writing Center** [[image:IMG_0361_1_CQ77_K3yI.jpg width="246" height="184"]]
One of my greatest goals as an educator is to create a collaborative peer writing center at the high school level. I first discovered peer writing centers as an undergraduate student at Marquette University. At the Ott Memorial Writing Center, undergraduate and graduate students can receive tutoring for any writing assignments. The tutors are college students who are taking or have taken Processes of Writing, an upper-division English elective that explores the different stages of writing and the benefits of tutoring. From 2003 to 2004, I worked at the Ott Memorial Writing Center and the Al McGuire Center. At the former, I tutored undergraduate, graduate, and law students; at the latter, I tutored student athletes, including those that were considered “at-risk.” Peer tutoring at Marquette was non-directive. Tutors coached and questioned the writers, helping them to recognize their strengths, acknowledge their weaknesses, and revise their writing effectively. I personally utilized the Writing Center as both an undergraduate and a graduate student. Peer tutoring prepared me for my career as a high school English teacher more than any other educational experience.
 * Background **

In high schools, writing centers often begin as modest enterprises and grow over time. My vision of a writing center at Franklin High School is ambitious yet flexible. With the A/B block schedule that we are adopting, the morning resource period is the ideal time for students to access peer tutors at the writing center. Students could schedule appointments in advance or stop by for “walk-in” appointments. While there, they could work with a peer tutor or a supervising teacher on brainstorming, prewriting, outlining, revising, or editing a composition assignment from any class. Tutors could provide feedback and assistance on any of the Six Traits of Writing. With its versatility, peer tutoring would benefit students of all levels and backgrounds.
 * Helping All Students **

The writing center could be a regular classroom, where writers and tutors could brainstorm or revise their papers at desks, or it could be a section of the library, where writers and tutors could collaborate at the tables. The presence of laptops would add yet another dimension to the tutoring, in which students could seek help with word processing, researching, or documenting their information. The writing center could be whatever we make of it.

Ideally, the center would be staffed by highly qualified students enrolled in a class that examined the fundamentals of the writing process. I believe it would make sense for this to function as an online course. The tutors will already be attending the resource period, so an additional 86 minute block in a classroom may be unnecessary or even unfeasible for them. Rather, because of the constructivist nature of the writing center, the tutors could spend the dedicated block working independently at the library, computer lab, or even a classroom with computer access where they could participate in online threaded discussion, give or receive online peer tutoring, update blogs or journals about their tutoring experiences, and research the assigned topics of the Online Writing Workshop course.
 * Staffing the Center with Qualified Tutors **

Most of the research that I have read recommends recruiting advanced writers to serve as tutors during the first year. Because the concept of a peer writing center is so foreign to most students, it is all the more important to have competent tutors. Kent (2006) actively recruited students to enroll in the course and act as writers when he first began his modest writing center. The writing course and tutoring position became so popular that he soon had enough students to the staff the center with multiple tutors for all seven class periods. Today, Kent allows any student to enroll in the course and work as a peer tutor without pre-requisites, as long as they complete the summer work and keep up with the course assignments.


 * Creating a Writing Community **

Establishing a writing center and course could create a real community of writers at Franklin High School. When we provide students with resources and time, we show them that we value writing. When we call students “writers,” “tutors,” or “editors,” we acknowledge their talents and strengths. When we allow students to collaborate with each other, we can bridge the gap between struggling and advanced learners. When we provide elective courses and tutoring opportunities to our most advanced students, we can help them to reach their full potential. The research is undeniable; peer writing centers, when properly staffed and operated, are simply Best Practices.