Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me A Match
This famous song from Fiddler On The Roof has been playing in my head lately, because it seems that matchmaking has become part of my job. I am part of a team at Morehead State University working to (re)create a writing center. We had a stand-alone Writing Center at various points in the past, but there simply was not institutional support to sustain it. So this time around we are embedding the Writing Center in our existing Tutoring and Learning Center which serves our students by offering writing tutors.
One of our great challenges is the ongoing mindset, among both students and faculty, that writing is a one-time event and learning to write is a one-size-fits-all proposition. We love the Writing Studio model for writing process support, but we know this model is impractical for widespread implementation. We don’t have the funding or trained tutors to sponsor so many small groups and the number of instructors willing to give up substantial class time for studio work is limited. And so this semester we are experimenting with the embedded writing tutor, or writing fellow, model of writing support.
Read the full “Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me A Match” post on my Metawriting blog at: http://metawriting.deannamascle.com/
