scholar, editor, and designer
Writing Center and Digital Studio Work
I began my tutoring career in 2016 as a peer tutor at The Writing Center at Ball State University under the direction of Dr. Jackie Grutsch McKinney. Before taking on the role of peer tutor, I had taken a course taught by Dr. Grutsch McKinney detailing writing center scholarship and pedagogy. This course was my first introduction to the world of writing centers.
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I worked at the Writing Center at Ball State until I graduated. While there, I became one of the first consultants at its newly opened Digital Studio, Tutor of the Month October 2017, and Tutor of the Year 2017-18. Now, I tutor in the Reading Writing Center, Graduate Writing Center, and Williams Digital Studio at Florida State University.
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Because I have tutored in both traditional writing center spaces and digital studios, I have had unique exposure to a variety of tutoring pedagogies in theory and praxis. This exposure has shaped my pedagogy and the way I navigate sessions. As I continue to work in these spaces and delve into the scholarship of the field, I am interested in discussing the "wiring" of the writing center, the creation of studio spaces, and centers that embody the written and the digital. I acknowledge and value that writing centers, digital studios, and/or multiliteracy centers exist in a multitude of institutional contexts, forms, and capacities. I also acknowledge that I have, throughout my career, worked in each of these spaces. I value my personal experience, spanning over 200 sessions with a diverse array of clients across two institutions, with texts ranging from screenplays to personal narratives to fashion design in Adobe Illustrator.
Excerpts from my Tutoring Philosophy
As a tutor, I strive to be open to the unique challenges every session brings, opening my skills up to a student-centered approach that values the individuality of each writer and their process. I firmly believe that there is no one, prescriptive, perfect way to tutor: as each student comes into the center wishing to display their thoughts, ideas, and perceptions of the world, I work to ensure that I am helping the best way I can, always centering my approaches around them. As such, I take what I've learned from my training as a writing tutor—conversations of directive and non-directive approaches, the prioritization of higher and lower order concerns, and more—and apply them situationally. This involves a careful dialogue with the student I am with; I take time to have them articulate their process, concerns, and needs to me. I'm interested in the person as much as I am the text.
Andrea Lunsford writes in “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center”, “A collaborative environment must also be one in which goals are clearly defined and in which the jobs at hand engage everyone fairly equally” (3). As I develop a student-centered tutoring pedagogy, these initial conversations where we define goals are integral to the progression of my sessions.
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But, because of FSU's institutional contexts, I especially enjoy my time with registered students; in fact, I tend to prefer these sessions. I feel they allow an ideal situation to enact this student-centered approach, where we not only define these for-the-session goals, but a rapport, a relationship.​
Image Description: Noah working with a Digital Studio tutee.
The Graduate Writing Center has especially been enriching for me. This semester, I've been paired with an education PhD student, a multilingual writer working on numerous research projects while navigating a variety of health concerns and professional demands. Together, we've gone through several proposals, her advisor's feedback, drafted messages to co-researchers, and maneuvered IRB proposals. But, we've also talked about how losing a day to get various tests done at the hospital can take on your workload; how sometimes, as academics, it feels like we're not even allowed to take care of ourselves as we do our work. We've talked about the wonders and woes of working with others, the unpredictability of research. We've also talked about things as mundane as the cupcake shop in Thomasville. All of these conversations help me understand her as a writer, but more importantly, as a person.
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As I work to understand my clients as people—not just clients in that space, with me in the moment, but as people, with material, complicated lives—I understand the writing process better. My own, others, my students. I get to see these processes play out on a micro level, up close and personal; and that's exhilarating. I love tutoring. I love the relationships I get to build with my clients. And most importantly, I love the way I get to work so intimately with the writer. And, in the process, understand how the writer influences the writing.
Works Cited:
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Lunsford, Andrea. “Collaboration, Control, and the Idea of a Writing Center.” The Writing Lab Newsletter.
https://canvas.fsu.edu/courses/45987/files/1943893?module_item_id=456104. Accessed 4 July 2018.
Selected Client Report Forms
The following gallery contains screenshots of Client Report Forms taken from sessions with various clients during the Fall 2018 semester at Florida State University's Reading Writing Center and Graduate Writing Center.
Letters of Recommendation
Below, find a letter of recommendation from Mandy Brooks, the Assistant Director of the Williams Digital Studio, and Jessi Thomsen, my Pedagogy mentor in Fall 2018..