The Writing Coach Program: An Overview >Kurtis Clements

Many writing centers are mistakenly branded by students and instructors as a paper review service, and the Kaplan University Writing Center is no different. As the numbers of papers submitted for review continually increase, Writing Center staff decided to dig a little deeper into the reasons for this trend. Obviously, as the number of students at Kaplan increase, so do the number of paper review submissions, but are there any other angles to consider? As a proactive step towards challenging and subsequently changing the image of the Writing Center from being a paper review mill to a full-service support center for students and faculty, a pilot writing coach program was instituted to educate both students and instructors about services within the writing center. The writing coach pilot is now in its fourth term and on its way to moving beyond the pilot phase and becoming an ongoing Kaplan University Writing Center program.

One goal of the writing coach program is to provide students with a personalized introduction to or experience with a Writing Center coach. Many times students are just not sure where to turn for help, and when they do turn to the Writing Center, it is by submitting a paper for review. With a known writing coach in the classroom, students can turn to that person for help, and in addition to receiving one-on-one assistance, students will also be referred to other services and content available through the Writing Center, which over time will increase students’ awareness of the many resources available in the Writing Center other than paper review.

A second goal is to help instructors understand better the Writing Center’s services and resources. To this end, the collaborative relationship between the instructor and coach will help the instructor become more familiar with what the Writing Center has to offer so that instructors can refer individual students to a particular service and/or resource rather than suggest the student submit a paper for review or, worse, mandate a whole class submit papers for review. For example, some instructors may not be aware of the many live workshops or recordings to live workshops the Writing Center offers. If a student needs help with editing, the instructor may suggest the student use the paper review service, but since the paper review service provides a holistic review of a paper and not editorial comments, the student would probably be better served viewing a workshop on editing – and the Writing Center has several workshops on this one topic, not to mention other related content. With a writing coach involved in a class, the instructor and coach will have an ongoing dialogue that should ensure students use the most appropriate resources possible.

So how does the program work? The Writing Coach program puts trained Writing Center tutors into classrooms across the KU campus to help students with their writing and let them know about the array of writing center services available. Often students come to the Writing Center by way of the paper review service and at a point in their process when deep-seeded flaws may already exist in the writing. The coach, with the help of the instructor, tries to work with students early in the process, perhaps at the beginning stages of a piece of writing before the student even begins to draft. The coach can then work with the student throughout the writing process, providing feedback and direction along the way. Coaches conference with students either via AOL’s instant messaging service or the telephone and discuss, once a representative writing sample is seen, what the student needs to work on to improve upon his/her writing. In many cases, the coach works one-on-one with a student over the life of the term so many opportunities to help the student exist.

The writing coach will have a strong presence within the class. To this end, coaches will engage students with weekly assignment-specific emails that explain ways in which the coach can help on a given project or discussion board directive. Coaches will also upload writing resources and other information to Doc Sharing as well as post regular announcements as a way to impart information and to connect with students. The writing coach has a dedicated discussion board area for student questions and/or interaction. In a course with a witting coach, students will have direct access to the writing coach, but they will also have access to information and resources that the coach makes available within the course that will help students with their writing whether they work directly with the writing coach or not.

Currently coaches are working in nine schools and twenty-nine sections, and the program is growing. If you would like more information about this exciting program or have questions, please contact me, Kurtis Clements at kclements@kaplan.edu, and I will be happy to provide you with the information that you need.

Kurtis is a full-time staff person in the Writing Center.

Did you know...

Did you know that Kurtis Clements heats his farmhouse in Maine entirely with wood that he and his wife cut, spilt, and haul from the woods?

Red Ink and Corrections > Kurtis Clements

This fall marks the first time in seventeen teaching years that I did not wend my way through the halls of an on-ground academic institution, where I would dutifully teach some version of freshman composition to college students who would rather not be there at all. One of my standard first-day get-to-know-each-other icebreaker questions was this: What do you remember most about high school English?

I asked, at least early in my teaching career, because my own high school English experience had been so miserable that I had concluded it must be an anomaly, and I wanted my students to set me straight. What I discovered soon enough, though, was that my experience was not at all atypical, that my students and I had had similar experiences and that they expected that I would be like every English teacher they had ever had. Sadly, what students remembered most about high school English was red ink and corrections.

Most of my high school years are more a haze now than they were then, and the only high school English teacher I have any concrete memory of was a man dubbed Sleepy Willets for his propensity to fall asleep during class at any time. While other teachers were notorious for nodding off showing movies in dimmed rooms or during prep periods, Sleepy Willets could nod off standing in front of the class, chalk in hand. He looked like a caricature of Edgar Alan Poe, his forehead too big for his narrow jaw, eyes enormous black orbs beneath heavy eyelids. These facts alone did not account for my miserable experience. As it turned out, Sleepy Willets also had a fondness for the red pen, and he would use it indiscriminately on my papers, slashing words, phrases, sentences, even entire paragraphs. He’d scratch comments between lines and in the margins and sometimes draw arrows and shapes to more comments squeezed in at the top or bottom of the page. His favorite mark of punctuation was the question mark, and when he wasn’t filling my paper with comments, he left thick red question marks in the margins. Once, my writing got the better of him, and Sleepy Willets was reduced to tears (I am imagining this part) and could muster only heavy red upper case letters like A-W-K and D-E-V, whatever those meant.

In Sleepy Willets’ class, I learned to fear writing papers much the way I feared all bodies of water the summer I was eleven when, without my parents’ permission, Danny Leonas and I snuck into the Empire Theater and watched Jaws on the big screen. That entire summer, whenever I saw water, I heard scary music in my head and was sure something terrible lurked beneath the surface, just waiting to get me. Sleepy Willets was my shark.

What is so ironic about my experience in Sleepy Willets’ English class is that I loved words and I loved to write. I wrote all the time – amusing little anecdotes about teachers (some habits die hard), movie reviews for the school newspaper (though I can’t prove it, I originated the “thumbs up” approval for movies well before Siskel and Ebert), and, my proudest accomplishment at the time, an unauthorized mimeographed serialization of the heroics of a group of hobbit-inspired beings who lived in the woods behind my high school. In the yearbook my senior year, my “Personal Quote” was “Better a word man than a bird man.” I loved to write and I had always loved English classes, always, yet Sleepy Willets’ red ink and correction marks were unintentionally driving me away.

I say “unintentionally” because I believe in his heart, Sleepy Willets was trying to help just as I imagine teachers today who use red and mark every error are trying to help. In fact, over the years, I’ve heard many well-meaning teachers of all levels explain and sometimes defend their use of red and the frequency and aggressiveness of their correction marks and comments, usually in some incarnation of this:

1. I use red because it provides the best contrast.
2. If I don’t point out every error, how will students
    know what to work on?
3. My teachers used red and it never bothered me.
4. It is my job.

To all of those responses, I say, politely, Phooey!

First off, it’s not about what the teacher thinks is best; rather, it is about how best to help students. Put another way, it is the difference between teacher-directed learning and student-centered learning. Students learn best by doing, and if the color red and pointing out every error discourage students from doing, how will they learn? Let’s face it: quite often the majority of comments point out grammar, usage, and mechanics errors. If composition theory has taught us anything in the last thirty or forty years, it is that pointing out grammatical errors does not help students become better writers nor does such feedback help students not make those errors in the future.

What, then, should a teacher do? For starters, stop using red. Use purple or green or pink or blue. Use any color except red. Stop pointing out every little error and, instead, focus on patterns of errors that hamper meaning. After all, is there any difference in meaning between example one and example two?

1. The sky is falling. I should go inside.
2. The sky is falling, I should go inside.

In both examples, the sky is falling and someone has the wherewithal to think about going inside. Whether we like it or not, the comma splice in the second sentence (I know some of you wanted to leap all over that error!) does not interfere with the meaning. I am not saying go out and create comma splices, but I am questioning how necessary it is to mark such an error, especially at the expense of comments that could actually help students become better writers by encouraging them to think beyond sentence-level errors to matters of content and meaning. In helping students discover and clarify what they are trying to say in their texts, the more likely students are to take ownership of those ideas and to care enough to polish their writing, perhaps even eliminating some of the sentence-level errors commonly marked. I’d rather have a piece of substantive writing with a few comma splices than a “Dick and Jane” piece of writing without any comma splices.

Limit the number of overall comments to two maybe three content-driven comments per page at most: Less is more. Think about the global, big-picture matters, not the picayune. While we may think we are offering great feedback – and the comments may, indeed, be excellent – the reality is that too many comments will overwhelm a student. Instead of reading and thinking about the remarks, they are ignored. Imagine the right-hand margin of a paper with one bubble comment after another – you should think about...what do you mean by...the sentence structure here is...the marked sentence is an example of...how does this content connect with…. Get the picture? Too many comments on a paper is akin to being in an overcrowded elevator – unpleasant and worth avoiding. Some students, upon seeing comments jammed together shoulder to shoulder would, like Sleepy Willets, be brought to tears and reduced to communicating in big capital letters: OMG!

Accentuate the positive. Students learn better when they are encouraged and feel as if they have the support of others, especially their teachers. Whatever happened to, You can do it! You’re getting the hang of it! Way to go! You’ve got it! All right!? Cheerleading gets results. Students want to improve, but they want to feel the teacher is rooting for them, so teachers need to embrace the It’s-Not-What-You-Say-but-How-You-Say-It philosophy.

Look at the difference between A and B:

A: Your discussion here is not developed thoroughly enough for your audience. Readers will not understand the good point you are trying to make unless you take the time to sustain your writing. You are on the right track, but you need to think about what you are trying to say and what your audience needs to understand that message.

B: The discussion here raises a good point! I wonder, though, if the development is thorough enough considering the audience? Would they need more specific information? Give this some thought and revise accordingly.

Which comment would you rather read on a paper you worked hard on? B, right? Of course! While both comments express the same basic idea, the second one does so in a way that encourages and challenges the student. Moreover, the comment is a reaction to the writer’s ideas, not a top-down directive. Comment A points out the student’s shortcomings by using the second person (you, your); the tone sounds accusatory. And how sincere is the “You are on the right track, BUT [emphasis added]” remark? You are qualified for the job, BUT I am hiring someone else. I don’t want to give you a speeding ticket, BUT I have to. It’s my job. Please!

In the end, we can all learn from Sleepy Willets. In his own way, he has taught me much more than he could have possibly imagined, and I carry his unintended lessons with me right in my shirt pocket next to a purple pen. But it’s not easy. While I strive for a pedagogy that matches my practice, I sometimes have to pinch myself to remember that I don’t want to be like every English teacher my students have ever had.

Did you know...

... that Kurtis Clements’ house in New Orleans survived Hurricane Katrina but a section of the roof of his new house in Maine blew off in what New Englanders call a Nor’easter?

Kurtis is a staff member at the Kaplan University Writing Center.

Debunking the Myth of the Writing Center as Paper Review Service > Kurtis C. Clements

Ask the typical student on KU’s virtual campus what he or she knows about the Writing Center, the odds are that most would say the Writing Center provides a paper review service for students. While this statement is true, it is not the whole truth – and there lies the problem.

Over the past several months, the Writing Center has seen a drastic increase in submissions to its paper review service to the point where meeting the 48 – 72 hour turn-around time can be a formidable, tutor-intensive challenge. Students often submit papers at the 11th hour, including sometimes frantic messages for paper-weary tutors: “Please help! This is due tomorrow!” For too many students, submitting a paper to the Writing Center has become an ingrained part of their writing process: draft, submit to the Writing Center for review, finalize based on Writing Center feedback.

This tendency to use the paper review service as purely an editorial service is not only a bad practice in general, but it has also come at the expense of other valuable Writing Center services – live tutoring, writing reference library, question and answer queue, and workshops and presentations – that might legitimately assist students with their writing process. For example, a twenty minute live tutoring session might help the student discover and articulate an appropriate focus and/or structure for a paper. Visiting the writing reference library might assist a student with prewriting strategies that can be employed to generate ideas for paper topics or supporting points.

Too often students come to the Writing Center at the end of their process (if a bona fide process has been used at all), thinking that a paper review is just what they need before finalizing and then submitting for evaluation. This approach is a breeding ground for bad writing because students often need help much earlier in their process, but due to a complicated amalgam of factors (work, family, other courses, for example), students don’t use the Writing Center until a draft is completed and at that point problems may already be inherent in the writing that may have been resolved sooner and much easier. Unfortunately, as is often the case with writing, “fixing” something involves much more than correcting a few comma splices and possessives errors; to this end, the work needed to improve upon a draft with systemic issues (a skewed focus, for example) will take considerable time, which is a strong argument against using the Writing Center’s paper review service as it is being used now. If a student submits a paper to the review service that lacks a clear focus, what is it the tutor can say, really, other than the paper lacks a clear focus and that perhaps a stronger thesis would help give the paper much-needed clarity and even structure? If this same student came to the Writing Center earlier, say to chat in real time with a tutor, he/she could have discussed the focus of the paper and perhaps worked on a thesis that established an appropriate focus – all before drafting. Students and instructors need to realize that the Writing Center can help in significant ways prior to a draft ever being completed.

To complicate the issue, some courses and/or instructors have a blanket policy that requires all students to submit papers to the Writing Center for review. This practice, while well-intended, does not promote good writing and, in fact, encourages the writer to be more passive about his/her learning as students give their work less attention up front because they think the tutors will point out what needs to be “corrected” during the review process.

While the paper review service certainly can be helpful, it is important to understand that tutors offer holistic feedback, not line editing. Tutors offer global, here’s-what-to-do-when-thinking-about-the-writing-as-a-whole type responses, and do not simply point out errors, though the latter seems to be what drives students to submit papers in the first place. The “error and correction” method of responding to student writing is an ancient and still used pedagogy that does little to improve student writing. What value is there in knowing a comma splice exists in a sentence in the sixth paragraph if the focus of the paper is not yet defined clearly, if body paragraphs lack supporting details and general development or if ideas are arranged as haphazardly as leaves in a windstorm? By over-relying on the paper review service, students miss out on the opportunities to think about and explore their ideas – to be a part of their own writing process and not a casual by-stander. If students compose a draft, submit that draft (sometimes the very first draft!) to the Writing Center, and then revise based on what a tutor reports, how is that kind of process truly going to help students become better writers?

And what do the students do with the feedback they receive from tutors, especially if it holistic? Do they really address the important substantive issues that can help them become better writers or do they only address what can be easily “corrected”?

Paper review can be an effective form of feedback if the service is used appropriately by students and faculty alike. To this end, all must realize that the student needs to do the legwork first – the working through the process – and submit a paper that represents time and effort spent to discover a focus, try out ideas, draft, experiment with structure, and clarify meaning. When students rush to complete a draft, when they bypass the actual writing process and instead just sit down and type, problems will ensue. When instructors make it mandatory for students to submit papers to the Writing Center, students are compelled to hurry through the writing so they can submit their papers for review.

The Writing Center and tutors can offer substantive help long before the final period is placed on a draft so those services should be used. Indeed, students should take advantage of the other valuable Writing Center services that may provide the kind of feedback and help that will lead to a much more polished final project and, better yet, real hands-on learning in terms of understanding and working with the writing process and addressing issues to make students better college-level writers.

[This article was originally published in our July, 2009 issue.]

Why Writing Matters or Stomping on Our Mothers > Kurtis C. Clements

 For about ten years, I conducted a little experiment in my freshman composition courses on the first day of the semester. Standing before the wide-eyed group and posturing myself as professorial as possible (I probably even wore a tweed sport coat), I posed this question: Why does writing matter?

I’d waggle a finger in the air and add, “I don’t want you to answer this question - it’s rhetorical. Just think about an answer.” I’d pivot and pace across the front of the room noticing out of the corner of my eye one or two eager beavers reaching for their college-level dictionaries (required) and thumb quickly for “rhetorical.” The others sat slack-jawed and glazy-eyed.

I instructed the students to rip a piece of paper into fourths and write on one the name of a vegetable they couldn’t stomach, on another a movie they hated, on the third a rule or law they thought was inane (probably not the word I used in class), and on the last the word they used for their mother or someone they loved deeply.

“Take the piece of paper in which you have written the name of a vegetable you can’t stand, drop it on the floor, and stamp all over it,” I instructed. Blank stares and a smattering of nervous is-he-serious laughter filled the room. “Go ahead,” I cajoled. “It’s ok.” And they did it, reluctantly at first, but soon with growing enthusiasm as if to say, Hey! College is fun!

They stomped all over the cauliflower and turnips and broccoli. They loosened up and some smiled when they stamped their feet on the movies they hated. Most delighted in their perceived rebellious behavior of trampling out a rule or law they thought was stupid. Then I paused. The brighter students knew what was coming next (they were almost always the ones who had reached for the dictionaries earlier). I asked the students to hold up the piece of paper they had written the name they use for their mother or someone they loved deeply. For theatrics, I sometimes asked students to share those names. Mom, Mommy, Mommy Dearest.

“Ok,” I said. “You know what to do - stomp on those papers!” Almost always the students hesitated, looked up, offered furtive glances around the room, occasionally someone remarked, and then slowly the students dropped the slips of paper onto the floor and half-hearted stepping, not stomping, ensued.

Then we started talking. “Why did it matter?” I asked. “It’s just a word.”

To most of the students (the vast majority over the years, I imagine), my antics put me in the category of loopy English professor, another talking head trying to convince non-believers of the merits of what I did - the teaching of writing. But to some, maybe only one in a class if I was lucky, what I did helped them connect with something that simply made sense in their eighteen-year-old minds.

Words have power. Writing matters. Writing enables us to express our thoughts and ideas, and it helps us understand ourselves, our lives, and our world. Writing allows us to make connections, to organize our thinking and to sort the fact from the fancy. Writing creates a record that lasts. Writing is empowering in that it enables us to communicate with others. If writing didn’t matter, then we might as well be stomping on our mothers.

[This article was originally published in our June, 2009 issue.]