The+Successful+High+School+Writing+Center

The Successful High School Writing Center emphasizes a peer-tutored center with integrated reading; the center model is the Mercy Reading and Writing Center, headed by a literacy coach writing center director and utilizing student tutors. The center combines content-area literacy, literacy coaching, and high school writing to mediate some of the limitations of each individual area of practice (80). I found chapter 7 to be the most relevant chapter focusing on the development of the writing center.

The first step of creation was to locate time in the schedule; the next was to identify specific concerns of the faculty about students’ reading and writing abilities. Through survey, they found the most frequent concerns to be reading comprehension, distinguishing main ideas from supporting details, and inability to make inferences; to a lesser degree were concerns about reading rates and discipline, as well as vocabulary. To launch their center it was promoted as a resource that made house calls, or classroom calls. They worked with interested faculty in designing reading and/or writing activities in their various subject areas and offered to come into the classroom and provide mini-workshops with students on a variety of literacy tasks and skills. After a month they had seen 90% of the student population, whether through an in-class workshop, a workshop or consultation in the writing center, or an online consultation via email (82).

Three months into their writing center and workshops, they discovered they had been practicing the concept of literacy coaching; someone who works alongside faculty to help them become better teachers of reading in their content-area courses (84). Essentially, literacy coaches work with faculty on an ongoing basis to help them find ways to teach students the literacy skills and strategies necessary for academic and life success. Their major role is to work with content teachers across the curriculum (85). The authors use three sources to support the idea of what is demanded of a literacy coach, and their purpose within a school, namely Fisher, D. (2007) //Coaching considerations//, [|www.literacycoachingonline.org], Shanklin, N.L. (2006) //What are the characteristics of effective literacy coaching?// also at [|www.literacycoachingonline.org], and, Sturtevant, E.G. (2003) //The literacy coach: A key to improving teaching and learning in secondary schools//, Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.

In addition to offering in-class workshops, the authors put together informal workshops to help faculty answer questions such as “How can I get students to know more vocabulary?” or “Why don’t students use the comments I write on their papers?” And once a year, the (pre-established) faculty and student book clubs merge, and students benefit experiencing their teachers as equals when any and all interpretations are game (90). The writing center coaches routinely collect evaluations for feedback, and report an overall increase in students’ critical reading and writing abilities. They explain that the informality may be perceived as a drawback. Their biggest “clients” utilizing the resource is their social studies and religion departments while the English department, though supportive, infrequently utilizes the center (91).

Clearly literacy coaching requires a high level of competence across the curriculum as well as solid foundational literacy pedagogy. The authors observe that any writing center can be strengthened if their staff is trained in supporting reading. Another option is to hold optional brown bag lunch sessions on integrating content literacy. The mention that Janet Allen’s //Tools for Teaching Content Literacy// (2004) is an approachable, practical, yet theoretically grounded book their teachers have found invaluable. Other alternatives may include faculty pair-and-share where faculty share strategies that are working in their own classrooms (92). Robin: Exploring //The Successful High School Writing Center//, by Dawn Fels and Jennifer Wells.