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Reaching the Community: Writing Center Staff Talk to High School English Teachers

Reaching the Community: Writing Center Staff Talk to High School English Teachers. Diane Dowdey Frances Crawford Fennessy Barbara A. Jones. What we hoped to accomplish. Our motivation Provide a service to the larger community Serve as a recruitment tool Publicize our center

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Reaching the Community: Writing Center Staff Talk to High School English Teachers

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  1. Reaching the Community: Writing Center Staff Talk to High School English Teachers Diane Dowdey Frances Crawford Fennessy Barbara A. Jones

  2. What we hoped to accomplish • Our motivation • Provide a service to the larger community • Serve as a recruitment tool • Publicize our center • Utilize our expertise and resources

  3. Our motivation • Language arts teachers face an overwhelming curriculum in Texas, with high stakes testing • We wondered about the needs students have when they come to our Writing Center or take our remedial course • How can we use terminology they are familiar with?

  4. What we wanted to do • Inform the teachers about our resources • Tutorial help • Workshops and presentations • Handouts • Inform the teachers about college writing assignments • Open a dialogue about writing with the teachers

  5. We wanted to provide: • Teachers with insight from former students • Students enrolled in developmental writing were asked what happened in their high school English class and what they wished their English teachers spent more time on

  6. Our relationship with the school • Sam Houston State University • Student population of just under 14,000 • Located in Huntsville, Texas in East Texas, 60 miles north of Houston • Local population of 35,000 • One high school • Population of 1,895 students in 2003-2004 55% European-American, 26% African-American, 17% Hispanic; 36% economically disadvantaged

  7. Contacting the school district • Frances, a tutor in the Writing Center and a parent of a high school student, contacted the secondary curriculum director for the district, Lisa Severns • Lisa and Diane, the director of the Writing Center talked and arranged a meeting

  8. The district’s motivation • A perceived need by the teacher’s and the administration to better prepare students for college writing • Better prepare students for the writing portion on the standardized test • Help teachers cope with the curriculum demands of MLA and APA formatting

  9. What We Planned To Do…developed in conjunction with secondary curriculum director

  10. A well rounded presentation: • invite an instructor who teaches freshman English at another college to join us. • Barbara Jones • Kingwood College • Sam Houston State University • Montgomery College • Writing Center tutor

  11. Our approach: • Information share • A collaboration with English instructors at the high school and English instructors from the university and colleges of the area.

  12. The agenda: • Introduction • Discuss WCTR services, brochures • Pass out notecards, respond to a prompt • What would you like to accomplish today? What do you feel would help you prepare your students for college?

  13. The agenda (continued) • From The Mouths of Students • Assignments and expectations for college freshman composition • Lunch at 11:30 • 12:30 grammar exercise fun

  14. Writing Center presentations: • “hands on” presentations • audience participation • another tool to use in the classroom

  15. Writing Center presentations: • Writing Process Idea to Thesis presentation and handouts • Organizational Strategies presentation and handout • Effective Quoting / Supporting Ideas presentation and handout • Citation Style handouts • MLA • APA

  16. Winding up the day… • TAKS prompts and examples (hands on) • Pass out notecards, respond to a prompt • What would you like to do next? What do you want to learn next?

  17. TYPICALFRESHMAN WRITING ASSIGNMENTS

  18. PERSONAL ESSAY“Write about an event from which you learned something.”(serves as a Diagnostic and emphasizes focus)

  19. INFORMATIONAL(EXPOSITORY)ESSAYdeveloped through writing techniques with which the student should be familiar—Example, Definition, Classification, Comparison-Contrast, Description, Casual, Analysis, and Process

  20. EVALUATION ESSAYin which the student should be able to critically analyze a performance for quality

  21. LITERATURE ESSAYin which the student must determine the author’s thesis through plot, characterization, theme, or symbolism

  22. ADVERTISING ANALYSISin which the student must apply Aristotle’s Theory of Persuasion—Logic, Emotion and Ethics—to determine the effectiveness of an advertising campaign(paper and web site)

  23. POSITION ESSAYin which a student must take a stand on an issue and support that stance(This is the first of three research papers. If the students have been exposed to MLA format and documentation, they definitely have an advantage.)

  24. PERSUASIVE ESSAYin which the student must understand the difference between Argumentation and Persuasion

  25. PROBLEM-SOLUTIONRESEARCH PAPER(This paper is the culmination of the freshman English program. In a six page research paper, the student should use all the techniques learned in the previous writing assignments.)

  26. ASSUMPTIONS(basic composition skills that college English instructorshope (wish)incoming freshmen have mastered)

  27. Structureof AFiveParagraph Essay

  28. ProcessWriting

  29. Modes of Development

  30. BasicGrammarandMechanics

  31. BasicCriticalThinkingSkills

  32. And then things happened • Unreceptive audience • Teachers resent college professors telling them what to do • Feeling attacked • Shortened time • Told needed to end the session an hour and a half early • Teachers wanted to discuss internal politics

  33. The Houston Chronicle • September 26, 2004 • Jason Spencer • Most Freshmen at Houston-Area Community Colleges in Need of Remedial Classes

  34. A liaison in the making… In an effort to promote our new found alliance, I contacted the Huntsville Item and informed them of our collaboration.

  35. We made the front page! • September 27, 2004 • Matt Pederson • SHSU Writing Center, HISD teachers seek to erase common mistakes

  36. Huntsville Item makes news: …a lot of themistakes are exactly what students were taught to do in high school, but those things do not work in college writing. Since she saw this from a large number of students, she felt that it would be beneficial, especially for the students, to teach them college writing skills before they even get to college.

  37. And the article continues… • One problem, Fennessy said, is students are no longer taught proper composition skills. • For the last 30 years, grammar has not been taught in school," she said.

  38. What a wordsmith does when she’s been outdone… • Prays • Hopes the 2 weeks between the article and the collaborative effort will be enough time to quell any hostility • Calls Huntsville ISD's director of secondary curriculum (Lisa Severns) to apologize

  39. In retrospect, what would we do differently?

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