Investing in Leadership: Student-Run Writing Centers

Date: February 28, 2013

Summary: In this episode we talk to Writing Project site leaders, teachers, administrators, and students about student-run writing centers as centers of leadership development for administrators, teachers, and students. Learn how the Northern Virginia Writing Project is taking up support of writing centers as part of their core work in their service area.

Excerpt from Show

Amber Jensen, teacher-consultant with the Northern Virginia Writing Project , and founder and Director of the Edison High School Writing Center in Alexandria, Virginia, on the impact of the writing center at her school, and the role of student-leaders:

They are doing the real work of advocating for writing instruction in really profound and transformative ways around the school. They're collaborating with their peers in the writing center, but they actually start to collaborate with their teachers in this very powerful way...this is truly a moment in contradicting some of those top-down messages in the educational climate, and really allowing the students to subvert that traditional hierarchy."

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Duration: 1 hour

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Related Resources Discussed on the Show

• Creating a Student-Staffed Writing Center
• The Northern Virginia Writing Project: High School Writing Centers and Writing Tutors
• Oakton Writing Center , Oakton High School Writing Center blog
• "Empowering Student Writing Tutors as WAC Liaisons in Secondary Schools" , by Amber Jensen
• Just Doing the WRITE Thing at the Edison Writing Center , Edison High School Writing Center blog
• The EWC , Edison High School Writing Center on Twitter
• "Getting It Off the Ground: A Look at the Wildcat Center's Inaugural Year", by Alison Hughes
• Wildcat Writing Center , Centreville High School Writing Center blog
• CVHS_WWC , Centreville High School Writing Center on Twitter
• To subscribe to the Student-Staffed Writing Centers listserv, send an email to LISTSERV@LISTS.PSU.EDU with "subscribe SSWC-L your name" in the body of the message.