When Writing Fellows Become Reading Fellows: Creative Strategies for Critical Reading and Writing In a Course-Based Tutoring Program
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Date
2014
Authors
Bugdal, Melissa
Holtz, Ricky
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We learn from Candace Spigelman and Laurie
Grobman in their introduction to the edited collection
On Location: Theory and Practice in Classroom-Based Writing
Tutoring that course-embedded fellows programs
“must be understood by all stakeholders as a distinct
form of writing support” (2), and that a writing fellows
program is designed “with its dual emphases on
peership and the social construction of knowledge”
(4). Spigelman and Grobman also point out that
Like writing itself, this scene of writing rehearses
the often uncertain, recursive operations of
discourse production, from inventing to
composing to reviewing to revising. Like other
writing acts, classroom-based tutoring is apt to be
chaotic, even messy. Yet within this turbulent,
hybrid classroom tutoring space, students,
teachers, and tutors can locate themselves as
writers. (6)
This “turbulent, hybrid classroom tutoring space”
became readily apparent to Melissa, the fellows
coordinator of the program discussed in this article,
and the five undergraduate writing fellows during the
fall 2013 semester when, in a weekly meeting early in
the semester, one of the fellows noted, “I knew I
would be spending a lot of time as a writing fellow,
but I didn’t realize how much of my time would also
be spent as a reading fellow.”