Editor’s note: We would like to thank Finley Williams, Writing Tutor of the Writing Center at Lane Tech High School, Chicago (Illinois), for providing this piece. If you would like to share your writing center’s experience during COVID-19, please submit via WLN.

Finley Williams

By March 17, the school seemed so hollow that, with the echo of an administrator’s footstep or a janitor’s cough, it might collapse upon itself. Locks still clinging to lockers, teachers’ supplies still on their desks, and the television screens still flashing posters for upcoming events, a ritual had been interrupted: because of the coronavirus pandemic, classes at Lane Tech High School would be remote until the end of the school year.

The writing center, like all other school services, was not prepared for the transition to virtual operations. Unlike other school services, however—the International Days dancing clubs, sports teams, choir—the center could continue online.

On March 31, our center director released the official guidelines for digital feedback. Because school district security policy prohibits school-sanctioned video chats between students without a faculty member present, “appointments” took the form of tutors commenting on a Google Doc. That is, the tutor left written feedback on the writer’s draft without the writer present—completely asynchronous—and with very little, if any, knowledge of what the writer wished to glean from the session.

How, I thought, can appointments maintain a congenial dynamic without face-to-face, or, at the very least, screen-to-screen interaction? How can we assure tutees meaningfully consider tutor advice? Most importantly, how can we keep the process above the product, the person above the paper, if the writer is no longer directly involved in the appointment?

Our director reassured us that online appointments would entail no paradigm shift: “Try for holistic comments and big picture questions. They help maintain that non-directive tone,” she told us. “Commenting digitally does not mean we go directive.”

Doubtless, these nondirective, holistic comments were possible, as we saw in the 200-odd successful digital appointments we conducted. But I still found that regardless of a tutor’s good intentions, their tech savvy, and their process-focused comments, if tutees are not directly involved in the revision process, we sacrifice the very agency that we claim to afford student writers.

In digital appointments, we cannot ask a writer what they think. We cannot broach our concerns and be a sounding board for tutees’ nascent ideas. There is no dialogue, and because of this, there is no dialectic. And though our comments can be nondirective in nature, they stink indelibly of an impersonality and asynchronicity that precludes the chance for dynamic discussion and the truly organic creation of knowledge about writing.

[pullquote]On a less theoretical level, I am unable to shake the tutee’s hand or make offbeat jokes, and I lose so much of what draws me to writing center tutoring: meaningful and sometimes hilarious conversations about writing.[/pullquote]

We transitioned to online “appointments” because of an unforeseen school shutdown—that system was purely a reaction, born in crisis, that sufficed well enough in exigent circumstances. We have now entered a three-month writing center hiatus, and while the crisis has not waned, we now have the time to reflect upon our reaction and look forward to operations in the fall, which will be partially digital.

Synchronous, face-to-face appointments are the writing center’s lifeblood, and at a time when the coronavirus has rendered them unsafe, if not completely impossible, there will be no panacea. By and large, though, the nearest solution is requiring tutors and tutees to conduct the appointment through the instant messaging service Google Chat, which would create a real-time exchange of ideas.

In the long-term, we can petition the school district to allow one-on-one video calls between students, or else investigate some sort of “breakout rooms” that would allow the center director to record and periodically observe tutors and tutees during the course of a video appointment. This would ideally quell the district’s fears of misconduct.

Doubtless, the writing center will once again resound with the clamor of conversation, but until then, it is imperative that we have a suitable replacement for the admittedly irreplaceable in-person appointment. Without it, writing center tutoring loses much of its joy.

Works Cited

North, Stephen M. “The Idea of a Writing Center.” College English, vol. 46, no. 5, 1984, pp.

433–446. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/377047. Accessed 17 July 2020.

 Brooks, Jeff. “Minimalist Tutoring: Making the Student Do All the Work.” The Writing Lab

Newsletter, vol. 15, no. 6, Feb. 1991, pp. 1–4.

Cooper, Marilyn M. “Really Useful Knowledge: A Cultural Studies Agenda for Writing

Centers.” The Writing Center Journal, vol. 14, no. 2, 1994, pp. 97–111. JSTOR,

http://www.jstor.org/stable/43441948. Accessed 17 July 2020.