Especially after the disruptions and adjustments of COVID-19, many teachers would shun the idea of beginning a new project, especially one that would increase an already untenable workload. While writing centers have been adopted at many colleges, they are still uncommon in secondary school environments.
Edited by Dawn Fels and Jennifer Wells, this text is a helpful roadmap for teachers considering creating a space which would over time empower students to take ownership of how writing is practiced at their site.
Addressing the different questions that arise as a writing center is developed, the essays from multiple perspectives allows for the text to be useful for the first years of writing center development, including examples of forms.
The book includes two essays that deserve to be read by secondary writing teachers regardless of whether a writing center is to be instituted at their site.
The chapter “The promise of change with one-to-one instruction” presents a theoretical background outlining the strengths of individualized instruction. Dawn Fels’ chapter “What state auditors taught me about writing center evaluation” reads like a manifesto for student based writing instruction that is not driven by the needs of testing.
