May 8th WAC and Writing Center

WAC
I always wondered what writing across the curriculum actually was. I think I have a better understanding, although I am still a little cloudy on the subject. I see that it helps. "students to become critical thinkers and problem solvers," and that it helps their communication skills. I didn't know that there were two different approaches to WAC, the writing to learn and the writing to communicate. I guess I use writing to learn more than I thought. I like the idea of journals and free writing. I know that they are pointless to some, but I think it is so important to have something so student based, something that students won;t worry because it isn't graded, but it is for them. I think that I will use this approach a lot in my classroom, especially with journals. Writing to communicate is just as important. Being able to write for the audience, for the reader is a skill that students must learn. This will apply to everything they write, in their future jobs and so on. I like how the teacher is a guide, or a "tribal elder to initiate."
Understanding processes is also important. I think that if we don't understand the process, we can't fully understand the result.
It would be interesting to go to a writing workshop. I think I would get frustrated though, because even though McLeod says that at workshops one must "model the pedagogy" I think it would still be someone telling me what to do, and I don't like that.

Writing Center
Hobson is definitely an advocate for the writing center. I have many thoughts on writing centers. I understand that they are designed to instruct and support writers. That writers have a place to go where they can join together with other disiplines and unite, forming a superhero writing group. I guess I am jsut tainted because it isn't always like that. Hobson does talk about how all writing centers are different, but he doesn't talk about the negatives that may occur there. First of all, I have had some bad tutors at writing centers. Most of the time they don't know what they are talking about, or they aren't looking at the contenet at all, just the format and the grammar, etc. They may not even ask me questions about what I was doingand why...it is just wrong, or teachers don't like that. I know that this isn't the point of writing centers. I think that the intentions are good. I think it is a great goal to, "produce better writers, not better writing." I just don't think that happens very much. I think that if we are going to have writing centers, we need experienced people working there. As for writing centers being a training site for teachers, I haven't experienced that yet.