The Writing Center Officially Returns to East!

Hello East faculty!

I am so very excited to say that we are officially opening the East Writing Center, starting next Wednesday, January 28th. UNC-Chapel Hill students, under the services of our district's CoachWrite program, will be here to assist students with ongoing and one-time writing assignments, help students develop their writing style, address issues of clarity and organization and more. Below is a more detailed breakdown of what they do!

The Writing Center Can:

• Assist students with any stage of the writing process, from brainstorming to editing.
• Collaborate with students on developing their critical thinking, as well as their writing style and voice.
• Reinforce the concepts and standards of strong academic and creative writing.
• Discuss with students their teachers’ expectations for writing assignments in any subject areas.
• Provide a non-threatening, even enjoyable, environment to improve communication skills.

The Writing Center Does Not:  

• Seek to “fix” student writing instead of guiding students toward thinking through their own choices and solutions.
• Focus on remediation. Writing conferences can benefit ALL writers.
• Target mechanical errors or flaws in student writing
• Guarantee taking a student from “an F paper” to “an A paper.”

From the UNC Writing Center’s FAQ page:

“We help individuals improve as writers. To this end, we focus on helping writers to develop skills no matter what their writing context. We help writers to make their own choices about a text rather than “fixing” papers for them. We don’t write on students’ papers; we counsel students about the choices they have as writers.

Students who work with a tutor often see improvement in their writing and feel better prepared for courses that require written work. Students may visit the Writing Center occasionally with questions about specific assignments or meet regularly with a tutor to improve their writing habits. They often visit with concerns about developing arguments, organization, evidence, and sentence-level issues.”

Sign up for appointments can be done outside my office, room 268 in upper Quad C. This is NOT just for English teachers! The tutors can assist with writing assignments in a variety of disciplines. I hope you will encourage your students to take part.

The Writing Center will be open in the Media Center during 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 7th periods on the 28th, with other dates and times soon to follow!