“I had no vision of the Writing Lab,” Liberman says. The Writing Lab came to fruition in 1973. We met with our students in one room or another. “One or two resident advisers were assigned to help me, part time. “ asked me to meet with a few of the students one by one to discuss their writing problems,” Liberman says. (Morris went on to get her doctorate in English and teach at the University of California-Davis.) Then Walker asked Mathilda Liberman to help out. He knew two faculty spouses, Jan Irving and Linda Finton Morris ’61, had expertise in writing. “I needed a couple people we could refer students to,” Walker says. “It worked,” he says.īut students don’t typically learn to be good writers from a single course or a single semester. Walker, who was dean at the time, set up summer writing seminars for faculty teaching the tutorial. As a result, the responsibility for teaching writing spread across the curriculum, but not all faculty members were comfortable teaching students how to write. The First-Year Tutorial, which had been pilot-tested but was not yet required, became the only required course. Then, says Waldo Walker, professor emeritus of biology, they all realized: “Oh my god, we’re not teaching students to write anymore.” This took the onus of teaching writing off the instructors of Humanities 101, which had been a required course. In the late 1960s, like many other colleges and universities, the Grinnell College faculty voted to eliminate the core and distribution requirements and adopt an individually advised curriculum. The way the Writing Lab approaches the teaching of writing - primarily individual appointments with students who are coming in because they want to - fits neatly with Grinnell’s individualized approach to education.īut it wasn’t exactly planned that way. It’s not the primary source of instruction at the College, but it is a major resource that this College offers.” “It’s really become a major part of the way the College teaches writing,” Carl says, “although certainly we believe we’re working fully in partnership with the faculty. One person giving you everything they’ve got in terms of feedback, and conversation, and respect, and support. “Our model is one-to-one tutoring,” says Janet Carl, director of the lab, “and that’s what we do most of and that seems very effective. In fact, it’s emblematic of the kind of work the Writing Lab staff does day in and day out - helping students learn to recognize problems in their own work and figure out solutions. “I like to hear my own voice,” Crim jokes when asked why he reads each student’s work aloud. He reacts as a reader and notes problems - all are minor at this stage of her draft. Kevin reads with a pen in hand, following each line. “Okay, left,” she says, and he notes the change on her draft. Kevin nods and begins to read aloud, exactly as the piece is written, so Ale can hear for herself where a word may not be the best choice - a “this” rather than “the,” “through” instead of “across.” Ale is from Guatemala and English is not her first language.Īle stops him. The essay has been workshopped in class, and Kevin has responded to content and structure in earlier appointments. Through the tall windows of Kevin’s office - northeast corner of Alumni Recitation Hall (ARH), ground floor - they could see bare sycamore branches and leaden sky, but they pay no mind. Kevin and Ale (pronounced “Allie”) sit side by side at a table piled high with books. She grins, shrugs out of her backpack and coat, and hands Kevin draft number four of her essay, “The Basic Principles of Long-Distance Running,” for Dean Bakopoulos’s course in creative nonfiction. On a cold March day, Alejandra Rodriguez Wheelock ’17 arrives right on time for her Writing Lab appointment with Kevin Crim, Writing Lab assistant and lecturer.
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