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MAWCA

The Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association

Friday Workshops

MAWCA hosts focused workshops on the Friday before Saturday sessions.

Workshops are for all writing center audiences. Within each workshop, there will be opportunities for break-out groups to address the needs and interests of undergraduate, graduate and professional tutors, as well as administrators and directors.

Friday Registration will be held in the Business Hall Hub from 2:00-3:30. 

All workshops held from 3:00-5:00, Friday, March 23 in Business Hall, Rowan University 

W1. Eliciting local narratives: ​techniques and technologies of the co-authored oral composition

Room 103

Andrew Davison, Assistant Director, Rowan Writing Center

Drawing from the oral history discipline, this workshop will explore the unique genre of oral interview, techniques for conducting one, and the technology required for recording and editing. An oral interview is a unique composition that is live, largely extemporaneous, and a collaboration between two or more individuals who share the authority in its creation. This allows for an authentic and subjective record of experience. Through discussion and hands-on instruction and practice, the workshop will cover preparatory research, drafting effective questions, interview techniques, and basic audio editing. Finally, we will discuss the value of oral narratives for preserving both institutional memory and individual perspective, including their use for telling writing center histories, narratives, and tutor philosophies.


W2. The Meaning of Social Justice

Room 121

Temple Jordan, Office of Social Justice, Inclusion, and Conflict Resolution, Rowan University

Michael Fotos, Rowan University Writing Arts

This workshop discusses the meaning of social justice while incorporating identity development and tenets of diversity. Participants will be encouraged to learn from one another across differences through a series of experiential activities aimed at exposing structural inequalities. Participants will be asked to interrogate feelings of guilt, fear, and shame associated with privilege and to develop strategies towards working constructively for social justice issues in their writing center spaces. The workshop will conclude with ways to facilitate difficult conversations in the writing center around race, gender, and privilege--from our approaches to tutor training to our interactions with student writers.

Keywords: activism, social justice, race, gender, privilege, navigating difficult conversations


W3. Integrating the Individual Narrative with the Curriculum

Room 131

Matt Ford, Literacy New Jersey

Directors, tutors, and instructors often face the difficult task of achieving necessary learning outcomes while struggling to address specific student needs. Working from a community literacy framework, this workshop prepares participants to adapt best practices for incorporating student goals and learning styles into tutor training and tutoring sessions, in order to form a student-centered learning environment. Participants will learn how to identify and incorporate long term, short term, and SMART goals into their sessions, as well as creating activities which empower the minority narrative within the writing center setting. In doing so, participants will leave with a heightened sense of student need and minority struggles in the classroom as well as a stronger sense of how to adapt writing center curricula and practices to address these factors.

Key words: community literacy, student-centered, English Language Learners, activism and narrative


W4. Translingualism in the Writing Center

Room 235

Dr. Missy Watson, City College of  New York and Dr. Rachael Shapiro, Rowan University

This workshop puts into conversation translingual approaches to writing with writing center administration and pedagogy. With the 2011 publication of "Language Difference in Writing: Toward a Translingual Approach" (Horner et al.), attention to the roles played by multilingualism, cross-languaging, and language ideology within our scholarship and our classrooms have intensified. Teacher scholars of composition and rhetoric have responded to translingual approaches to writing with mixed levels of enthusiasm, challenging questions and criticisms, innovative theory, and an array of inspiring teaching practices. However, the work of and in writing centers, we believe, remains a mostly untapped enclave of the field well positioned and poised to incorporate translingual theory and practice.

In this workshop, participants will engage in conversation and activities aimed at addressing the following questions: What is translingualism? In what ways might translingual theory and practice inform the work we do in writing centers? What benefits and limitations might writing center administrators and tutors be mindful of when incorporating translingualism, and what are some strategies for negotiating challenges?

Through collaboration and conversation, we will develop and share strategies for enhancing our writing centers with translingualism's insights.


Please indicate which workshop you will attend in your conference registration form.



MAWCA is a 501(c)(3) tax exempt public charity. 
Mid-Atlantic Writing Centers Association

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