Sydney Smithgall, University of Iowa
Elisa Burba, University of Iowa
Eva Brooks, University of Iowa
Josephine Geiger-Lee, University of Iowa
Abstract
Four Writing Fellows in their junior year at the University of Iowa describe the logistics of their writing center’s curriculum-based peer tutoring program and the development of their fellowing philosophies. They explain how exposure to writing pedagogy and writing center research literature helped them learn how to deal with challenges common to Writing Fellows and writing center programs. In particular, they learned to navigate the idea of creating welcoming spaces, managing imposter syndrome, balancing instructors’ expectations with students’ own goals, and approaching fellowing through the lenses of a generalist and a specialist.
Introduction
The four authors of this paper traveled to St. Charles, Missouri, for the Midwest Writing Centers Association’s (MWCA) 2023 Spring Conference to give a panel presentation on the Writing Fellows program and the key ideas that have shaped their personal fellowing practices. The following account of their respective experiences as Writing Fellows expands on that presentation, which emphasizes the value of engaging with research literature in the field of writing center pedagogy before putting theory into practice.
In 2003, the University of Iowa’s writing center welcomed 15 undergraduate students to become the first cohort of the Writing Fellows program. Prior to this, graduate students were the only tutoring resources available in the Writing Center. Today, more than 20 years later, the Writing Fellows program consists of honors students from any major who are in their second year or above and have demonstrated effective writing and interpersonal skills. Fellows may be directly recommended to the program; however, all Fellows go through the same application process that requires a written portion, a letter of recommendation, and an interview with one of the program instructors. After acceptance of the position, Fellows receive a semesterly stipend, which increases after finishing two semesters of work. Some Fellows may work simultaneously as Writing Center tutors, but the programs function separately and have different application processes.
Each semester, instructors who have volunteered to work with the program are matched with two to five Fellows who will provide writing support for two major writing assignments. These classes include general education requirements and major-specific courses in fields such as rhetoric, literature, dance, and sociology, among others. This is not an embedded program, so Fellows do not attend the classes being fellowed, but they do visit the classroom to introduce themselves and provide a face to the name that will be sending them materials (i.e., commenting letters, marginal comments, and conference sign-up sheets) over the following months. During the first or second week of classes, Fellows meet with the course instructor to discuss assignment expectations and review the assignment criteria they are looking for in student essays.
Students go through a two-step process for both fellowed writing assignments. Given that it is mandatory for students in a class to work with a Fellow, the program encourages instructors to include participation in the fellowing process as an assignment requirement. First, students turn in a draft to their assigned Writing Fellows by a deadline set by the instructor. This draft includes a cover sheet with questions about what the students believe their strengths and weaknesses are; this information gives Fellows insights into students’ processes, comfort levels with writing, and areas of concern. For example, students may note their paper lacks a conclusion because they are not sure how to write one. Fellows spend the next week after this deadline providing written feedback on those drafts through both marginal comments and a commenting letter outlining areas for students to strengthen. Commenting letters feature a series of short explanations of higher order concerns, contrasting with the more specific details addressed in marginal comments. When Fellows send the drafts back to students for revision, students also schedule a one-on-one conference (virtual or in-person) with their Fellow to discuss the written feedback and any questions students may have about the writing process or the instructor’s expectations. Each conference is 20 to 30 minutes long, allowing for the Fellow and student to review the materials together before the instructor’s final assignment deadline. Writing Fellows can also offer follow-up appointments at their own discretion for students interested in feedback on a later draft of their paper.
This structure allows Writing Fellows to function independently; they schedule their own conferences, communicate directly with students, and choose their own fellowing methods based on their philosophies, experiences, and interactions with research literature. Even so, the program has a tiered setup that establishes a reliable support system and puts resources in place for when questions arise. Throughout the semester, each course will have a more experienced Lead Fellow to facilitate communication. Fellows will also regularly meet with a commenting mentor, who may be one of the Fellows program directors, the associate director of the Writing Center, or a graduate student tutoring there. The commenting mentor schedules a meeting for each round of drafts for the Fellows to discuss strengths and weaknesses of the drafts, present possible solutions for the weaknesses, and to brainstorm questions for the course instructor.
Each new Writing Fellow also enrolls in a one-semester, three-credit Writing Theory and Practice course taught by the program directors, simultaneously taken with the first semester of fellowing. This class serves two purposes, the first of which is to provide on-the-job education through weekly check-ins, mock conferences, and activities intended to create a support network. The second objective is to introduce new Fellows to writing center literature and discuss the implications of ongoing research. Course readings emphasize diversity, equity, and inclusion and encourage students to think critically about how race, class, gender, disability, accessibility, and learning English as an additional language can affect a student’s perception of writing resources. In informal conversations in and out of the Theory and Practice class, Fellows have attested that these open-table discussions are formative to their tutoring strategies and helpful in understanding how to best approach tutoring on an adaptive, case-by-case basis.
The course also features two major writing assignments: the first is a personal essay tracking each Fellow’s evolving journey with literacy, and the second is a fellowing philosophy that outlines personal tutoring values put in conversation with expert voices in research literature. In fact, three of the four authors have drawn from their fellowing philosophies for this paper. Drawing upon the rubric provided during the course, this assignment requires Fellows to describe and explain “your current Philosophy of fellowing, identifying the ideas, influences, and sources on which it is based.” This was a scaffolded assignment, starting with a thesis paragraph and pre-writing questions, followed by commenting and conferencing with other Theory and Practice students on the first draft, and culminating in a submission of the final draft.
To provide an example of how this all works and who the authors are, the four Fellows involved will provide overviews of their respective backgrounds and the two classes they fellowed during their first year with the program. Sydney was a second-year student studying English and creative writing on the publishing track. Their first semester, they fellowed an Interpretations of Literature course of mostly first-year students, taught by an instructor in the English department. Both course assignments were literary analysis essays of varying length that drew source material from course texts. During their second semester, Sydney fellowed an upper-level sociology course with an instructor that was working with the Writing Fellows program for the first time in 15 years. While their job still centered on clarity of writing, Sydney found this course to be more content-intensive (e.g., explaining research terminology, spending more time helping students establish a logical progression of ideas and less time discussing general principles of structure and writing mechanics) as they helped students first plan a review of literature about the morality of a social practice and then organize a research paper after gathering their own data in a local setting.
Elisa was in her second year majoring in English and history, with a minor in gender, women’s, and sexuality studies. In her first semester as a Fellow, she worked with a rhetoric class, part of the General Education requirements for all undergraduate majors at the University of Iowa. The following semester, she fellowed an English class focusing on the works of William Wordsworth, a class that she will go into more detail on later.
Eva fellowed two Interpretation of Literature sections as an English and creative writing major on the publishing track. An Interpretation of Literature class is a General Education requirement for all non-English majors at the University of Iowa. Their reading list and curriculum is very instructor-specific, but they focus on honing similar literary skills such as close reading and textual analysis. Like with Sydney, most students in both of Eva’s courses were freshmen. The first semester’s course was an honors section, whereas the other was a general section focused on writings from former members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Both instructors were post-graduate students teaching as part of their curriculums.
Josephine was a second-year student studying English and creative writing and journalism and mass communication as a double-major. For her first semester, she fellowed an upper-level sociology class, taught by a leading scholar in the field. The papers dealt with applying critical concepts and theories to the modern-day. For her second semester, she fellowed an English class with a professor she knew as an English major. That dealt with critical analyses of Wordsworth’s poetry. Both classes provided her a different perspective on “specialization,” as addressed in her section.
In this article, these four Fellows dive into the challenges they’ve experienced during fellowing through the lens of seeing research literature as a toolbox to draw upon when putting theory into practice. It’s important for Fellows—and other Writing Center student staff—to engage deeply and critically with research literature and provide spaces for these open discussions to flourish.
Writing Fellows: Creating a Safe Social Space in Academia
Sydney Smithgall
During my section of our presentation at the MWCA conference, I discussed the factors our Fellows consider when trying to make a tutoring space feel welcoming to students. Here, I will start by sharing key background information that has informed my fellowing philosophy before moving on to discuss how I have bridged (and continue to bridge) the gap between theory and practice. In my experience, research literature and encouragement from instructors to share our own conclusions in class provided the tools I needed to fellow in an effective and informed manner.
Unlike voluntarily signing up for writing center services, working with Writing Fellows is mandatory for students in fellowed courses. Requiring participation impacts student writing (e.g., students may put in less effort when they know a Fellow will help them revise their paper, such as when I have received two-sentence drafts), student conference involvement (e.g., students may be more willing to engage when they know they aren’t being singled out for extra writing support) and fellowing preparation (e.g., preparing strategies to engage students who may resent not having a choice in the fellowing process). The examples provided are not an exhaustive list, but they do provide a glimpse of the discussions held in our Fellow training course based on the experience of past Fellows.
As is true with any situation that involves seeking help, a lot of stigma surrounds tutoring, which may discourage students from using the resources available to them. Applying the fellowing process to all students in a course may relieve pressure because the step of having to initiate contact with an academic resource is eliminated. It is certainly easier to accept help when your peers are receiving the same services; normalizing destigmatized, accessible resources also reinforces self-advocacy in the future. It is this framework for approaching fellowing that I strive to implement during conferences. For example, I often talk about trends across all papers with students to show that they are not alone in navigating the process. While positive fellowing outcomes cannot be attributed to this alone, many students who reported feeling frustrated at the beginning of our conference told me that they felt much more confident in their writing and revision abilities by the end of our discussions.
As for addressing potential ways to overcome challenges of negative perceptions when seeking help, I firmly believe that communication is key. In fact, I believe that engaging in clear communication is the most important part of being a Writing Fellow. For me, this means not only providing clear and concise feedback, but also ensuring that students understand the nature of the Fellow-fellowee relationship and feel comfortable asking for clarification or accommodations when needed. I have seen Fellows establish this line of communication in different ways, but my strategy hinged on consistency and flexibility (the latter of which I will discuss later). To establish this consistency, I began and ended each session by ensuring the student felt seen beyond the writing. Before even pulling up the student’s essay, and I would ask about their year in school (often followed by questions about their first weeks on campus, given that I have frequently worked with freshmen), their area of study, how their semester was going so far, and how they felt about the class and assignment they were writing for. After reviewing feedback, I would conclude the conference by asking about their plan for revision and what points we discussed they wanted to prioritize, followed by an invitation to reach out if any further questions came up.
I have frequently found myself relating these ideas on how to make students more comfortable to Oweidat and McDermott’s article, “Neither Brave nor Safe: Interventions in Empathy for Tutor Training” (2017). After my first semester of fellowing, I included the following excerpt in my fellowing philosophy to discuss the importance of intentional language in tutoring settings:
A student’s work is impacted by their physical and emotional environment, making an understanding of these interpersonal factors crucial to identifying the best ways to support their writing process. I believe that the best way for a tutor to look beyond the writing is to consider the space in which the conversation is taking place. These ideas of how to foster a welcoming environment came up in our class discussion of crafting “brave” and “safe” spaces for students of various identities (Oweidat & McDermott, 2017, p. 5). I wholeheartedly agree with their ideas of “fluid” spaces and found this an interesting discussion of a tutor’s control over emotional space, although I quite vocally rejected this idea of a “brave” space. When we speak of bravery, we are using active language and asking for courage; I believe we should not ask more of our tutees than their willingness to share their work and putting sensitive or personal topics on a pedestal of bravery does nothing for the normalization of having these conversations. I am, however, a steadfast believer in the absolute necessity for Writing Fellows to craft safe spaces. Beyond the physical environment of a conference, the openness and empathy of a tutor can make a world of difference to nervous and resistant students alike—progress depends on trust. (Smithgall, 2022)
Writing Fellows often seem to be a campus outreach branch of the Writing Center (Severino & Knight, 2011), but each Fellow must develop their own strategies for communication that accommodate individual preferences of Fellows, students, and instructors. Even as we emphasize the importance of weighing our words and paying attention to the cues of our students, we must remind ourselves that tutors must also practice self-advocacy. If we listen only to the students’ requests, we are sacrificing our personal boundaries that must come into play for a Fellow-student relationship to remain balanced and effective. For example, I am quite flexible when it comes to conference time and location, but I have learned to set limits on what that looks like.
During my first year as a Fellow, I allowed students to choose whether to meet with me in-person or virtually, despite my personal preference for meeting in-person that stems from finding body language extremely helpful to social interaction. I also made it clear that I would work with students to find a conference time that would be feasible for both of us if the availability on my conference sign-up sheet didn’t align with their schedules. However, I found that this flexibility was leveraged against me when students would repeatedly show up late regardless of the conference format, not show up at all, or change their sign-up right before their conference time without communicating with me. To remedy this, I made sure to implement stronger guidelines in the following semesters; I set a deadline for students to sign up for a conference and locked the document so students would actively communicate with me in the event of rescheduling, I made it clear I would not hold conferences if students were more than 10 minutes late, and I became more comfortable telling students I was no longer able to conference with them in cases where they canceled without notice and tried to reschedule last minute (extenuating circumstances aside). I have had multiple students tell me they appreciated my genuine interest and willingness to work with them, which allowed me to continue prioritizing open communication while also setting boundaries to protect my time and resources.
To provide another example, we often discuss in our program how intersectional identities can become relevant in fellowing or tutoring settings. It is never the responsibility of a Fellow to assume the role of social education regarding a marginalized identity they claim, such as when then-undergraduate tutor Morrison describes how the Writing Center ceased being a safe place for her as a Black woman (2017). Students’ perspectives on race evident in their writing, including a dissertation seeking to capitalize on Black hair care without first listening to Black voices, pushed Morrison to explore self-confession and the relationship between “emotional safety” and “obligation.” Though the idea of speaking up is a single definition of “brave” that is not inherently implied by using the term, tutors of color and LGBTQ+ tutors should not have to act as “brave” spokespeople for their marginalized position in academia and society. Morrison (2017) herself writes, “my very personal self is part of the session, and not really on my terms” (p. 26). More generally, I believe that reading this article encourages Fellows to consider the complex and unavoidable reality of bringing identity to academics, an idea that Josephine will revisit toward the end of this paper.
All of this might seem like a question of semantics—admittedly, my perspective on the Oweidat and McDermott (2017) article has since evolved to better appreciate their framing of fluid tutoring spaces—but I include this example to illustrate how drawing my own conclusions from reading led to a deeper engagement with fellowing theory. My interest here hinged on the belief that we should strive to use thoughtful language in tutoring settings when establishing a secure environment. When we speak with care, as Fellows are trained to do in the broad discussions of our writing theory and practice course, our students walk away with more confidence. This leaves them better equipped to get what they need from academic resources the next time around, which I have witnessed firsthand as many of my students became more vocal and engaged during our second conference. Furthermore, several students have told me they voluntarily used the Writing Center for another class paper after a positive experience with Fellows.
To illustrate the intersection of theory and practice, I will return to my first interaction with the brave and safe debate: a discussion post response. The question I raised in class was this: what constraints have we placed on safe spaces that necessitate their differentiation from brave spaces? My post was not intended to be definitive or prescriptive but rather to call attention to the power of the words we use and illustrate the type of responses we encourage in our Writing Fellows Theory and Practice course. I believe that safety and vulnerability are not mutually exclusive; rather than establishing a degree of separation, I wonder if it’s possible to expand our view of safe spaces to encompass those uncomfortable moments of learning while maintaining a non-judgmental, encouraging environment. This may be implicitly held within the idea of a “fluid” space, but I find an explicit discussion of the language to be insightful to my interpretation of theory nonetheless. Is the idea of safe versus brave spaces the most important debate in writing center discourse? Certainly not. At the end of the day, creating a space where students are comfortable learning and growing is a success no matter which word you assign to it. But was this a valuable debate to engage in? For me, the answer is undoubtedly yes. What started with an assigned discussion post response challenging the rhetoric of brave spaces became a journey of learning how to engage with writing pedagogy and gaining confidence in my ability to contribute to the theory and practice that will one day culminate in, we hope, writing centers that serve as academic and social hubs of progress.
The following passage from my Fellowing Philosophy embodies the message I would like to send in support of implementing Writing Fellows programs and in conversation with other Writing Center staff:
I believe that Writing Fellows have a unique position to promote positive systemic progress. Just as students will take away what they invest in the process, tutors must fully engage in the past and present of writing center discourse if they hope to foster a resource open to all students’ writing needs in the future. (Smithgall, 2022)
When it comes to applying theory to practice, I believe most of our work lies in encouraging and exemplifying open communication, identifying and challenging personal biases through learning and relearning, practicing patience, actively accommodating student needs, and ensuring the accessibility of written feedback and communication. All these ideas were introduced to Fellows in our training course, and from this I’d like to emphasize how important it is for students working in the Writing Center to engage with research literature and discuss the value of that engagement. I believe that many writing tutors consider programs such as ours to be confined to commenting and conferencing on student work, and this can certainly be true depending on available resources and training. However, like the students visiting our Writing Center, Fellows will get out what they put in. I strongly encourage undergraduate Writing Center staff, especially those not required to take theory and practice courses, to follow their curiosity and dive deeper into the literature of writing pedagogy and literacy development.
Fellowing as Learning: Exploring Expertise
Elisa Burba
During the Writing Theory and Practice class that Sydney describes in the previous section, many Fellows discussed the experience of having their friends ask them to read over and edit their papers. Their friends requested their help because of the Fellows’ enjoyment of writing and their perceived ability to write well. For many, including myself, these experiences were part of the reason they applied to be a Fellow in the first place. However, through principles introduced in the Theory course and through readings, I learned there are distinct differences between the practices of editing for friends and fellowing for classes. The most obvious difference was that while I could get away with giving my friends plenty of suggestions, filling the page with marginal comments and edits to their grammar, when I fellowed, those suggestions had to be cut down and prioritized according to which ones addressed the problems I saw as the most important. I also had to ensure that I was praising and critiquing in equal measures, an ideal that sometimes I did not follow when editing my friends’ drafts. The most striking difference to me was the contrast between how I was viewed by my friends versus how I was viewed by the students whose papers I fellowed. Although I struggled at first with being seen as an expert in a position of authority, I ultimately overcame my imposter syndrome by recognizing the authorial agency of the students I fellowed and how our collaboration within meetings allowed both of us to draw upon our own knowledge. Neither of us had to be the expert as we were co-creating knowledge and working together to expand upon the paper, allowing us both to be more comfortable in the meeting.
My friends often called me a great writer, and their personal experiences with me and their knowledge of my love of writing as well my success on my own papers led them to bring their papers to me for editing. However, the students that I fellowed saw me as an expert because I had been placed into that role in relation to their class, not because they had prior experience with me to back up that view. At the same time, I saw myself as a peer to those students, something more akin to the relationship between myself and the friends I edited for. This view of my role was challenged at the end of my first semester as a Fellow by a student who wrapped up their final email exchange by thanking me for my “help and expertise.” This phrase caused me to look closely at how I was being perceived by the students I worked with. As a part of my fellowing philosophy for the Writing Theory and Practice class, I wrote:
I have never felt like I should be an authority figure. Whenever others have placed me in positions of power, I feel like I have not earned it or that there may have been a better [candidate] for the position. I cannot help but feel like I am lacking some expertise or skill, or as if someone overestimated my value within a position. (Burba, 2022)
These feelings are all classic symptoms of imposter syndrome, something I recognized in the process of writing my fellowing philosophy. The McLean Hospital (2023) characterizes imposter syndrome as one feeling that “they were not bright, had achieved their success from sheer luck, and that they had managed to fool everyone regarding their intelligence and capability” (n.pag.). I wanted to address this issue going into my later semesters as a Fellow.
As previously mentioned, I was assigned to an English class, ENGL:2309 Selected British Authors Before 1900: William Wordsworth, alongside Josephine and two other Fellows during my second semester on the job. This course was taught by a professor with whom I had previously taken classes and was in a class with at that time because of my English major, which I am working towards in addition to a history major. Working with an English class and a professor I knew both helped me feel more comfortable in my supposed “expertise,” but I was still worried about other students knowing more than I did and mistrusting my suggestions. Most of the students were pursuing either an English major, an English minor, or an English and creative writing major due to the nature of the course and major requirements. Some students I worked with were older or further along in their education than I was, leading to some hesitancy on my part to even suggest that their writing could be “improved” or changed in some way. I worried they would not respect my thoughts due to my age or lack of experience in the English major. It is important to note that the students rarely said or did anything to make me feel this way. Out of the nine students I worked with, only one seemed resistant to my ideas. Of course, I fully supported any of my students in expressing their agency as writers and leading the sessions themselves in response to my comments.
No matter the draft, I always started with a read-through that focused on praising the draft for at least two features, no matter how small those features may have seemed. For example, during my first semester as a Fellow, I fellowed a rhetoric class that required students to write an analysis of an argument that they witnessed or took part in. During my first read-throughs, I praised one student for being self-aware when describing their motivations behind the stance they took in the argument, while I told another student that their title was both engaging and informative. Doing this allowed me to separate the experience of fellowing from the experience of editing for my friends. This practice spawned from Daiker’s 1989 article, “Learning to Praise.” Daiker (1989) writes that solely critiquing papers tends to be easier than praising them and suggests that “past failure or a perception of past failure” (p. 104) is a major cause of students’ struggles when writing papers. To help alleviate this vicious cycle, Daiker (1989) only wrote comments of praise on his first read-through of a student’s paper, which I adopted into my own fellowing practice. This also allowed me to put my mind into “fellowing mode” rather than “editing mode.” Creating these two mindsets allowed me to work on being present in my fellowing and recognize that I was not just reading another one of my friend’s papers.
A large part of my fellowing included creating a collaborative environment where both Fellow and student worked together and learned from one another while walking through the paper and the comments. In my fellowing philosophy, I wrote:
I often speak from my own experiences with writing when fellowing and giving suggestions on how to improve drafts, but if students are going to listen to and learn from me, I must also be willing and able to listen to and learn from their own experiences. Talking with students often ends with me having something that I want to try the next time I write an essay, whether it be a method of researching or drafting. If I am going to be seen as an expert, I might as well continue to learn and collect as much information about the writing process as possible in order to help out students as much as possible. (Burba, 2022)
My thoughts echo Bruffee’s in his keynote speech for the 2007 National Conference on Peer Tutoring in Writing, “What Being a Writing Peer Tutor Can Do for You.” Bruffee (2008) wrote about the virtues of working with other students as a peer tutor, as “(y)our tutees learn from you, you learn from your tutees, you learn from the writing peer tutors you work with, and they learn from you” (p. 5). I wanted to ensure that my fellowing was not just a one-way street; it was a symbiotic relationship with both parties getting just as much out of it. This allowed me to feel as if I did not need to know answers to everything and that I was striking a comfortable balance between being an expert authority figure and a peer to the student I was working with. Creating that collaborative environment also allowed me to combat my imposter syndrome because there was space for the student to self-advocate and bring in their own ideas and writing process.
This collaborative environment required me to acknowledge when I was the less knowledgeable party on the topic being discussed. While I was an English major fellowing an English class, I was not attending every class alongside the students, as our Writing Fellows are not embedded in courses. This meant there were often elements of paper topics discussed by the professor in class that I was not privy to. By asking the students to explain those elements I did not understand, I allowed the students moments to demonstrate their own knowledge and what they were the most interested in writing and learning more about. An important part of managing imposter syndrome is recognizing both when you are not the expert and when you actually are the expert about something—as hard as that may be for someone with imposter syndrome to understand. Personally, this looked like speaking from experience about what had worked best for me in order to write a successful paper while providing space for the student to explain and implement what they had learned in class while I took the backseat during that part of the meeting. By giving the students this space, I have noticed that they tend to feel more validated in their knowledge when I recognize that they know something I do not; this led to them being more engaged in the process overall.
In his article “Imposter Syndrome in the Writing Center: An Autoethnography of Tutoring as Mindfulness,” Villarreal (2021) writes that “a key component in pushing back on imposter syndrome is mindfulness” (n.pag.). Mindfulness occurs when an individual is aware of their own feelings and thoughts and can ground themselves in the present moment due to their self-awareness. This is a concept that I began to also try and implement in my fellowing. Self-doubt could crop up both in meetings with students who were receptive to my suggestions and in meetings with students who were not. In the first scenario, having a student agree with everything I suggested and immediately implement those suggestions made me worry that the student thought my knowledge of the process of writing was infallible. When working with students who were not receptive to my suggestions and insisted on doing everything their own way, my self-doubt was only reinforced. Through the implementation techniques learned that promote balance and mindfulness in my own life as well as the techniques I learned through research literature, I have learned being aware of feelings of inadequacy—no matter how false they might be—is important for Fellows because they need to present themselves as confident in their work and receptive to the ideas and knowledge of the students. I was able to confront my imposter syndrome through recognizing the agency and class-based expertise of the students I worked with and the research I read as a part of the Theory and Practice class.
Balancing Needs of Students and Interests of Instructors
Eva Brooks
Throughout my first year of fellowing, I didn’t expect the Writing Fellow experience to feel so different from how writing center research discusses the expectations of instructors. This research allowed me to put this balancing struggle into context, but the contrast to how it was described and how I experienced this shocked me. I worked with a class on two specific assignments over a semester. Working with one instructor for the entire semester allows us Fellows to closely understand the expectations an instructor has for these two assignments and provide more specific feedback to students. Writing Fellows are encouraged to communicate with the instructor of the class throughout the semester, usually meeting at a separate time before each assignment. During my first year, I met with both the instructors I worked with in person, but this can also be done through emails or video calling. Because instructors and Fellows openly communicate, Fellows are more able to answer common questions about the assignment from students. Talking personally with the instructors helped me not just to understand the assignment but to get a sense of the instructor’s energy and what they were searching for in papers. This left me prepared for the plethora of similar questions students would ask me about the assignment. I saw students have a variety of interpretations and responses to an assignment’s guidelines, and without these meetings I wouldn’t have the interpretation of the instructor to compare. Balancing what instructors are looking for with what students want for their draft is a large part of my experience as a Fellow. Striking the right chord helps to provide feedback that can develop not only the kind of paper that the instructor is looking for, but help inspire students to hone their craft on future papers and build essay-writing skills they can apply in the future.
Both classes I have worked with were sections of Interpretation of Literature, the same course Sydney fellowed their first semester. Unlike Sydney, each semester I worked with a different instructor in sections. The first semester was an honors course without a theme, but the second semester course focused on the theme of Mormonism. Both courses used the same first writing assignment; however, the instructors had vastly different expectations for the assignment and their students.
That first assignment was to write an analytical essay breaking down a literary device used in a work they read in class, exploring how that device contributed towards the theme or message. For the first semester honors section, the instructor pushed students to find the heart of the connection between the literary device and theme. She asked that students not name literary devices directly, as she found that often students would use these terms as “buzzwords” without exploring a quote that illustrated the device. For analyzing evidence, she encouraged students to pick apart quotes word by word to pinpoint the exact way they contributed to the work. In contrast, the spring semester section instructor did not have those specific ideals in mind. While he also liked the idea of deeply analyzing quotes, he allowed students to use literary device terms and seemed more concerned with students identifying what a work could be saying with those devices than how they wrote about them. In addition, the topics the students in these two different classes wrote about varied widely. In the second semester class, students had a small pool of class readings to choose from, but the first semester students could analyze anything they read in class and outside texts extending to even Taylor Swift songs. Surprisingly though, these different approaches led to similar questions students had about their work. Perhaps it was the wording of the initial assignment, but despite differences in subject matter, each class of students seemed equally confused by their respective instructors’ approaches.
I found it easier than I initially expected to connect to the students as peers. As Elisa noted, students had immediate confidence in me because of the “expert” role I had been assigned. We discussed as a class the idea of the peer element, but I didn’t expect to immediately have this trust because internally I knew how new I was to fellowing. Having that initial trust allowed me to easily lead meetings in a professional and friendly direction, as we were taught to be the most helpful solution. I also found that students were thankful that someone besides the instructor was re-explaining the assignment. As a peer, I was able to conduct meetings with an ease that allowed students to be honest about what they didn’t understand. It validated them to talk through assignment questions without facing an instructor’s judgment, which allowed me to inject questions about their thought process with their initial drafts. Students in both classes were unsure if they were following the assignment guidelines, which created a concrete challenge. They often expressed confusion about expanding upon evidence or finding a specific theme, especially in the fall class where they couldn’t rely on naming a literary device as part of an explanation. Many came into my conferences with drafts that, while they may have contained insightful writing, did not expand on their quotes and connect them to their stated theme in the way that the instructor was looking for. These situations challenged me to help a draft to grow and develop while also meeting the instructor’s expectations.
There is a chronicled disparity between fellowing or tutoring between helping students construct a stronger paper and meeting the needs of an instructor. Thonus (2001) writes about instructor expectations of tutors in “Triangulation in the Writing Center: Tutor, Tutee, and Instructor Perceptions of the Tutor’s Role.” She describes how tutors are expected not just to communicate openly with students, but to remind students of the instructor’s evaluation criteria. The instructor’s expectations lie at the heart of tutoring discussions. She writes that “the third party, the course instructor, is a silent participant. What the instructor ‘wants’ becomes the agenda of the tutorial session” (Thonus, 2001, p. 61). I imagine this sense of want is heightened for a tutor because they must grapple with a different instructor’s expectations every time. However, because writing Fellows work through multiple student responses to the same assignment, there is a universal need to address the instructor that a tutor would not have to take into account. As a Fellow for a specific class, the instructor is a more tangible force for me and my students.
With fellowing, the instructor is not a “silent participant.” The students made it clear, often through blunt statements, that their goal was to meet instructor guidelines. Any student’s goal in a class to some degree is to pass, but knowing the student’s instructor and helping them throughout a semester makes this more apparent. The instructor’s expectations are tied to grand factors like GPA and academic success in a more tangible way than with an individual paper. I also found knowing the guidelines so specifically made expectations go hand in hand with skills that are helpful with any piece of writing. I soon realized I had to constantly balance the instructor’s goals and the student’s material. Writing a paper analyzing the devices in a Taylor Swift song can work, but how do I communicate to the student that the instructor wants specific analysis of each word without hurting the student’s motivation and turning them away from the task?
This balancing conundrum is exaggerated compared to tutors, but as a Fellow I have a similar set of resources to address issues. A key purpose of the fellowing process, like with tutors, is to help students learn questions and skills that they can apply to any paper. While a “strong” paper is subjective and tipped towards the instructor’s vision in this context, addressing this only from the instructor’s point of view could lead a student to not having the mindset to work with different prompts and lose confidence. Discussing instructor’s goals through general questions on writing essays was the main way I tried to balance these facets. Throughout the specific assignment, I tried to allude to tools that they can use for anything they write in the future—in the words of an article that our class read, we were teaching for transfer (Hill, 2016). Some students made it clear with their questions and flagging engagement that they only wanted to think about writing essays because of the assignment in front of them. While I think it’s important to meet students on their level of engagement with essay writing, since it’s not a passion for everyone, I felt only providing feedback related to the scope of a specific assignment would undermine the learning experience. By attending to the student’s ideas through broader questions about whether evidence is supporting a claim or the development of a theme, I could try to explain this in tandem with instructor goals.
Throughout the fellowing process, it was tricky to practice focusing evenly on instructor expectations and student goals. Sometimes through finding evidence that they were proud of, students would fail to explain how it bolstered their claim to the instructor’s liking. It was tough to keep the students motivated while telling them they still needed to explain how the lyrics proved their claim. For students more focused on the grade, I found that they were vaguer with their thesis statements, leaving their analysis without a connection. Looking back, I think I managed some level of success in balancing all these expectations by tailoring responses for the individual students. I would ask questions about their view of the theme, like clarifying what the Taylor Swift student saw as the message of “Cornelia Street,” to indirectly gauge how thoroughly students had thought about their claim. I found that for both the passionate and the assignment-focused, they often had a keen sense of their claim even if they didn’t convey that in their thesis. Even for those with a strong claim, this line of questioning was helpful for training their eyes on their analysis. “So you’ve noted this lyric demonstrates this literary device… is this literary device what you think creates the comforting feeling you describe in your thesis?” I would ask. When the student said yes, I would narrow in with “What parts of it make you think so?” Students like this one would verbally provide ample analysis of what I found instructors wanted to see. Focusing on the students’ goals also revealed that they had done deep analysis like instructors were asking for, but they had become lost trying to put their thoughts down on paper. Encouraging students to express their viewpoint and question their claims hopefully didn’t just answer whether or not they had analyzed enough, but gave them a blueprint of the questions they should ask when reviewing any essay.
The few times students were hesitant about this, not seeming to feel a passion for the quotes that they chose and not really providing an answer, I would take a more utilitarian approach. When I explained what the instructor wanted from an analysis, hearing the expectations in different words helped them to approach the paper differently. I realized when students expressed confusion or concern about meeting the assignment requirements, it demonstrated a central goal to please the instructor and secure a good grade. By hearing a peer clarify what the instructor wanted, they became eager to see what they had in their draft that matched. From there, I worked with them to read the expectations and shine a new light on the assignment sheet by leading them through general questions they could ask about all of their essays.
For students that appeared more confident about fulfilling the assignment expectations, I shifted more attention to writing conventions and methods that could transfer to future papers. It was difficult within the time frame to inspire students focused on the professor’s expectations to find an internal, personal goal for their paper and vice versa. Honing in on what the student desired seemed to result in students feeling more confident in themselves and the assignment, and final drafts that met instructor guidelines with more accuracy. I reflected on this process after the first semester of fellowing in my fellowing philosophy:
Every student I fellowed had different needs and was in a different stage of paper development… A paper will be judged based on the expectations the teacher has, but must also stick true to the passions and ideas of the student. It’s a balancing act to meet everyone’s expectations and have a good paper come out of the woodwork. (Brooks, 2022)
Through balancing expectations and strategies, a Writing Fellow is akin to a Writing Center Tutor in being “not a sharply defined role but rather a continuum of roles stretching from teacher to peer, negotiated anew in each tutorial” (Thonus, 2001, p. 61). Our class worked with a lot of texts about writing tutors, as there are not many papers on the specific experience of “fellowing.” While these readings helped to shape our approach, I felt myself stretching to meet goals in a different way than was described of writing tutors. A Writing Fellow experiences more palpable instructor involvement through a very different lens than a Writing Center Tutor, but this lens can help to find a way to make conferences a valuable learning experience for the future of both the fellow and the student.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Fellowing as a Generalist and Specialist
Josephine Geiger-Lee
Similar to embedded writing tutors, Writing Fellows often work both within and outside their disciplines. While some skills remain relevant regardless of field—elements of a good argument and concise language, for example—others must adapt to meet the assignment. Toward the end of the Writing Fellows’ training course, we receive a framework to guide our understanding of the dual nature of the classes we may fellow. Using the terminology Hubbuch (1988) and Kiedaisch and Dinitz (1993) developed, we describe this as either being a “generalist” or a “specialist.”
A generalist role is where a Fellow (or, in a broader sense, a tutor) does not work within their specific skill set or knowledge base. An example would be an English major fellowing a dance class. The Writing Fellows program gives toolsets for generalists first; most of us will end up serving as generalists. Part of this comes from developing a broad knowledge base. Regardless of our major coming in, all Fellows should be able to speak about the merits of arguments, the importance of allowing a student to speak on their argument and find the right words to explain in, and more. However, another reason comes from practicality—some majors, such as computer science, will not get the opportunity to fellow a computer science class simply because the professors haven’t opted into the program.
A specialist role is where a Fellow works within their specific skill set or knowledge base. An example would be an English major fellowing an English class. While the theory and practice we learned remains integral to our fellowing, new challenges arise from being a specialist. Some students we fellow may know us as a student first, not a Fellow, or in the case of English majors, they may feel as if they have equal training in their field.
When we discussed Severino and Traschel’s article as the Fall 2022 cohort of Fellows, we did so before any of us served as either. We were all first-semester Fellows. However, some fears other students cited in their discussion thread were writing conventions that may be unknown to a generalist Fellow (is passive voice more standard in lab reports? what kind of citation—something many students want addressed in conferencing meetings—is best for each field?) or focusing on “product over process” for a specialist Fellow (if a Fellow knows the field well, will they jump to the end and ask if the argument makes sense based on their own knowledge base rather than the writing there?).
When it came time for my contribution in the discussion thread on this article, I chose to speak about “conquering the challenge of confidence.” To me, before I served as a specialist, it seemed like the biggest opponent would be yourself. In the end, that proved to be true.
As a Fellow now, I’ve served as both a generalist and a specialist. My first semester, I assumed the role of a generalist in a sociology class entitled Race, Organizations, and the Workplace. For my second semester—alongside Elisa—I assumed the role of a specialist for an English class about the work of William Wordsworth. Later, as I continued through my fellowing journey, I would fellow a course called the Italian American Experience as a generalist and an Interpretations of Literature class where I felt I served as a specialist.
To me, being a generalist for the sociology course came with a host of confidence issues, as I cited in my discussion thread. Not only was I a first-semester Fellow, but I was unfamiliar with the content presented even in the prompt sheets for assignments. I didn’t know what the “plantation system” entailed, much less how it continued to be reflected in the modern age. Along with being intimidated by the content, the professor had penned the textbook in the class himself and had proven standoffish (he was not available for questions—not through Zoom or email—due to his busy schedule).
Another fear of mine came from not being trusted as a Fellow. The students in the class were sociology majors while I was an English major. However, when I met with students, I could fall back on the knowledge given to me through the Writing Fellows training course. While I researched before commenting or meeting with any students, a valuable skill is asking someone to break down their argument for someone less familiar. The papers we read on empathy also needed to extend inward; while I may have had imposter syndrome, having empathy for myself and allowing myself not to be the expert in the field allowed me to have better conversations with the students.
Neither the Fellow nor the student is an expert. For one of my first conferences, I asked a student to break down the systems in the workplace. With a laugh, the student admitted they weren’t sure if they could describe the systems in place. Using what knowledge I had acquired while researching, I could bounce ideas off them, which then sparked memories of what was discussed in class. Being vulnerable and admitting my lack of knowledge led to students being more vulnerable. Students would ask questions about citations because they didn’t feel comfortable asking the instructor, which they told me.
Finally, that first course allowed me to see expertise comes in many different forms. I may not be a sociology major, but the most popular second prompt the class wrote on dealt with discrimination against Asian Americans in the workplace. As a Chinese American, I could relate to and grapple with the prompt in a fulfilling way. While I may not know the psychology behind terms like “tiger mom,” I knew the term intimately.
Morrison wrote on her experience as a Black tutor in a White university (2018). While we had read it previously in the course—it was included in a unit about marginalized identities—it still felt pertinent later. Morrison was unsure if she should bring her identity “to the table” every time; the White student wouldn’t relate to it, and, sometimes, it wasn’t even visible (such as through a cameras-off Zoom call). Yet accessing and activating her identity allowed her to dig deeper into the prompts and feel more confident as a tutor. This was true for me as a Fellow. Fellows do not operate in a void; they carry their race, ethnicity, gender, and other aspects of their identity with them. I could draw from that knowledge base and feel like a specialist.
The second class I fellowed dealt with the poetry of William Wordsworth, allowing me to break from being a generalist and foray into being a specialist. I knew the instructor before from interactions in the English department, and I knew of her reputation through peers such as Elisa who took her class. The assignments—from prompts to paper lengths—were all familiar to me.
However, I quickly encountered a roadblock; the students seemed disinterested. I would attribute some of the poor participation in the fellowing process specifically to being a specialist in the English field. My credentials matched many students’. We undertake the same process of revisions, and while opting out of the fellowing process would deprive them of a second set of eyes, many students did choose that route. For the first round of fellowing, I received five out of eight drafts—including one with a note requesting to ‘opt-out’ of the process at the top of the essay. Then, of the five conferences, only two people attended. One person hadn’t responded to the sign-up sheets despite my three attempts to reach out, and the other two signed up and did not attend. For the second assignment, I received four out of eight drafts, but I had four conferences.
While lack of student engagement may be linked to being a specialist, it is important to note this course may be an outlier. Other factors could include the instructor, who had been working with the program for the first time and did not make the fellowing process mandatory. In the ensuing semesters, her policy has been that not participating in the draft review or conferencing will result in a letter-grade drop for the paper. Elisa, who both fellowed that first class with me and then a later class with the same instructor, told me the later courses had almost 100% participation.
It is also important to consider being a specialist in an English field may look different than being a specialist in a different field. Later in my academic career, I would take a class with this instructor and be on the opposite side of the fellowing process—I was the student. However, since I was a student rather than a Fellow, I got to hear people’s protests against the fellowing process. Of the five Fellows assigned to that course, four were English majors, meaning it was predominantly specialists. Two English students in that course told me they were more knowledgeable than the Fellow since the Fellow never took a course in Gothic fiction specifically. Another student told me they preferred their own process—which was what I had heard when I served as a Fellow. I would be curious if specialists in other fields don’t face the same lack of engagement; however, the Writing Fellow program here at the University of Iowa predominantly consists of English majors (even if some of us are double majors). At least for our program, to be a specialist is almost exclusively to be an English major fellowing an English course.
Besides the lack of engagement, my personal conflict with being a specialist came again from confidence, although it came in a different way. I didn’t want to override a student’s idea just because I felt like I was on very firm footing. During one of my conferences, a student wanted help with their thesis on a word-by-word level. She kept checking in with me as we discussed the thesis, asking if she was “doing it right.” While I wanted to help her on a broader scale—such as knitting her ideas into a thesis—and I ultimately disengaged with this process by asking her to think it over after the meeting, my specialist role had some students approaching me like an expert. Elisa had similar experiences with this, which only worsened her imposter syndrome. For me, it didn’t worsen mine, but it made me less confident I was giving them transferable skills but rather just helping them with this specific essay (product over process, as one of my peers said in that discussion thread).
That is not to say there were no advantages to being a specialist. As Severino and Traschel (2008) note, “for first-time tutors, an assignment to a familiar course was confidence-building” (p. 6). While I was in my second semester fellowing this Wordsworth class, it boosted my confidence to work in a subject I recognized. I could tackle the prompts in a head-on way. In contrast, in the sociology class, as I read through the papers, I took notes on vocabulary I didn’t know and then researched them. I would also wait until we could have a conference amongst Fellows and ask our Writing Center commenting mentor, who has a social science doctorate, if she had any experience with the topic. This slowed down the process in a way the Wordsworth class never did. While slowing down the process, in some ways, could be positive—it allowed me to think deeply, and fully, about the prompts and get more resources to make my knowledge base wider—it also was frustrating. Writing Fellows are also undergraduate students, and our window of time to fellow doesn’t always come at an opportune time. In a perfect world, slowing down to better understand content would only be positive, but coupled with other assignments to do, it made me feel more frantic to get things done after I had gotten answers.
The English class on Wordsworth also provided familiar ground to cover. Analyzing a poem used skills I felt confident in, and it used skills I had been graded on and taught. While I’ve written essays in different fields before, it was often for general education requirements, where the teacher has so many students you can’t receive personal feedback. My skills in poetry were skills I had gotten feedback on.
Ultimately, my experiences being a generalist and a specialist proved invaluable, not only as a Writing Fellow but as a writer. Confidence is key to revision in many fields, even as the tutor rather than tutee, so having the framework given to me through the course allowed me to approach each situation with greater confidence in my own skills. Both experiences—as a generalist and as a specialist—taught me ways to approach my own writing and how to approach teaching. Therefore, while both have distinct advantages and disadvantages, I would encourage anyone in the role of a Fellow, or a tutor, to explore both being a specialist and a generalist to become a well-versed Fellow or tutor.
Final Remarks
Our theory, practice, and orientation course component in the Writing Fellows Program design ensures that the assistance we provide is dynamic and adaptable; our students and their writing are a product of the world around them. Many of these conversations that situated fellowing in broader contexts occurred within this course, all of which was inspired by our interpretations of research. The MWCA conference provided us further opportunity to grapple with these issues.
Through our first years as writing Fellows, we engaged in discussions about creating welcoming spaces, managing imposter syndrome, balancing instructor expectations with a student’s mindset, and approaching fellowing through the lens of being a generalist or a specialist. These discussions introduced the idea that working as a peer writing resource is a collaborative process. The research and literature we were exposed to was not framed as a set of proven rules but rather a guidebook from which to learn from and contribute to in return.
Writing centers often have a reputation for social advocacy, and we believe that having conversations about learning and relearning is one of the most important continuing goals of programs like our own. Whether you have a Writing Fellows program on your campus, a more traditional writing center, or both, we encourage you to read widely, tutor kindly, and listen to the students and staff learning alongside you.
References
Brooks, E. (2022). Balancing and act: aiding approach, engagement, and connection as a peer writing fellow [unpublished essay]. University of Iowa.
Bruffee, K. A. (2008). What being a writing peer tutor can do for you. The Writing Center Journal, 28(2), 5-10. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43442295
Burba, E. (2022). Expertise and empathy: my fellowing philosophy [unpublished essay]. University of Iowa.
Daiker, D. A. (1989). Learning to praise. In C. M. Anson (Ed.), Writing and response: theory, practice, and research, (pp. 103-113). NCTE.
Hill, H. N. (2016). Tutoring for transfer: The benefits of teaching writing center tutors about transfer theory. Writing Center Journal, 58(3), 77-102.
Hubbuch, S. (1988). A tutor needs to know the subject matter to help a student with a paper: __Agree __Disagree __Not Sure. The Writing Center Journal, 8(2), 23-30.
Kiedaisch, J. & Dinitz, S. (1993). “Look back and say ‘So What;’” The limitations of the generalist tutor. The Writing Center Journal, 14(1), 63-74.
McLean Hospital. (2023, June 2). A guide to imposter syndrome—and overcoming it. https://www.mcleanhospital.org/essential/impostor-syndrome.
Morrison, T. H. (2008). Being seen and not seen: A Black female body in the Writing Center. In H. Denny, R. Mundy, L. M. Naydan, R. Sévère, & A. Sicari (Eds.), Out in the Center: Public controversies and private struggles (pp. 21-27). University Press of Colorado. http://www.jstor.com/stable/j.ctvbqs9mw.5
Oweidat, L., & McDermott, L. (2017). Neither brave nor safe: Interventions in empathy for tutor training. The Peer Review, 1(2). https://thepeerreview-iwca.org/issues/braver-spaces/neither-brave-nor-safe-interventions-in-empathy-for-tutor-training/
Severino, C., & Knight, M. (2011). Writing Fellows as ambassadors for the Writing Center. In C. Murphy & S. Sherwood (Eds), St. Martin’s sourcebook for writing center tutors, (4th ed., pp. 214-227). Bedford/St. Martin’s.
Severino, C., & Trachsel, M. (2008). Theories of specialized discourses and Writing Fellows programs. Across the Disciplines: A Journal of Language, Learning and Academic Writing. http://doi.org/10.37514/ATD-J.2008.5.2.04
Smithgall, S. (2022). Fellowing beyond the paper [unpublished essay]. University of Iowa.
Thonus, Terese. (2001). Triangulation in the Writing Center: Tutor, tutee, and instructor perceptions of the tutor’s role. The Writing Center Journal, 22(1), 59-82. https://www.jstor.org/stable/43442136
Villarreal, B. J. (2021). Imposter syndrome in the Writing Center: An autoethnography of tutoring as mindfulness. In G. N. Giaimo & N. Pollack (Eds.), Wellness and care in Writing Center work. https://ship.pressbooks.pub/writingcentersandwellness/chapter/title-here-2/