Work Week in the Writing Center

At College of the Ozarks, each full-time student works fifteen hours a week during the semester, plus two forty-hour work weeks. In exchange, we receive full tuition scholarships. It's a really good deal, trust me. In the week following finals, half of the writing center student staff stayed on to complete a work week, and boy! was it a busy one!

We all had projects to work on.

Thomas and Rebekah put together a presentation for a junior high writing class that visited the writing center.Thomas Explains How Writing is Involved in Making a Movie

Rebekah Returns

Let it be known that Rebekah had already graduated, but she came back to help with the project just because she wanted to, even with her wedding just around the corner!

What will we do without you, Rebekah?

Mrs. Bishop and Michelle discussed plans for a writing conference that we plan to host for area English teachers from the public schools.

Conference Plans Take Shape

Grant was busy the early part of the week compiling the writing center user statistics...

Compiling the User Stats

...but by Thursday he was ready to get his hands dirty on some real work! The Center's plants were in need of tending, so we hauled them outside, toted several sacks of potting soil over from the greenhouses, and went to work. Well, Grant and Derek went to work. I was busy taking pictures and filling pitchers of water from a nearby spigot.

Uprooting

Green Thumb

Michelle took advantage of a quiet evening to organize our scrapbook. I was thinking ahead to future scrapbook entries and captured the moment!

The biggest news in the writing center was that the dean approved our expansion of the center into the media storage room next door! Next semester, we will have the computer lab in one place and the writing center where students can get one-on-one help next door. Hopefully the new environment will be quieter and more conducive to thinking!

The View from Mrs. Bishop's Office-to-be

Before we could move into our new space next door, it would need to be painted, but before that, the walls needed a thorough washing, which Thomas, Derek, and Sam were happy to do.

Thomas, Wall-washer (Is that similar to a well-wisher?)

Derek, Off Duty

Sam had been working long and hard on writing the script for our online reader response form. Instead of filling out a form by hand for each student whose paper we review, we will be able to do it online and the results will be fed to a database. During the work week, the form was finally ready!

Sam Takes the Online Form for a Test Drive

My project was one I'd been keeping on the back burner since last fall: revising an article on the importance of civility in peer tutoring that had started as a paper for a class with Mrs. Bishop.

"Civility" Gets a Good Send-off

After several revisions, the article was finally ready to submit to a writing center journal. Here my co-workers and Mrs. B. gather in for the submission party.

Brushing Up on Civility

Each semester, we choose a character trait to emphasize in the writing center, which is then displayed on the wall. I was pleased when "civility" was chosen as the center's character trait for Fall 2008.

Even with all there was to do, we still had time for fun!

Michelle says, "Read my lips!"