A Different Type of College Visit
Student insights offer a deeper understanding of writing program effectiveness.
by Sara Primo, English teacher at Germantown Friends School
I have been thinking this year about how one of the best ways for a “private school” to defy some of the stereotypes about being “private” (insular or fortressed) is to become a lab that others can benefit from and to participate institutionally in a larger exchange of ideas and resources. The teaching resource that has incubated at Germantown Friends School that I am most eager to shout about from the mountain tops is the Peer Writing Advisor program. And yet: I have always known that showing up on my own at a conference to talk about Peer Writing Advisors would be only halfway effective; this work is so student-centric that students are the best ones to represent it.
In early October, I took three Peer Writing Advisors to present at a conference for educators at the University of Pennsylvania. The conference was called, “The Celebration of Writing and Literacy,” and our specific workshop was called “Revise & Stabilize: Cognitive Dissonance in the High School Writing Center.”
I started the workshop by leading the audience in a writing prompt and a pair-share about a time they received feedback, to get them thinking about their relationship to feedback. I shared that though I am revision’s fiercest advocate, I also have a long history of ambivalence when receiving feedback on my writing. And that has been one of my introductions to the type of contradictions within the field of peer tutoring.
I then introduced the Peer Writing Advisor program at GFS with a slide in the background with our mission statement: “Peer Writing Advisors are students trained to work with other students one-on-one on writing assignments. They believe that writing is communicating. Through conversation and questioning, PWAs help students clarify their ideas and communicate effectively.” In its fourth year, the PWA experience is launched by an intensive eight-week training each spring for rising eleventh and twelfth-graders. I emphasized that the way the program has developed has led me to contemplate various tantalizing contradictions. For example, I feel so strongly about the principles with which I train my students to Peer Writing Advise, but I also want to instill in them the courage and determination to debate and push back against ideas about language and linguistics. Also, I am asking these students to question how they’ve been taught while simultaneously asking them to team up with teachers in a shared endeavor. Lastly, each year I want my Peer Writing Advisor cohort to feel confident but also humbled, empowered but also deeply conscious of never exploiting their power.
But what would the students themselves say are some of the inherent contradictions baked into the Peer Writing Advisor Program? With that segue, I handed it over.
Madeline, a senior, presented about power dynamics. She spoke about upperclassmen and lowerclassmen, differing expectations coming into a meeting, and the differences between higher-order concerns versus lower-order concerns.
Madeline had this to say about the conference afterward: “It was a really cool experience for me. I’ve been a PWA for an entire year, and it’s made me think a lot about my own role in the hierarchy of education, so being in this space with so many educators that were interested to hear what I had to say felt good. I also really liked the other presentations and hearing the other teachers in the room’s perspectives and experiences. It was just a very chill atmosphere and there was this awesome sense of just so much passion for helping kids learn. I definitely would attend again (and look at other workshops) if I had the chance!”
Sona presented on Descriptive vs. Prescriptive language. Her slide defined Prescriptive language as “one correct form of language” and Descriptive language as “no one correct way to write/speak” She explained that the first half of our training course used the descriptive lens, emphasizing theoretical discussion. The second half of our course shifts to the prescriptive lens, the real-world application. Sona also spoke of her desire to uphold the social justice content of our training in an atmosphere where getting good grades sometimes dominates.
After the conference, in an email to me, she wrote: “I had a lovely time last weekend at the conference. It was a small crowd at our workshop, but an attentive and heavily engaged group. I was more nervous than I thought I’d be. Discussing that subject is always a blast, I could’ve gone on for much longer. The presenter who followed us was fantastic. It was a dual-privilege both to discuss such a fascinating topic with an engaged crowd and also get to listen to the thoughts of this brilliant, random dude I’d never hear from otherwise. I’m grateful for the opportunity, I had a lot of fun.”
Walden, a senior, presented on his area of expertise, “Advising Prewriting.” Walden also presented this same topic over the summer to my PWA teacher training in August, held at GFS. By focusing intently on prewriting, Walden gains a more accurate view into his advisees’ brains. He spoke to the nature of “stimulating synthesis and the creation of new ideas.”
Walden’s debrief after the conference included these reactions: “I’ve become very attached to my own idea that I presented. I feel I have a tether to advising brainstorming. Being able to share something so important in an official context, and give it the gravitas it deserves, was an exciting prospect…. It was strange presenting to that size of a group… I really loved the other talk that we saw. He was very fascinating and funny.”
The audience, though small, took photos of each student’s slides. The crowd included my Philadelphia Writing Project mentor and a group of teachers from Saudi Arabia. I was thrilled to see how poised our GFS students were and also how rich their content was. Not only that, they all reacted with extreme enthusiasm to the next presentation, a lower school Philadelphia public school teacher presenting on writing prompts. I hope this is just the beginning of opening ourselves up to new ways and means of exchange on topics we are all passionately invested in.
Sara Primo is an English Teacher and Writing Center Coordinator at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia. She is the faculty lead for “Peer Writing Advisors,” which received a Maguire Innovation Fund for Progressive Education award this spring. Sara is also the author of the post Poetry Inside Out.
