Through this conference, we hope to assist administrators in developing tutor training and tutors in negotiating conversations about antiracism as it arises within tutoring sessions. This summer session builds off of the conversations initiated at the MAWCA 2020 Conference  “Decolonizing Writing Center Practice: A New Vision for a New Decade” held last March.

Again, as stated in MAWCA’s previous Call for Proposals, critical perspectives require us to ask questions about the values that shape our work and how those values demand personal, professional, and institutional change. As our conference chairs, Mairin Barney and Carmen Meza queried last Spring, “...we ask, what are the ends of writing center practice, who really benefits from them, and what might a revised notion of these ends look like? What are writing center practitioners, staff, and tutors, interested in re-envisioning about their centers?”

Now, more than ever, these questions demand consideration and thoughtful action.

Questions to continue to explore:

Tutors: What elements of your identity or experience inform your writing center work? How does your identity intersect with your tutoring tool-kit? How have you tried to improve the writing center during your tenure, and what about your writing center experience do you hope to take with you when you move on? How does your work at the writing center overlap with your interests and/or future plans?

Administrators: What is the role of your writing center within your institution? How do you (try to) use your writing center work to call attention to the ways in which institutions serve as dehumanizing agents? How do you prepare tutors to work with diverse students? How do you engage faculty in critical or radical approaches to teaching and grading? How do you advocate for underrepresented populations of students?

Social Justice: What is the role of writing center work in language diversity? What do “diversity” and “social justice” mean to writing center practitioners? How are these terms linked, and how are they different? What is the role of a writing center within a larger community of people? How do writing centers impact non-students? Who is served by writing center practices and why? Do Writing Centers have the social capital to enact powerful change?

Alternative paradigms: What frameworks beyond decolonization have helped you to theorize a radical writing center? How will you transform your work in the next decade?

Workshops & Breakout Sessions

• Admins will learn practices for training tutors to confront racism as it appears in student writing and writing center sessions.

• Tutors will learn how to enact anti-racist pedagogy when working with writers and each other.

• Breakout Sessions will last 1 hr 15 minutes to allow for conversations to expand

• Final afternoon session will recap and allow sharing across levels

• #MAWCASummer20 specific for participants

• #decolonizeeducation #criticalpedagogy #educationforliberation #decolonizeyourcurriculum larger conversations

Missed the Keynote? Access the Recording Here

Tutors: Join the Anti-Racist Writing Tutor Network